MELISSA MARTINEZ
STAFF WRITER

Since March 15, Cal State San Marcos has been swept up in controversy over the arrest of junior Matt Weaver, who is suspected of stealing more than 700 student identities to vote himself into office during the Associated Students Inc. spring elections.

Weaver—who was an editor for the controversial Koala newspaper—was running for ASI president against Scott Silviera, ASI’s current Vice President of External Affairs. Silviera spoke to The Cougar Chronicle about his experiences, the now-invalidated election and his plans to campaign again in the spring.

Q: Were you stunned by the news that Matt Weaver had been arrested?

A: I was. You know, you never expect to hear any other student getting [sic] arrested and definitely, at the [time], it was something random and no one knew what was going on. There was confusion for everyone.

Q: Did you have any suspicion or hear any rumors that there was going to be some effort to swing votes during election week?

A: Nope. My understanding was that everyone was campaigning as hard as they could to try and [sic] get as many people to vote as possible.

Q: Did you hear the rumor that a professor was coaching you and other candidates to keep [Weaver] and another candidate associated with The Koala from winning?

A: No, there was no outside help of any kind … I was on my own in my campaign.

Q: Can you explain what happened on March 15?

A: From my perspective, I heard rumors that [Weaver] got [sic] arrested. I was told that the results were going to be postponed, and then I received an email saying that the results were invalid— that someone had compromised the credibility of the results and that further information would come. I was basically left in the dark; all the information was kept within the people from the election committee, and only until we sat down for a meeting was everything brought to light. We then had to make a decision as to where to go from there.

Q: Do you plan to run again, and do you expect to run unopposed?

A: I do plan on running again. My intentions are still the same. Even if I have to postpone it a couple of weeks, I still obviously want to serve the students. I honestly have no idea if someone is going to run against me. I truly hope that someone runs for every position, and I’m a big believer in that competition brings out the best. We’ll see what happens, but at this point, I haven’t heard anything.

Q: The new elections will now take place during finals week. How does this impact you, since you’ll have to campaign twice this semester?

A: So, personally, it’s a big burden because there’s a lot of time and energy that goes into it. Talking to students, making the pictures and what not is a big deal, so it is unfortunate that I do have to do it twice. However, I see it as something that is so important, so it shouldn’t discourage someone from doing it again. The fact that it’s the week before finals is also very unfortunate, since that’s the crank time for studying and papers. For any student, that’s hard as it is—on top of doing a job and/or campaigning— so that’s unfortunate. But again like I said, it’s a worthwhile cause and I’m excited. As long as I get the opportunity, I’m pretty thankful for it.

Q: Do you think the university has handled this situation well?

A: Absolutely. I am so impressed with how both the ASI professional staff, as well as the IT department, worked to handle this. From my understanding, it took both to really figure out the issues that were going on and without either one of them, he probably could’ve gotten away with it. I’m so impressed with how they handled it, with the news and with the further issues of it. They handled it very tactfully and very efficiently.

Q: If you’re elected, have any of the experiences involving the election fraud, Matt Weaver and The Koala newspaper impacted what changes you’d like to see in 2012-2013?

A: Obviously, there will always be issues with civility on campus, which is why I’m such a big fan of the Civility Campaign. I think it’s something that ASI does currently and continues to back and support. As far as the issues with the election process, I think our election committee, as well as staff, do the absolute best job they can and the run a very efficient campaign. I think the issue that happened was a rare occurrence, and I think that’s something that the IT department on campus can fix. All in all, my goal is the same, and I hope to still improve the campus for everyone.