Benjy Egel
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Computer engineering junior Will Blumhardt has been disqualified from the Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) presidential race after not meeting the qualifications to be an eligible candidate.
Fifteen of the 71 ASI Board of Directors candidates were also disqualified for not meeting the election requirements, which include a 2.0 Cal Poly cumulative grade point average (GPA), a 2.3 GPA in Winter Quarter, not being on any sort of school-sanctioned probation and being a member of the student body.
Blumhardt’s absence leaves civil engineering junior Connor Paquin as the only College of Engineering (COE) candidate left in the race. Fewer COE candidates means less competition for engineering students’ votes, Paquin said.
“Usually in an election with more than one (person) from the same college, there’s kind of that inter-college competition,” he said. “People identify with their college pretty closely, and if you have more than one person (from) one college, then there’s more people that they can identify with.”
Blumhardt addressed the Recruitment and Development Committee on behalf of all four candidates back on March 7, urging the committee to allow him and his competitors to speak freely to media. The policy preventing them from doing so was eventually overturned.
Agricultural business junior Jake Rogers and political science senior Joi Sullivan are the other two remaining presidential candidates. Blumhardt’s disqualification took the others by surprise, Rogers said.
“I never heard anything about this. I thought Will was all in and ready to go for it.” Rogers said.
Six Board of Directors candidates from the Orfaela College of Business were bounced from the race, as were five COE students. Two College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Studies were also disqualified, while the College of Liberal Arts and College of Science and Mathematics lost one apiece.
Blumhardt declined to comment on the issue.