Last week, The Hatchet’s Editorial Board endorsed Lande Watson for Student Association president. We made our endorsement based on the points Watson made in her platform and her answers to questions during our endorsement hearing. Based on the SA Joint Elections Committee’s decision today, The Hatchet’s Editorial Board retracts our endorsement of Watson.

The JEC disqualified Watson after finding her in violation of making threatening and intimidating statements, making false statements and having campaign agents engage in harassment. While the JEC only disqualifies based on the number of violation points a candidate has, the Editorial Board would retract our endorsement based on the violations, regardless. We probably won’t ever know exactly what did or didn’t happen – but being found guilty of these violations is serious.

We will not endorse either of the two remaining presidential candidates – Cole Ettingoff and Adam Johnson. The Editorial Board made our endorsement decisions based on candidates’ platforms and our hearings with the candidates. We will not be endorsing a candidate for SA president in the 2017 SA election.

The editorial board is composed of Hatchet staff members and operates separately from the newsroom. This week’s piece was written by opinions editor Melissa Holzberg and contributing opinions editor Irene Ly, based on discussions with managing director Eva Palmer, homepage editor Tyler Loveless, contributing sports editor Matt Cullen and copy editor Melissa Schapiro.