The Chronicle will be publishing endorsement letters for the 2016 Young Trustee elections from Monday, Feb. 1 to Monday, Feb. 8. No endorsements will be published Tuesday, Feb. 9 or Wednesday, Feb. 10, the days of the election. The final deadline for endorsements will be 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 7.
We will accept letters from any and all student organizations, so long as the groups adhere to the rules stipulated below. We will not accept personal endorsements from individuals.
1. Organizations must offer to meet with all three candidates, Max Schreiber, Wills Rooney and Jamal Edwards, and the candidates must be given at least 24 hours to respond. If a candidate voluntarily declines to meet, the endorsement meeting may go on as scheduled and the candidate's absence must be noted in the endorsement letter.
2. In the endorsement process, organizations must give equal speaking and questioning time to each candidate. No candidate may receive more time than another.
3. Members of organizations who decide they want to participate in endorsements must remain in the room for every candidate's appearance. Members may not leave and return, or arrive late. If they do so, they may not participate in any portion of the endorsement process, including deliberations and voting.
4. To avoid even the appearance of impropriety, The Chronicle expects that members of organizations with significant personal or professional attachments or associations with candidates will remove themselves from the endorsement process. Any conflict of interest that would jeopardize a non-prejudiced review and consideration of a candidate should result in a recusal. If a member of an organization recuses him or herself due to conflicts of interest with any one candidate, that member may not participate in the endorsement process at all, for all three candidates.
5. If one of the candidates currently is or was previously a president or officer of an organization, that organization is precluded from issuing an endorsement letter.
6. If an organization wishes to publish an endorsement letter, the president of the organization must email Editorial Page Editor Jonathan Zhao (jonathan.zhao@duke.edu) and Editor-in-Chief Amrith Ramkumar (amrith.ramkumar@duke.edu). All three candidates must be CC'ed on the email as well. The email must include an attached endorsement letter as a word doc and the following statement: “I, the president of [organization name], certify that all Chronicle endorsement rules were followed in the formulation of this letter. I understand that failure to adhere to the rules undermines the election process, as well as the integrity of my organization and The Chronicle.”
7. Endorsement letters must be signed by the leader of the student organization and include his or her full name, school and graduation year.
8. If a candidate wishes to challenge an endorsement letter on the grounds that any of rules above have been violated, he may submit by email a formal challenge to the editorial page editor and editor-in-chief stating his claims. The president of the organization must be CC'ed and may respond to the challenge. This challenge must be received within three hours of the endorsement letter email sent under Rule 6. The Chronicle retains the final and exclusive right to adjudicate the merits of any such challenge.
9. There is no guarantee that endorsement letters will be published. The letters with the greatest likelihood of being published are those that arrive earliest and are concise. Letters may not exceed 325 words. If The Chronicle determines that any of the aforementioned rules have been violated in the formation of an endorsement letter, that letter will not be published.
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