Following a student leader’s allegations of bias in the Mav Awards selection process, documents related to how finalists were chosen have apparently disappeared from the student government server they had been stored on.
Cultural Diversity Board (CDB) Director Shelby Cerise claimed bias was at play when her name and her organization were removed by two student government officials and a CMU staffer from a list of finalists for the Associated Student Government’s annual awards.
Cerise said she is resigning at the end of this year because of the matter.
Those involved in the process deny any bias but cannot specifically remember why CDB and Cerise were removed.
“I don’t remember the conversation — I don’t remember the specifics,” Manager of Student Life Operations Julienne Stump said Thursday.
During the same morning The Criterion’s article concerning alleged bias in the Mav Awards finalist process was published online, documents requested by The Criterion disappeared from the Associated Student Government’s R-Drive, sources familiar with the matter say.
The R-Drive is the official, private online folder for the student government’s documents.
The Criterion requested the documents Wednesday at 1:42 p.m.
“We will not be releasing the documents,” ASG Director of External Affairs Chrystina Meador said in an email Thursday afternoon. Meador did not explain why the documents would not be released and declined to comment on a later phone call.
The Criterion was requesting the nomination forms of the finalists FAC chose, the list of finalists chosen by FAC, the list of revised nominees — revised by Meador, ASG Vice President Gabby Gile and Stump, a Colorado Mesa University staff member.
The Criterion also requested nomination forms Stump referenced in The Criterion’s article.
“Personally, I don’t think that those edits and that work material is public information,” Gile said.
Gile said she was not concerned about the documents disappearing from the R-Drive because they are not documents that fall under the ASG Constitution.
“I’m not saying it’s okay or not okay,” Gile said.
Stump, Gile and Meador changed the list of finalists decided by the Fee Allocation Committee (FAC) — a subcommittee of the student government whose members are student-nominated.
“A bunch of student leaders picked their top three from the pool for each [category] and then I looked at the top three and I made some changes based on the descriptions, number of nominations, and my input,” Stump said in her initial interview Wednesday.
“The first part of the process was a group of student leaders who met following an FAC meeting choosing their top candidates, and the second part was professional staff,” Stump wrote in a later email Wednesday. “Once my input (on behalf of Shane and Gail) was applied, then the top three nominees was considered final.”
However, on Thursday, Stump and Director of Student Life Shane O’Neill were downplaying Stump’s role in the decision-making process.
“Julie let her input be a big piece of it — she let her input be heard by Gabby and Chrystina,” O’Neill said. “But, ultimately, they’re student awards and students decided.”
O’Neill said it was a misunderstanding that professional staff had the final say.
“In that article that was written,” Stump said, “it sure sounded like I just said ‘Absolutely not, Shelbys out.’ And I did not say that.”
Stump believed her, and other Student Life staff members, opinions were important in the process because they may see the nominees more on “the front line” than students.
Stump said that it was important she give input because FAC members may have said “I guess” when voting for someone and that some finalists were in the wrong categories.
Stump said she did not believe her opinion mattered more than those on FAC who decided the initial finalists.
Student Life staff did not take part in the decision-making process for last year’s Mav Awards, according to last year’s Director of External Affairs Carly Hanley.
“Being honest with you, being in that room, looking at what came out of the first committee [FAC], I don’t want to call — I don’t want to say that they had bias in the way that they looked at it,” Gile said. “But I think that they looked at it in a very different way than we [Gile, Meador and Stump] looked at it.”
Because they used a different perspective when changing the finalists, Gile said their decisions “inherently made it less biased.”
CDB and Cerise were removed from the finalist list chosen by FAC with no formal notice or explanation given to the members of FAC.
O’Neill did not know why members were not notified of the change.
“That was actually a question that I had,” O’Neill said on Thursday.
Gile said that FAC judged the nominations on what work they had seen from them in Student Life while herself, Meador and Stump judged it more on how many nomination submitted for a nominee and the quality of the information provided in a submission.
O’Neill said two of CMU-TV’s five alleged nominations were submitted by organization members.
Stump said she was not aware of this but would not have affected her decision-making had she known.
Meador did release the list of finalists revised by her, Stump and Gile:
Academic Advisor of the Year
Alumni of the Year
Club Advisor of the Year
Club Leader of the Year
Club Member of the Year
Club of the Year
Faculty Member of the Year
George Kelly
Cheyenne Fergerstrom
Kevin Bates
Savanna Edgar
Josiah Bohrer
SVA
Morgan Bridge
Sam Lohse
Jared Meier
James Perez
Connie Tipton
Cierra Mahuka
MED
Eli Hall
Jane Quimby
Julie Stump
Amanda Herron
Sierra Watts
Faith Wood
GEMS
Chad Middleton
Grand Valley Leader of the Year
Humanitarian of the Year
Maverick of the Year
Organization Advisor of the Year
Organization Leader
Organization of the Year
Coffee Shop Talk
John Beezley
Beau Flores
Gail Howe
Joe Azar
KMSA 91.3FM
Robert Bray
Amara Hobbs
Ben Linzey
Ky Oday
Alexis Dymek
CMU – TV
Kevin Vangundy
Isabella Vaz
Bryce Reedy
Alec Williams
Horizon
Sports Team of the Year
Staff Member of the Year
Student Athlete of the Year
Student Leader of the Year
Track & Field
Jody Diers
William Agritelley
Sam Gaasch
Softball
Annie Gingerich
Jason Buhr
Braydon Gear
Tennis
Shane O’Neill
Brooke Hodgson
Ethan Lovelace
Gile said that with any award show there will be claims of bias. She said last year appeared biased towards campus media organizations.
“I think its something for them [ASG] to look at next year, maybe standardizing some kind of way of looking at these nominations and deciding and picking winners,” Gile said. “Ultimately, I think the people that needed a voice, had a voice,” Gile said.
Winners were decided Wednesday in a group that consisted of unknown student government representatives, O’Neill and Stump.
While O’Neill said he did not participate in the majority of the voting and could not remember if Stump had as well, Stump said on Thursday both of them were involved in nearly all of the decisions — except categories in which they were a finalist.
Lucas Vader contributed to this report.