Midd Briefs SGA votes to block release of election results

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SGA votes to block release of election results

The Student Government Association (SGA) voted Sunday to withhold the results of the April 27 SGA Presidential and Student Co-Chair of Community Council elections. The decision came after students reported having been able to vote multiple times in the elections, and SGA members confirmed no student username or password had been required to access the online voting system.

Before the meeting, SGA President Alex Stanton said the Senate still intended to make the results public, as had been done in previous elections.

"The Senate hasn't approved the release of the results," wrote Stanton in an e-mail last week. "It will happen at our meeting next time."

The SGA did not discuss the election results at their final public meeting, instead voting 9-3 to withhold the official results, at an informal dinner meeting held on Sunday.

After the meeting, SGA Senators only confirmed that SGA President-Elect Max Nardini and Student Co-Chair of Community Council were the winners, and said 643 students had voted in the election.

The online elections did not require students to enter usernames or passwords in order to vote, and only restricted votes based on IP address. The lack of security allowed individual students, and potentially non-students, to vote multiple times so long as they accessed the site from different computers.

Stanton downplayed the likelihood that multiple votes had swayed the election's outcome.

"I can tell you that the margins in both races were large enough that the potential for students to vote more than once at other computers wouldn't matter (i.e there aren't enough public computers in labs on campus to change the result)," wrote Stanton.


Defense files motion to dismiss assault charges

A former Middlebury student charged in Addison Superior Court with attempted sexual assault of one female student and lewd and lascivious conduct towards another, has filed a motion to have the charges dismissed.

In the motion, received by the court Thursday, Defense Attorney Robert McClallen alleges that the state is unable to prove several factual elements of the offense.

The student, a 21-year-old male from Rutland, Vt., was a junior at Middlebury last spring when the incidents allegedly occurred at a March 31 Delta social house party. He withdrew from the College last spring.

The two women told investigating Middlebury Police Department Officer Vegar Boe that they drank a blue punch at the party and lost consciousness. One woman alleges she woke up in the defendant's room with physical signs of assault.

Addison County State's Attorney John Quinn only formally pressed charges against the defendant in January, after DNA evidence sent to a state crime lab came back inconclusive.

In an affidavit, Boe notes that the court could issue a subpoena for the findings of the College's internal investigation, which have yet to be made public.

A status conference for the case is scheduled for May 21 at the Addison Superior Court in Middlebury.