Young Trustee candidates Max Schreiber and Wills Rooney will attend meetings with the Black Student Alliance “that will result in an unofficial endorsement letter” after a “misunderstanding” about a previous invitation to attend endorsement meetings.
In a letter to the editor published in The Chronicle Thursday, BSA President Henry Washington, a junior, wrote that BSA had originally invited the Young Trustee candidates for unofficial endorsement meetings. Seniors Schreiber and Rooney, however, said they interpreted Washington’s first invitation—sent in an email to the candidates Jan. 29—to attend BSA endorsement meetings as stating that BSA would issue an official endorsement in The Chronicle. They then declined to attend official endorsement meetings because Young Trustee candidate Jamal Edwards, a senior, was previously the president of BSA.
Washington, who declined to comment for this article, wrote in his letter on Thursday that Schreiber and Rooney should have known that BSA would not be issuing an official endorsement because of Edwards' ties to the organization.
Washington’s original Jan. 29 email inviting candidates to endorsement meetings, which was obtained by The Chronicle, does not say that BSA would be issuing an unofficial endorsement rather than an official endorsement in The Chronicle as it has in years past.
The email does say, however, that BSA’s endorsement would be released in a memo that analyzed what the candidates had to say during their endorsement meetings.
“As you probably know, our group often chooses to endorse a candidate for the Young Trustee race,” Washington wrote in the email. “As we always do, we plan to pen and release a memo that details a reasoned analysis of our experience meeting with all three candidates, offering ultimately a candidate that stood out (or not) among the three and why (or why not).”
Schreiber argued that Washington was not at all clear in his original invitation that BSA did not plan to issue an official endorsement.
“If you read that email, it’s very clear that this was an official endorsement meeting that he was inviting us to,” Schreiber said. “It’s very clear that there were some Boss Tweed style tactics when it came to this endorsement meeting. The ethics were sketchy. Wills [Rooney] and I both agreed that there was no objectivity going in.”
Rooney agreed with Schreiber that Washington’s original email did not indicate that BSA would issue an unofficial rather than an official endorsement.
“That was not made clear in the first email,” Rooney said.
Senior Jay Sullivan, a Chronicle columnist and BSA general body member speaking on behalf of the organization, said that any questions Rooney and Schreiber may have had about the nature of BSA's endorsement process could have been resolved privately rather than through a public statement. He also pointed out inconsistencies in The Chronicle's previous policies for accepting official endorsements.
“This could have been solved by an email or two, and all they decided to do was basically blame BSA for an issue that really shouldn’t be BSA’s fault,” he said. “All they did was publish a letter in The Chronicle, blasting BSA for some reason...I question whether or not this was done more as a publicity stunt than a statement of ethics."
Sullivan, who is supporting Edwards’ campaign for Young Trustee and said he has given campaign advice to both Edwards and Rooney, also pointed out that The Chronicle has previously run endorsement letters from organizations that had official ties to candidates. For example, Sullivan noted that in 2014, Jacob Tobia, Trinity '14, was officially endorsed by Blue Devils United, even though they previously served as president of the organization. Last year, The Chronicle published an endorsement letter from the Engineering Student Government even though Young Trustee candidate Anna Knight, Pratt '15, was president of ESG at the time.
Sullivan added that although the The Chronicle has in previous years asked members of organizations to recuse themselves from the endorsement process if they have ties to a candidate, it has not previously banned an organization from submitting an endorsement letter if a candidate served in a leadership position within that organization.
He argued that the decision to make a public statement adds to unfair criticism and blame that BSA has received and reinforces the incorrect perception among some students that BSA is responsible for every protest, gathering, demand or mistake by black students.
“BSA has been blamed for lots of things,” he said. “To put them up for scrutiny yet again is not something I think they deserve at all.”
Both Schreiber and Rooney reached out to Washington after they published their statement, asking for an unofficial meeting with the BSA Executive Board separate from the endorsement process. Sullivan argued, however, that it was strange for the two candidates to ask for a meeting with BSA so soon after they had harshly and publicly criticized the organization.
"When Max [Schreiber] calls meeting with BSA 'Kabuki theater' and [both candidates] say it's a waste of their time, how does it seem genuine or honest or authentic to engage with an organization by calling them that in the media and then sending them an email saying 'I would like to meet'?" Sullivan said.
Following publication of his letter to the editor, Washington reinvited all of the Young Trustee candidates to attend unofficial endorsement meetings. All three candidates confirmed that they will be attending.
Edwards declined to comment for this article, but confirmed in an email that he will be attending a meeting with BSA.
Rooney said that he is looking forward to his meeting with the organization.
“The members of the Black Student Alliance are students at this University. Their voices matter," Rooney said. "I’m interested in meeting with them and explaining what my vision of Duke is and fielding their questions on it. What they decide to do with that is ultimately their decision.”
Schreiber also confirmed that he will attend a meeting with BSA, but wrote in an email that he had reservations.
"Now that BSA has decided to not officially endorse and the [BSA Executive Board]'s collusion/conflict of interest has been exposed, I will certainly be attending the meeting with the understanding my back is against a wall," he wrote. "I have a responsibility to all voters, even those supporting another candidate, if I win."
He added that he still felt that BSA’s endorsement process was unfair. Schreiber argued that BSA’s ties to Edwards and the social media support of some BSA Executive Board members for Edwards led him to believe that his comments in an endorsement meeting might be misconstrued in an endorsement memo that was distributed or published.
Schreiber noted that he felt BSA had done itself a disservice by holding its endorsement process in the manner that it has.
“The people who are screwed most by this whole ethics disaster are members of the BSA who don’t serve on the [Executive] Board, because frankly they don’t get to hear from me and Wills in an objective fashion.”
Update: This story was updated Monday to change the pronoun referencing Tobia to they at Tobia's request. An earlier version of the story used the pronoun he.
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