PUBLISHED MARCH 26th BY THE CAMPAIGN TO ELECT PRIYA DAS FOR PRESIDENT Open Letter to The Lance and

UWindsor Students re: University Candidates very tricky This is an open letter to The Lance and a message to students at large to address a recent article published on March 26th regarding allegations of plagiarism and misconduct against Priya Dass campaign team. We would like to make it unequivocally clear that Priya Das has never participated in or encouraged the type of malicious behaviour that has been alleged, which centers on our teams official campaign video. However, in light of the sensationalized media messages and exaggeration of the facts, we have decided it is in the best interest of students to remove the video from our Youtube page for the remainder of the election to provide room for lively discourse of legitimate issues. There is, however, a very real need to ensure students are properly informed regarding central issues that have been brought to light by The Lances publication. The allegations against Priya Das and this team were recklessly disseminated by The Lance without sufficient journalistic responsibility or appreciation for the facts. Our team believes that students are entitled to be aware of the facts that were withheld from them in The Lances publication: First, it is a fact that several hours before The Lances publication, the Universitys Chief Communications Officer verbally suggested to Priya Das, in a telephone conversation, that credit should be given to the University for any copyright footage and that such recognition would mostly likely solve any copyright issues. Such credit was attached to the video immediately; however, The Lance chose to ignore these developments and intentionally published outdated and false information. Second, The Lance article created a false impression that our campaign team was engaging in misconduct while flagrantly ignoring other presidential candidates genuine breach of copyright laws. One candidates campaign video utilizes music owned by record labels Polo Records and RCA Records (Feel This Moment by Christina Aguilera). Further, another video utilizes music owned by record labels EMI and Scotti Brothers (Eye of the Tiger by Survivor). These facts were ignored by The Lance. Third, the video in question was the product of significant original editing that was the creative result of our campaign team, which involved a mash-up style of several freely available videos on Youtube. It was done with the intention of building school spirit and encouraging UWindsor students to feel a close attachment to this community. When our team was informally advised to show credit, we complied. Subsequent advice to our team suggested removal of the video entirely, and we have done so.

PUBLISHED MARCH 26th BY THE CAMPAIGN TO ELECT PRIYA DAS FOR PRESIDENT Fourth, our team has been contacted by concerned students who believe The Lance has engaged in open bias. Specifically, the printed version of The Lances publication referred to presidential candidate Caroline Jacobson as President elect, implying that Jacobson had already won before voting was even finished. The online version of the publication later quietly changed the phrase to President candidate. The general tone of the article, and the mincing of words after publication all provide an evidentiary basis for concluding that The Lance has engaged in biased journalism. This is particularly inappropriate and unethical considering the student newspapers duty to remain neutral in the electoral process. We have, at no point, attempted to conduct ourselves in any inappropriate manner. Unfortunately, it has come to our attention that other candidates are not holding themselves to the same standard: At 6:44pm on Tuesday, March 26th, Caroline Jacobson wrote an email to the Universitys Chief Communications Officer attempting to circumvent the electoral complaints process, questioned the competency of the Chief Returning Officer, and canvassed this University administrator for support. In her email, she states, I felt like if I were to only appeal this to the CRO there wouldn't be any action taken with regards to a sanction [...] Im urging the university to take a stance [...] Can I expect further sanctions or contact with the CRO from your office on this matter?

Our team would like to invite all students to critically assess the media messages that have been circulated during this election. We have the privilege of attending an institution that develops our critical thinking abilities and equips us to read between lines and see through to the facts. We believe students are entitled to those facts.

Sincerely,

The Campaign to Elect Priya Das for President