Votes have been rolling in for the Student Association elections since Monday morning, and the lone presidential candidate finally has some competition.

Jamar Hooks, a junior political science, sociology and policy studies major, is launching a write-in campaign for the SA presidency. He decided to throw his hat into the ring to challenge what he sees as candidate Drew Lederman’s lack of attention to minority issues.

The campaign wasn’t entirely Hooks’s idea. He said he first considered running when he found out his friends had been writing his name on their ballots. He finally decided to make his campaign official after noticing Lederman’s absence from the Student African-American Society’s forum on the recent blackface incident.

‘I was a little concerned that he was showing no interest in minority issues,’ Hooks said.

Lederman said he was not aware the incident had occurred until the SA Assembly meeting Monday night and that no SA members were invited to attend the forum.

With at least two days left in the election, Hooks plans to kick his campaign into high gear by reaching out to non-minority students. He serves as the president of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity and vice president of the National Pan-Hellenic Council and said minority students already know his position on most issues.

Among the issues Hooks feels strongly about are the proposed upgrade of Public Safety officers to peace officer status. He said as a minority student, he feels threatened by the possibility of arming Public Safety officers.

‘As a black male, I feel slightly threatened on campus,’ Hooks said. ‘I don’t see remotely any reason why they should have guns.’

Hooks said even if he loses, he hopes whoever wins will pay greater attention to minority issues.

Lederman said prior to the blackface incident, he saw no reason to make race an issue in the campaign. He said the incident isn’t something SA will take lying down.

‘It’s not something that I’m going to accept,’ he said. ‘It’s not something that I’m going to ignore.’

At present, there is no way to know how successful Hooks’s campaign has been. Hooks must receive at least 100 votes in order to be considered an official candidate when the results of the election are reported, SA President Andrew Thomson said. SA officials won’t check vote totals until the online polls are closed, he added.

SA’s online polling system ran into trouble when it opened at midnight Monday and had to be closed until 10 a.m., Thomson said. The voting process was slowed by an excessive number of votes left in the system from previous elections and the polls were closed to prevent students from mistakenly thinking their vote had been recorded, he said.

The system has experienced no subsequent problems, Thomson said.

Published on November 4, 2003 at 12:00 pm