Young Trustee candidates Wills Rooney and Max Schreiber, both seniors, have announced in a written statement that they will not attend Black Student Alliance Young Trustee endorsement meetings.
According to the statement, Schreiber and Rooney believe that it would be unethical for BSA to make an endorsement given that Young Trustee candidate Jamal Edwards, a senior, was president of BSA during the 2014-15 academic year. They also expressed concern that they would not be given a fair hearing by BSA given that many members of the BSA executive board have already expressed their support for Edwards though social media posts and Facebook profile pictures.
“An endorsement meeting where each candidate is not afforded the opportunity of a fair hearing and where the board has no semblance of impartiality is no endorsement meeting at all,” the statement reads.
Schreiber Rooney YT BSA Endorsement Meeting Statement by thedukechronicle
In the statement, Schreiber and Rooney point out that organizations which they are affiliated with have declined to make endorsements to avoid conflicts of interest. The Interfraternity Council—of which Schreiber is the president—and the Jewish Student Union have declined to make endorsements because of Schreiber’s involvement with those organizations. Rooney was previously part of The Chronicle's Editorial Board and is still involved with the Duke Catholic Center, so both groups have similarly declined to make endorsements.
Schreiber expressed further concerns in an interview Saturday that the BSA endorsement meetings would be a waste of time for himself and for Rooney.
“These endorsements would be totally Kabuki theater if we did them because the outcome is predetermined,” Schreiber said. “We already know the leadership has a clear conflict of interest with Jamal so why would we allow them to falsely represent themselves as objective judges of my candidacy and then report back to others what I say?”
Rooney echoed these comments and said that he felt that BSA had already effectively endorsed Edwards in a public way.
"I don't think it's possible for BSA to hold a fair or honest or open endorsement meeting when out of their eight executive board members I was able to find six on Facebook and five of them had already changed their profile picture to endorse formally Jamal Edwards," he said. "They've already effectively endorsed Jamal, and despite their trying, it's impossible for a truly impartial meeting to occur."
Rooney noted that he is open to meeting with BSA and discussing campus issues with them, but does not feel that their endorsement process is fair and open.
Schreiber said that while he found BSA’s endorsement process to be ethically troubling, he did not think BSA was acting in bad faith and added that he could not fault Edwards for taking BSA’s endorsement.
“I can’t make a judgement on who’s influencing [BSA], whether it’s because they like Jamal because he’s their former president or whether Jamal is actively reaching out and saying ‘support me,’” Schreiber said. “I can’t fault Jamal, and I wouldn’t fault Wills either, for going out to a former group that he knows and saying ‘support me.’ My only issue is that it’s so obvious that it’s predetermined.”
Edwards did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication. Black Student Alliance President Henry Washington, a junior, declined to comment.
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