Glenn Connelly, Staff Photographer

After about two hours of debate, Associated Students council members voted yesterday to reprimand five A.S. executive council candidates who used MySpace as a campaigning tool.

Presidential candidates Matt Keipper, Andrew Roy and Daniel Goldberg as well as executive vice president candidates Brian Hamilton and Amanda Venegas were reprimanded for violating Section 4.06 (p) of the Elections Code, which prohibits the use of social-networking sites as campaign tools.

The A.S. elections committee banned the practice of campaigning on MySpace on March 23, but yesterday, an article in The Daily Aztec revealed that all three presidential candidates and both executive vice president candidates allowed their friends to post endorsement messages on their personal sites.

This is a violation, elections committee members said, because the candidate has the opportunity to set their messages to private or to delete messages after they are posted.

Goldberg received two additional reprimands during the meeting, bringing his total number of infractions to three, and making him eligible for disqualification from the election.

He received one of these reprimands after a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity – of which both Roy and Keipper are members – filed a complaint for a sign he posted that said “Do you really want a Lambda Chi for president?”

Goldberg was punished for a similar sign, which stated “Do you really want Lambda Chi in charge of SDSU?”

He was issued another reprimand for the offensive nature of the comment posted on MySpace that read, “If SDSU students don’t vote for this player ? They’re gay.”

Elections committee chair Israel Alarid asked Goldberg to issue a letter of apology to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Student Union for the comment.

Goldberg did not have the opportunity to speak during the council meeting yesterday because he was at work and could not arrive on time.

Afterward, however, he expressed regret for the comment being posted on his site.

“I really apologize to all students at SDSU,” he said. “I did not mean to disrespect Associated Students, the elections committee or LGBTSU.”

He said he thought the ruling was fair.

“A.S. council is there to do what it’s got to do,” he said. “And hopefully that will be my job next year, to make sure people follow the rules.”

It took the council members more than an hour to come to a resolution about Goldberg, and once they had done so, it took nearly an hour to decide if they should similarly acknowledge the other infractions.

At issue was whether the candidates who were present at the meeting should be allowed to make remarks in their own defense.

Eventually Keipper spoke up and shortly after, the council took a vote.

“A precedent has been set,” he said. “And that is what we should stick to.”

Keipper, and the other reprimanded candidates abstained from voting on the issue.

After the meeting, Keipper said “the council made just decisions.”

Roy agreed that the conclusion was fair but took exception to the way the council conducted business yesterday.

“The Elections Code states in detail what would have to have been done in order for the Election Code to be broken,” Roy said. “I don’t think it was clearly understood and viewed before a decision was made.”

Normally, violations are issued after complaints are filed with the elections committee. Alarid made an exception in this instance because the campaigning violations became public knowledge.

“Because we were not going to police, they were given the power and authority to police themselves,” Alarid said. “Because they took advantage of that, we were forced to enforce (the policy).”

The elections committee will hold a special meeting at 6:30 p.m. today in lower Aztec Center to decide whether to disqualify Goldberg from the election.