Ruling - 26th February - University of Cambridge Social Media
I have reviewed a complaint relating to a candidate for President (PG) posting a collaborative post with the official University of Cambridge account, breaching Rule 4.6 (”Candidates and their campaign team are not permitted to use the University of Cambridge, College, or the Students’ Union logos within their promotion or campaigning materials.).
I am satisfied that the candidate must have actively accepted the collaboration with their campaign account however I accept that this may have been inadvertent, given that this is the account the candidate used for their work as an MCR President prior to the election, and which has previous collaboration posts with Cambridge University. For the avoidance of doubt, before campaigning opened I expressly agreed to candidates using existing accounts for their election campaigns. I will consider only yesterday’s post in this ruling.
Yesterday’s collaboration, however inadvertent, is a breach of the rules. It is not a resource available to all candidates to promote their campaigns and it creates an unfair advantage. Cambridge University has 1.5 million followers, I am satisfied that many will be students eligible to vote and in addition to the collaborative post feature, the candidate’s campaign account is tagged in the text of the caption meaning that even after the collaboration was removed, the perception of endorsement remains.
In mitigation, the candidate is not primarily responsible for the content of the Cambridge University post, and they notified the Elections Team and swiftly removed the collaboration, within two hours of the post being made. There have been no prior complaints about this candidate and given the candidate’s proactive approach to us, I am confident that they have sought to follow the rules.
I have therefore determined that the threshold for disqualification is not met, despite the unfair advantage given. I am satisfied however that sanctions are required in order to ensure a level playing field for all candidates in the election. I have taken as a starting point a two hour campaign ban, reflecting the two hours for which the actively accepted collaboration post feature was visible. I have adjusted this down to 1 hour 30 minutes to reflect the mitigation above.
Jeeves Rohilla must not conduct any campaigning activities from 1:30pm on Thursday 26th February until the end of voting.
During the period of the campaign ban, all forms of campaigning are prohibited - this includes soliciting votes in person or online, posting of any social media posts, flyering or any activity actively seeking to promote their candidacy. Any breach of the campaign ban should be reported with evidence to the Deputy Returning Officer via the complaints form.
In making this ruling, I considered if disqualification would be appropriate and decided, as noted above, it was not. As this ruling could be appealed to the Returning Officer, the results for the President (PG) election should not be released until any appeal has been resolved.