Tweetgate 2015?

In the chaos that was the election results last week, there was some incorrect information posted on the @NISG twitter account. For those of you who aren't one of @NISG's 1145 twitter followers, I'll recap what was posted from the account, which was deleted.

" @NISG

Pres/VP Runoff Vote. 606 votes, Katie and Renae 543 votes. 40 Votes for Write In candidates. There will be a runoff next Tuesday/Wednesday"

Now, it's clear that aside from mysterious capitalization choices, that the "Tweeter in Question" obviously forgot to put Jared and Tanner next to their 606 votes, and missed the "9" for the "4" in KR's vote total. This tweet was posted at 9PM Wednesday, and the tweets that followed stated that correct information would be up soon. 

Fast-forward to this morning, and the Northern Iowan's Letters to the Editor had Matt Doore, RA in Rider and known Jared and Tanner supporter, write a letter accusing NISG of bias. The letter is somewhat confusing, as neither Jared or Tanner are mentioned directly, but it's clear that he's upset about what he coined #tweetgate2015. Now when I search on twitter for that hastag, I don't find much about NISG. In fact, I find seven total tweets ever with that hashtag. 

The letter by Mr. Doore is frustrating, because I was expecting an endorsement of  Jared and Tanner, but instead we have six paragraphs on why that particular tweet was bad, that NISG is somehow bias, apparently against JT. He calls for a "reevaluation of the election committee", which I assume he actually means to be the Election Commission. 

Now if you go to the new-and-improved uni.edu/NISG , you'll find lots of information on the Judicial branch of NISG, which is the committee that oversees the election. Calling for a recount, or challenging the results of the last election is a serious motion, and if Matt Doore really feels this way, he should have notified Nathan Davis right away rather than publishing it in the NI.  More to the point, who tweeted this anyway?

As it turns out, the normal person who runs the account, Director of Public Relations Beth Sullivan, was at the basketball game that night that as captain of the dance team. In her absence, Eric Boisen was at the election results and was responsible for the tweet. He outed himself today and apologized from the NISG page:

"I know this is late to the punch, but I would like to apologize for NISG’s abhorrently bad tweeting of the NISG election results on Wednesday night. The Director of Public Relations, who normally mans the NISG Twitter was gone, so I said I could take over the Twitter for the election results. During the stating of the results, in the confusion and quick talking of the Election Commission, I forgot to mention Jared and Tanner in the election results as well as put in the wrong vote total for Katie and Renae.

That tweet was not sent in anger or malice, but was an honest mistake. In the confusion, I also stated that Dave Coltrain was elected as a Senator for the Graduate College even though he did not receive enough votes. I should have proofread those tweets before sending them out, as well as deleted them sooner when they were shown to be inaccurate. I apologize to Jared & Tanner for UNI, Katie and Renae for UNI, and Dave Coltrain. I will not be posting the results for the runoff election. I will leave that to Beth Sullivan who is an amazing Director of Public Relations.

I apologize again,

Eric"

Okay, so we all make mistakes. The tweet has since been deleted, and everyone who wants to know knows why and when the runoff is happening. Personally, I'm a bit annoyed at the level of attention that this required. Griping about a tweet, about how something came out wrong is just a day in the life of running student government. To blame the entirety of NISG as if it is some mysterious agency with it's own agenda is ridiculous.  Whoever wins the race this week will have to deal with students complaining about things that NISG has no control over, and often. 

Considering the level of negativity I've contributed to this election season, I was really expecting both tickets, especially Jared and Tanner, to hit hard on the positive aspects of their campaign. We'll never know if JT sanctioned this letter, but really this space complaining about a typo on Twitter could have been used better to talk up why Jared and Tanner are the better ticket. Sorry Matt, but I think you goof'ed. 

Now on to the other letter to the editor in today's issue of the Northern Iowan (I'll link them when they're up online). This one was written by Linh Ta, a former executive editor of the NI and my former boss. This letter has more of the pieces I'd expect from an endorsement: hitting campaign points on their experience, examples of what they'd like to do, and how Linh knows them. Lastly, it ends with a clear endorsement, and urges people to vote. It's almost as if Linh has extensive writing experience! 

From my perspective, Katie and Renae simply look better in this edition of the NI. Holding the two letter up next to each other, as they are in the paper, Doore looks like he's still mad that JT didn't win last week and directing it at one tweet, while KR got somebody who's been involved on campus to write a strong endorsement letter. Being an effective student leader is responding well to adversity, and getting worked up about a tweet misspelling shows a confusion of priorities. 

I'll take a brief second to make a clarification that may be muddy. I am a writer for the Northern Iowan. The NI is an independent, student-run newspaper that has it's own governance wholly separate from NISG. I, Corey Cooling, am a student at UNI with no position in Kevin's NISG administration, and I am employed by the NI to write this blog. Everything in it is 100% my work and opinion, and the blog is not in any way supported by or sanctioned by NISG. If it was, I would refuse to do this. I'm upset at the notion that I somehow represent bias for/against NISG and that I have an agenda. I'll be reflecting on this and posting about it later.