Del WaterGate
Image Courtesy of SGA Instagram
By MaggieMae Dethlefsen
Traditionally, when running for the SGA Senate at CUA, the candidates receive an email from the Board of Elections informing them that they may begin their campaign. Unfortunately, after CapFest, Bennett Bert, a junior Politics major, received an email informing him that he was barred from campaigning. This was a surprise to the candidate since he has run two very clean campaigns for the Senate and has never been accused of committing violations in office in the past two years. The question was: what had happened to put this ban on Bennett and his campaign?
On the evening of September 13th, Del Water Gap came to campus to be the guest artist for the night. While they were performing, an unknown student got Del Water to say Bennett’s name on stage. From witness accounts of the event, it is recorded that the performer said, “Bennett is running for Senate,” not the iconic slogan, “Bennett for Senate,” that Bennett runs as his campaign slogan. The performer on stage also made it clear that he would not endorse candidates whose positions are unknown to him. Bennett even gave the board of elections photos, videos, and over a dozen student signatures as evidence that he had not personally prompted or asked the performer to say his name on stage.
The board said that Bennett had allegedly broken these three senate campaign rules: “1) this is publicly campaigning before the official start of the campaign cycle: violation of Section 2, Clause 2, “Upon receipt of the notice of eligibility, the campaign cycle will begin, and candidates may begin to publicly advertise.” 2) This is an endorsement: violation of Section 3, Clause 13, “candidates shall not request, accept, or publicize endorsements.” 3) This came from a third party during a University sponsored event.”
Bennett shared that, regarding these alleged violations, “I was not provided with a path to appeal the Board of Elections decision. However, upon receiving the notification that I would be barred from campaigning due to the alleged offenses, I responded to the Board with photographic and video evidence clearly showing that it was others in the crowd who prompted Del Water Gap to make his announcement and not me.”
Even with this evidence given to them, they felt that, though he was not the one who got Dell Water Gap to say his name, he was “complicit” in the attempts and stood by their decision not to let him campaign.
Many may wonder if it wasn’t Bennett who got the performer to say his name on stage, and the performer even stated it was not an endorsement, why did they stick by the decision to keep him from campaigning? They stood by their decision to keep him from campaigning because Benett “received so much attention from it, they needed to “level the playing field” to make it fair for the other candidates.”
With elections being held on September 23rd, many in the class of 2026 waited anxiously for the results. Bennett says that he is “extremely grateful to have a strong base of support on campus, however, my competitors have been campaigning hard which I am not allowed to do. It has, therefore, been difficult to raise awareness for my candidacy on campus and mobilize my supporters to vote.”
Even with this hurdle of not being able to mobilize his campaign the class of 2026 spoke through their votes and put Bennett back in his position as one of the two class senators.
