With the kickoff of the SSMU election campaign on Monday, countless students woke up yesterday morning to see that their Facebook newsfeeds were inundated with "Vote for x" photos. For the next four days, students will be subject to both traditional posters and class canvassing and online campaigning through Facebook.com. However, candidates and committee chairs will be very restricted in what they can and cannot do on everyone's favourite social-networking Web site.
"We're allowing candidates to use [Facebook] on a very limited extent," said Elections McGill Chief Returning Officer Bryan Badali. "We've established Elections McGill as a Facebook user. All groups for SSMU, Senate and referendum questions will be established and controlled by Elections McGill."
Candidates and committee chairs are not allowed to establish groups, buy flyers or post on the walls of groups that they are administrators for. However, they are permitted to create events as well as write on the walls and send messages to users that they are already friends with.
Only Elections McGill is allowed to start groups for the SSMU Executive, Senate and referendum races. The groups' admins include Elections McGill and all the candidates running for the post. These groups serve as the only forums where candidates are allowed to display their credentials and platforms in an online manner. Also, all Facebook campaigns, which includes groups, events and wall posts, must be down by midnight on Saturday.
One of the biggest difficulties that Elections McGill faces is the prospect of monitoring the Web site during the course of the campaign.
"We'll do our best," Badali said. "We'll be constantly monitoring the site, largely through the newsfeed function. We've added all the candidates and their campaign members. If we find a violation, we'll take action against it."
Vice-President University Affairs candidate Adrian Angus felt that while this was a fair way to deal with the growing trend of online campaigning, no one should be abusing the privilege.
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