Steve Dalton was out to dinner at Chipotle in Tenleytown on Sunday night with some friends when he overheard a group of customers discussing a highly controversial issue at AU.
“I was filling up my drink when I overheard a group of five people talking about the [Clean Energy Revolving Fund] referendum,” Dalton said. “I thought that was kind of weird. I didn’t expect to hear anything about CERF in Chipotle.”
CERF is a fund created by the Student Government that will purchase solar panels, wind turbines and other sources of renewable energy for AU. The money saved by the renewable energy will then be put back into the fund, enabling the purchase of more renewable energy generators. There was a referendum on the issue on this year’s SG ballot asking if students supported mandatory $10 fees to the fund.
Dalton, an undergraduate senator for the class of 2010 — who did not support the referendum — returned to his table, where he sat with SG Secretary Colin Meiselman, School of Public Affairs Senator Eric Reath and Taylor Yeates, the billing director for AUTO. Dalton and his friends were suddenly approached by the people Dalton had overheard talking about CERF earlier.
“They were clearly angry about my opposition to the CERF referendum,” Dalton said. “They called me different names and said that ‘my day would come.’ They told the other people that I was with that their day would come too, only sooner because I would eat them. They continued to go back and forth with some of my friends but I did not engage with [the students].”
The group of students then left. Dalton said he and his companions were not able to identify any of the people who had approached their group.
“I didn’t know who they were but they certainly knew who I was,” he said.
Dalton said he is dismayed that the recent controversies surrounding the SG elections and the CERF referendum have boiled over to create such severe personal conflicts.
“I wish we could just disagree without being enemies,” Dalton said. “Other SG members have different opinions than myself, but we can all talk about it with some civility. We are all students first and should not take things like this to such an extreme level where people are being approached while they are out to dinner with friends.”
Meiselman, who was with Dalton at the time of the incident, echoed Dalton’s sentiments in saying this incident was totally unexpected and out of line.
He said he hopes that AU students can find more constructive ways of voicing their opinions for and against the CERF referendum.
“I understand both sides of the issue, but it’s ridiculous that someone would say those things about someone who had a different point of view,” Meiselman said. “Students have the right to say what they want to say but that’s not the way to go about it.”
Jennifer Jones, the president of EcoSense, which supports the referendum on CERF, said she heard about the incident through a friend and was shocked.
“I find it appalling,” Jones said. “We [at EcoSense] really respect Steve Dalton and everything he has done for our school. I would never do anything like this and I hope that no one else would.”
Jones added that she sent out an e-mail Tuesday night to the EcoSense listserv about the incident.
“Supporting clean energy should not involve antagonizing people,” Jones wrote. “It is about promoting environmentalism — it is not about individuals and it is not about being partisan.”
Dalton said this incident reflects many of the larger conflicts that have flared up throughout this election. Dalton feels that there may be some lingering feelings of anger between supporters of presidential candidate Nirvana Habash and SG President-elect Nate Bronstein over the controversies surrounding both of their campaigns.
The Eagle previously reported that Nate Bronstein allegedly sent out a mass e-mail to a random assortment of AU e-mail addresses and listservs, including SPA freshman and sophomores, AUSG executives, the cabinet and the Undergraduate Senate. Bronstein has said he did not send the e-mail and he filed a formal complaint with the Board of Elections. There was allegedly another e-mail sent over Delta Gamma’s listserv in support of Bronstein. This complaint was never formally filed or verified.
The Board of Elections disqualified Habash from the elections for violating election rules. Two of Habash’s friends sent out an e-mail over SPA’s Leadership Program’s listserv in support of her presidential campaign. Habash appealed the decision and was eventually allowed to run as a write-in candidate.
Habash is confident that the conflicts of the SG elections will quiet down after the election is finished, she said in an e-mail before the final results were known.
“I have faith that once the elections are over, we will all have time to work things out,” Habash said. “When you have two people who have an overload of mutual friends running against each other for such a demanding position, individuals are bound to take sides.”
Habash added that it is too soon to predict how the presidential candidates will interact with each other after the elections.
“We have been so busy working to get my name on the ballot, and [Bronstein] has been working so hard on his campaign, that I think we just need this to be over before figuring out where we go from here.”
E-mails to Nate Bronstein were not answered by press time.
Meiselman said he did not anticipate that this election would turn out to be so fraught with problems and controversies and he is disappointed with how the elections have become more negative as time goes on, he said.
“All the candidates know each other pretty well and tensions have flared,” Meiselman said. “I think this incident [with Dalton] is just icing on the cake to show just how ridiculous this election has been. I don’t understand why this election has turned out the way it did.”
You can reach this staff writer at jryan@theeagleonline.com.
