Investigation request submitted regarding SG president

SPECIAL TO THE ORACLE

An investigation request was submitted to the Ethics Committee of Student Government on Feb. 1 by vice-presidential candidate Logan Holland, claiming Student Body President Chris Griffin libeled Holland and his running mate, Ryan Soscia.

The committee dismissed the request Wednesday due to an error on the date.  However, Holland said he resubmitted a fixed request Wednesday around 4 p.m.

The request states Griffin sought to “damage the reputation” of Holland and Soscia in an attempt to promote their opponents Moneer Kheireddine and Shaquille Kent’s campaign. 

Griffin denies any legal wrongdoing.

Kheireddine and Griffin are fraternity brothers and Holland said he always assumed Griffin would support his friend and was not upset over the fact. 

Griffin said regardless if Holland resubmitted, he believed the investigation request would again be dismissed. 

“I don’t believe I did anything wrong,” Griffin said. “Libel, the definition of libel, is essentially when you knowingly say or write something false about a person to damage their reputation. I didn’t say anything I knew to be false.”

According to Griffin, he sent a few messages to friends he knew were considering voting for Holland and Soscia after learning the candidates were attempting to “dig up some dirt” on him and his presidency, and informed his friends of the development. 

However, Holland said he and Soscia never searched for information pertaining to Griffin prior to the campaign.

“We worked with Chris this term,” Holland said. “Ryan was the (Chief Financial Officer) and I was Attorney General. We saw and witnessed everything that’s happened this term and that Chris has done, so I didn’t need to go looking for things or digging for things because I was there until Dec. 18 when I resigned.”

Holland said he hadn’t seen anything regarding Griffin’s ethics while in office that would be cause for concern.

Griffin said this is an attempt to boost their campaign. He said it’s much easier to say, “SG is bad and corrupt and we are going to fix it” than it is to say, “SG is doing good things and we want to continue that.”

Prior to learning Holland and Soscia were attempting to “dig up some dirt” on him, Griffin said he had not been vocal about who he planned to support. 

Holland said this was not an election problem or complaint and had no plans on bringing the issue up in the upcoming debates.

“Shaquille Kent is a good guy and when I spoke to him personally he said, ‘Look if I’d known he was doing this, I would never, ever, ever have let him do this’ and I believe Shaquille when he said that,” Holland said.

Unless a special session is called, the ethics committee will meet next Wednesday at its normal time of 2 p.m. and will review the newly submitted investigation request.