Editor’s Note: Since the publishing of this article, sections have been edited to better distinguish Stephanie Margolis’ opinions from that of the author. Additionally, information about the private Twitter account was deleted as it was deemed unnecessary to include in the article. 

The 2018 Student Government Association elections were shaken up when former candidate Stephanie Margolis accused a different ticket’s supporter of spreading foul information.

On Feb. 20 at approximately 12:55 p.m., a private Twitter account tweeted out a statement reading, “mmmm i hate sga elections bc i dont care as much as it seems but like it’d be nice if a zionist and frat bros didnt rep students formally, u kno?” This tweet was mentioned in Margolis’ original Facebook post.

A day later, on Feb. 21 at approximately 11:05 a.m., Brock Parent, a senior STPEC major, released an email to other STPEC members endorsing the presidential and vice-presidential ticket of then-candidates Timothy Sullivan and Nathalie Amazan.

Parent began the email by encouraging recipients to vote for the ticket by saying, “writing to you all today to encourage/plead you to vote in the SGA Elections and to do so for Nat and Timmy: the only ‘left’ (radical) President/VP ticket, and also a good one.”

The email concluded with the inclusion of remarks about the other president and vice-president tickets.

“I hope you will vote for Nat and Timmy to be the next President and Vice President of the Student Government Association. The other two tickets are: two fratty men who think things are fine as is (and keep stealing slogans from Nat and Timmy), and the VP of the other ticket is literally a fellow with the racist, islamophobic hate group, StandWithUs,” remarked Parent. “This is a no brainer, my friends.”

The “fratty men” remark referred to the Tim Conceison and Jake Binnall ticket, whereas the “fellow with the racist, islamophobic hate group” remark referred to vice-presidential candidate Stephanie Margolis.

It is still undetermined whether the Twitter user and Parent were in correlation with one another.

Margolis addressed the posts in a Facebook post with attached screenshots of Parent’s email.

“You will see a picture below of an email sent out to about 100 people who I have never met basically calling me racist and Islamophobic, two things which are not true,” Margolis stated. “They link these claims to my being pro-Israel which should have nothing to do with a campus election where outside political policies won’t matter or affect work I would be doing on campus for student interest.”

Margolis also referenced the remark about the Conceison and Binnall ticket in the Facebook post by saying, “You will notice that these also claim the other ticket in the race was fratty. While one of the candidates is in an upstanding fraternity on campus, his VP candidate has never been in Greek life.”

Sullivan and Amazan were elected as the SGA president and vice president for the 2018-19 school year, defeating the Conceison/Binnall and Nordberg/Margolis tickets.

Amazan responded to the controversial statements by saying that her ticket had no relation to Parent or the Twitter individual, saying that Parent acted out of his own volition.

“The issue was resolved on Feb. 21 and resulted in our suspension being rescinded, because this person in no way, shape or form was a part of our campaign…Any form of slander is completely against and does not uphold the values of our campaign,” Amazan explained.

The Parent email was addressed and resolved later that day after it was sent out.

“We’ve apologized to those who were hurt and have offered our energy to aid in any and all healing that they may need,” emphasized Amazan.

Parent and the anonymous Twitter user could not be reached for comment.

Gretchen Keller can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @gretchenkellerr.