Jaber.

YPSILANTI — An Arab American candidate who was disqualified from the election of the student government presidency at Eastern Michigan University is accusing the Student Government Elections Commission of discrimination.

Fatma Jaber ran a write-in campaign to challenge incumbent Desmond Miller. Students voted online on March 26-27. On April 20, the elections commissions announced that Miller and his running mate Steven Cole won the election for president and vice president of the Student Government. 

Jaber was disqualified from the elections for “violating university and election rules,” according to the commission’s report, which states that she was handing out literature away from a designated table and defied a ban on active campaigning that was imposed on her. 

Jaber was left with 85 votes after being stripped of more than 1,200 that did not include the name of her running mate Chris VanWashenova. If those votes had been counted, Jaber would have won the election 1289 votes. Miller received 1174 votes.

“The Student Government adviser and Commission Chair also determined that Miller and Cole would have won the election even if Jaber and VanWashenova had not been disqualified [for their misconduct] because Jaber and VanWashenova would have received 85 valid write-in votes,” reads the report. 

The Michigan Director of the The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) Fatina Abdrabboh has filed a lawsuit against Leigh Greden, EMU’s Student Government advisor, on behalf of seven students whose votes for Jaber did not count because they failed to include VanWashenova’s name. 

Greden is EMU’s Vice President for Government and Community Relations and a member of the elections committee, according to the lawsuit. 

The elections commission argues in the report that votes with Jaber’s name only do not count because the Student Government’s bylaws require that candidates for president and vice-president must run as a joint ticket. 

The commission quotes the bylaws as stating that “the student body president and student body vice president shall be elected together as a ticket” and “names of candidates (grouped by ticket) shall appear on the ballot.”

However, Abdrabboh says the bylaws support her argument that a vote for the president means a vote for his or her ticket.

The lawsuit accuses Greden of violating the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits the “exclusion from participation in, denial of benefits of, and discrimination under federally assisted programs on ground of race, color or national origin.” The lawsuit does not mention that the commission disqualified Jaber. 

Abdrabboh said the disqualification was “an afterthought.”

“The disqualification, the pretext for what they wanted to do from day one, which was to ensure that somebody who looks like [Jaber] and is from her ethnic and religious background does not become president,” added Abdrabboh.

Greden could not be reached for comment by The Arab American News. 

“It is important to note that at all times during this election we followed university and student governance bylaws and processes,” said Geoff Larcom, EMU’s executive director of media relations, in a brief statement on behalf of the university.

The Student Government Elections Commission’s report, which details the reasons for Jaber’s disqualification, states that on Wednesday, April 24, the candidate was handing out literature away from a reserved table at the Student Center.

Handing out flyers away from designated tables is against the rules of the Student Center and thus violates “university policy.” Greden warned Jaber to remain at her table in two separate text messages, according to the report.

Jaber was banned from “active campaigning” on the evening of April 24. The following day, she appealed the ban and was granted the right to invite students to vote on her laptop without walking up to them. However, several students complained that she approached them with a laptop and asked them to vote for her before and after the ban was lifted, states the report. 

According to the report, one student was offered candy to vote for Jaber, who entered his vote herself.

Jaber refuted the findings of the commission and said she complied with Greden’s complaints in the Student Center, although the bylaws of student government do not prohibit such conduct. She said she stopped giving out flyers at the Student Center, unless students insisted on taking them from her table.

“Greden was incorrect in his statement. However, we still did comply with it,” she added. “That set in motion the ban and all the events that followed.”

Abdrabboh described the report as a series of “inconsistent stories” that ends with the conclusion that Jaber is disqualified. “Many of the allegations are false, and some of them have supporting evidence that is completely fabricated,” added Abdrabboh.

One complaint says that Jaber harassed a student in Pray-Harrold, a campus building, but the candidate says she has text messages proving that she was in a different building at that time. Although the commission report dismisses that complaint, Jaber says that other complaints are equally false, but she did not have the evidence to disprove them.

Jaber said Greden traveled to different buildings around campus and asked for statements against her about two weeks after the elections.

“The fact that all complaints are anonymous is concerning. In this country you are allowed to face your accusers,” said Abdrabboh.

Jaber says she requested the identity of the students who complained against her campaign, but she was unsuccessful. “For all I know it could be Desmond and his friends,” she added.

Abdrabboh said Greden, who was Jaber’s adviser, became “the judge, jury and executioner against her.”

Jaber said her opponent used her tactics but was not sanctioned. She added that she also personally campaigned the same way for Miller last year.

“Handing out literature, letting people vote on his laptop, he was allowed to do everything that they did not allow me to do,” she said. “The rules applied to me and me alone.”

However, the report states that both candidates were treated equally. According to the report, only one complaint was submitted against Miller, alleging that he had placed campaign literature on top of the table stands inside the Student Center. Greden investigated the complaint and dismissed it after finding that the conduct did not violate university policy, states the report. 

Jaber says her ethnic and religious background were the reason behind her disqualification. “They truly don’t want a Muslim, an Arab who wears the hijab, to be the voice of 25,000 students. They don’t want me to be the president,” she said.

Abdrabboh said discrimination nowadays rarely manifests itself clearly in one apparent incident. “As a person who sees discrimination on a daily basis, and as a civil rights lawyer, rarely is there a smoking gun that screams discrimination,” she said. “Anyone who has been a victim of discrimination knows that the small conduct of bad actors shows the real picture of discrimination and racism when added over time, as opposed to one ‘I got you.'”

The ADC Michigan director added that discrimination is apparent in the totality of the events at EMU.

Jaber is demanding runoff elections and is planning to take her case to the university’s Board of Regents.