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It’s rare for college students, who typically
preserve their bright-eyed crusading for major state and federal elections,
to get involved in local politics — but Springfield is far from
typical. In a letter distributed last week to more than 70
reporters, elected officials, and others in Springfield and surrounding
areas, Aakash Raut, chairman of the College Republicans at the University
of Illinois at Springfield, boasts that, with students’ help,
Republicans took a 6-4 majority on the officially nonpartisan Springfield
City Council in on April 17. “Many election observers had not taken this
into account, in predicting what the election outcome would be, but after
the results were in, some local leaders noted that this factor could have
made a pivotal difference, in several of the close races,” Raut
writes. The letter continues: “One aspect of local
election campaigns that was implemented this year, and which
college students are especially accustomed to, but which has been largely
untapped, in Springfield elections, was the use of technology
resources.”
In addition to using e-mail, blogs, and
social-networking Web sites to coordinate their activities, UIS Republicans
also used university computer labs, libraries, and databases.
That’s a no-no, according to the head of a
state ethics-watchdog group. “We definitely want young people to get
involved in elections and campaigns, but to use a state asset for what
essentially is electioneering is where it crosses the line,” says
Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. If this all sounds familiar, it’s because
Jennifer Rose, a student at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and
campaign manager for dark-horse Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich
Whitney, landed in trouble last fall for doing the same thing. Although SIU officials instructed the Green
Party’s Rose to cease and desist, UIS doesn’t seem to mind. UIS
spokeswoman Cheryl Peck says that the College Republicans’ activity
did not violate university policy. “That is not a misuse of university resources
as long as they’re a recognized student club. If it were an
individual who wasn’t a member of a recognized organization, doing
this then it would be a problem,” Peck says. In fact, she notes, students routinely invite
political candidates to campus for speaking engagements. Canary is inclined to disagree with Peck’s
parallel, saying that it’s one thing for a candidate to come to and
lay out his or her policy positions for students, but get-out-the-vote
campaigns for specific politicians are a different matter. But Chad Fornoff, executive director of the Illinois
Executive Ethics Commission, sides with UIS. He says that the state ethics
act applies only to state employees. “We just don’t have jurisdiction over
students,” Fornoff says.
In other words, whereas administrators at public
universities, for example, are prohibited from using state-owned resources,
such as taxpayer-funded computers, for political activities, students are
not. “I don’t think this is the crime of
the century,” says Canary, “but it might be wiser from now on
to use your personal e-mail that you send from your personal laptop.”
The state election code prevents using state
resources for political purposes, says Dan White, spokesman for the
Illinois State Board of Elections. Thomas P. Hardy, director of university relations for
the University of Illinois system, agrees. “Neither students nor employees should be using
university property or equipment for personal activities, which I would say
includes political activities,” he says. The newly elected Springfield aldermen will be sworn
in Friday, May 4, at an inauguration ceremony held in Sangamon Auditorium,
on the campus of UIS.
Contact R.L. Nave@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2007.
