From The Daily Tar Heel Online (10/08/08): The Board of Elections, the body responsible for ensuring the legality of campuswide elections, is breaking N.C. law.
On Sunday the BOE refused to let Daily Tar Heel reporters into ameeting in which it discussed fines to be levied on potential studentbody president candidates for campaign violations.
Under N.C. Open Meetings Law, meetings of public bodies are presumed open.
If a body goes into closed session, it can only be for one of ninespecific reasons and the body must reference the part of the law thatallows the meeting to be closed.
The N.C. Court of Appeals declared student government groups public bodies in 1998.
It was completely reprehensible, unacceptable — and, um, illegal — for the BOE to go into closed session Sunday.
When challenged on the secrecy by The Daily Tar Heel during themeeting, the board said the meeting needed to be closed so it coulddiscuss confidential campaign violation reports.
Sorry, that’s not one of the statutory reasons allowed by N.C. Open Meetings Law.
The Student Code states: “The Board of Elections shall hold specialmeetings to hear complaints concerning candidates or the enforcement ofelections laws, to be attended by a majority of the voting members.Such meetings may be closed to the public by a majority vote of theBoard of Elections.”
We love the Student Code. We think all candidates and elected studentofficials should follow it. We think the BOE should penalize them ifthey don’t.
(That’s why we’re delighted the BOE held this meeting at all, albeitfive and a half weeks after the violations were first reported by TheDaily Tar Heel.)
But important as it is to this campus, even the Student Code doesn’t supersede state law.
“We’re assuming everything in the Student Code is legal,” BOE ChairmanRyan Morgan, a sophomore who’s never served on the board before, toldThe Daily Tar Heel on Monday.
He further said that if there’s a problem with the Code, the ball is in Congress’ court.
But Congress Speaker Pro Tem Bryan Weynand rightly understands the relationship of Student Code to state law.
“The General Statute of North Carolina would supersede anything the Code says.”
That should really go without saying.
Student government at UNC has a long and celebrated history ofindependence and self-regulation. That can and must continue, but inorder for it to do so, student officials must operate with integrityand in strict adherence to the law.
The Daily Tar Heel wanted to attend the Sunday meeting because it couldreveal how the BOE interprets election law. Also, the $40 fines handeddown were larger than any in the past few years, and we wonder whatthat says about how the BOE intends to carry out its duties this year.
Government works better in the open. We must be able to hold our publicofficials accountable for the work they do. The law is verystraightforward.
Throughout the campaign season, the BOE wields significant power overthe election of our future student body president. An institution withsuch influence should not be allowed to operate without fulltransparency and public scrutiny. It must open the meetings.