William & Mary Young Democrats Must Change
Update: This piece led the Virginia Young Democrats to investigate the William & Mary Young Democrats. Several instances of wrongdoing came to light during this investigation. In particular, they found that the chapter had repeatedly violated its Constitution during leadership elections, and that they had inappropriately endorsed in primaries. After questioning the President and others about the club’s treatment of members, the Dean’s office forced the club to amend their Constitution to expand their non-discrimination clause and bar harassment of members. I could not elaborate on this when I first wrote this article because I was still a student and the Student Code of Conduct limits how much information students may make public regarding disciplinary actions. Unfortunately, this also means that I could not give VAYD this information, so the statement inaccurately claims the Dean’s office took no action. However, the statement does confirm that VAYD investigated the chapter and found wrongdoing. Despite this, members of the chapter’s leadership continue to deny there was any investigation or wrongdoing to this day, and refuse to take responsibility.
Here is the statement (Apologies for dividing it in two. Medium wont let me upload it as one larger picture. I repeat one line in the middle to show that I did not leave anything out):
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As a student at the College of William & Mary for the past year and a half, I have found the Young Democrats club on campus to be cliquey, intolerant of dissenting views, biased in primaries, and willing to spread falsehoods about those who cross them. I now feel that I have no choice but to push for change in this organization by making my case publicly, as efforts to change it from within have proven impossible due to inaccurate vote counting, a Constitutional Amendment that disenfranchised many members of the club, and the tendency of the Executive Board to exclude those who disagree with them.
The impetus for this article was a recent election in which several votes for one candidate were not counted, a large number of people were not informed how to vote absentee, and a Constitutional amendment that allows the Exec Board to choose who can and can not vote which was passed without debate.
The William & Mary Young Democrats Constitution requires a secret ballot for all elections:
This requirement is generally not met, as all absentee ballots have to be emailed to the Secretary in order to be counted, so obviously the Secretary will always know how everybody voted. In addition, in this case, both candidates for President were shown all of the absentee votes. It was then passed on to me.
So much for a secret ballot! Interestingly, in a previous election last September, when I ran for an office, the club managed to set up a password secured page that people could log into in order to cast their vote anonymously. I have no explanation for why they did not simply do the same thing in December when this election took place, but they clearly violated the Constitution. One member informed me that he felt pressured to vote for a certain candidate because everybody would know how he voted.
The Constitutional amendment passed in December was extremely poorly considered, and, unlike every single other election in the club, was passed without allowing for any debate before the vote. Here is the key part of the amendment I take issue with:
The first issue is that the highlighted part is contradictory. Does “The President [get to] make any determinations regarding a member’s status”, or is it determined by “a majority vote of the elected executive board”? Both of these things can not be true at the same time. However, the most disturbing part of this is that there should clearly never be a situation where there is any uncertainty whether a member has attended four events. Four events is pretty cut-and-dry — either you attended four events or you did not. So then why does the President/Exec Board have this unchecked, and nontransparent, ability to simply decide who gets to vote? I think I have an answer.
As the vote began, I tried to introduce discussion by pointing out another issue with the amendment, which is that it does not account for members studying abroad, who obviously do not have the opportunity to attend four events. The outgoing President is studying abroad, and so this amendment would disenfranchise her and prevent her from running for a position when she returns next fall! This was obviously not well thought out. When I raised this objection, an elected member of the Exec Board made a very revealing statement, pointing out that the amendment has language in it to allow the exec board to determine who can vote. Apparently at least one exec plans to totally disregard the four meetings requirement when it is convenient. I believe that such plans to allow people to vote who have not met the requirements are why the Constitution was amended to allow the Exec Board to ultimately choose who they want to vote. The incoming president, Sahil, said that they could amend the Constitution again in order to fix the problems with this amendment after I pointed them out; however, no such corrective amendment has been introduced at this point — over two months into the semester.
I tried to introduce an amendment to the Constitution last September which would have included gender identity, sexuality, and religious views in our outdated non-discrimination clause. However, several of the execs said they did not know how the amendment process worked, and so it was delayed. With four consecutive cancelled meetings and various other issues, the amendment was delayed into mid-November. At which point I printed out my proposed wording and brought it to a meeting. At that point Sahil introduced an amendment himself that he claimed included “all of” what I included in my amendment. It did not. In fact, it did not include most of what I wanted. It did not include sexuality, or religious views. It did include “religion”, but this is significantly different from “religious views” because “religious views” is inclusive of non-religious people, who make up a huge percentage of young Democrats. When I noticed this I emailed the Secretary to ask to include sexuality and religious views, but she told me it was too late to add that language because we were within two weeks of the vote. Keep in mind, this amendment was only brought up two weeks before the vote. Therefore, it was impossible to ever propose any changes. I find it difficult to fathom why the inclusion of sexuality and religious views in the non-discrimination clause could not be accomplished between September and today. At this point is seems spiteful not to include these groups. In a Trump presidency, such a measure would be a good way to take a stand against discrimination and show support to these communities.
In addition to the Constitutional amendment, an election for President was announced the same day. The Exec Board attempted to give people only until midnight that day to determine whether they wanted to run for the office. Our meetings end at 9pm. They literally tried to give people three hours to determine if they wanted to run for the most important position in the club. Fortunately, they extended the deadline after I objected to this, but they clearly had no interest in anybody aside from their preferred candidate running.
When the election was held, two votes were improperly not counted. One person has shown me a screenshot of the email they sent with their absentee vote. They sent it to the right email address, before the deadline, and had paid dues to the club. Their vote absolutely should have been counted, and they are obviously upset that it was not. Another person swears that they voted and has the same exact story. Both of these people voted for the candidate who ran against Sahil, and voted against the amendment. Interestingly, many people who planned to support the candidate running against Sahil did not receive emails instructing them how to vote. Two of these people had been members of the club for months. This is a grossly inappropriate way to have elections and violates the club’s Constitution, as well as basic Democratic values.
This club has also been blatantly biased in several primaries. Virginia Young Democrats’ Constitution, which is publicly available, expressly forbids chapters from endorsing candidates in Democratic primaries, as different chapters would likely endorse different candidates and dividing the party in such a manner is counter-productive.
In May 2016 WMYD’s official email account sent out a message supporting Delegate Monty Mason (now a State Senator) over his primary opponent Shelly Simonds and informing members how and when they could volunteer to help his campaign. No similar email was sent out with information on Simonds’ campaign.
In addition, WMYD’s official Facebook page posted an image supporting Monty in the primary, although it was taken down after the leadership of Virginia Young Democrats intervened to tell them to stop. Despite my support for Senator Mason in that primary (and my clear support and volunteer work for him in the past), I stand against this violation of VAYD policy on principle. It served to alienate members who supported Simonds, including several who had known her for years.
William & Mary Young Democrats’ name was used in a public article in the school newspaper, the Flat Hat, explaining how they were gathering signatures for Delegate Mason, even as Simonds was also attempting to gather signatures. In addition, the club’s President, who was introduced as “Young Democrats President”, is quoted as supporting Mason. The use of imagery that suggests the club’s endorsement, as well as the use of official leadership positions as part of an endorsement, violates Virginia Young Democrats’ policy.
Around this same time, I was feeling the impact of their bias in the national primary. Although I had been hoping that Biden would run, I made up my mind to support Bernie Sanders shortly after the Iowa Caucus. I knew that many members of the Exec Board, including the group of friends who hold power within the group, supported Secretary Clinton, but I did not expect this to be an issue because 1. a significant portion of the party supported Senator Sanders, so they should not want to alienate so many people, and 2. the VAYD non-endorsement policy prevents them from using the chapter to endorse in a primary. Unfortunately, this was not the case. There were three Bernie supporters on the Exec Board, and we universally felt excluded. It did not help that on the night of the Iowa Caucus (when I was undecided) the President of the club literally said “I don’t understand how any Democrat could support Sanders.” The founder of Students for Bernie, who was a multi-year member of the Exec Board and who had volunteered for numerous Democratic candidates in the past, was particularly hard hit. It was so bad that she felt compelled to publicly share her experience on Facebook.
After this came to light, I asked the other execs to apologize to her in our group chat. To my knowledge, none of them did.
I hope that the Exec Board changes its ways, but I fear that we will see a continuation of this bias in the upcoming primary between Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and former Representative Tom Perriello. I hope that we will not see club members excluded for supporting a certain candidate again.
It is unsurprising, given this history of ostracizing and oddly harsh reactions to even mild disputes, that some people are now afraid to openly criticize the Exec Board. Several other members have also expressed agreement with some of my complaints, especially in regards to the cliquey-ness of the Exec Board, but feel either powerless or afraid to do anything about it. This is certainly not how any group should be run. It is antithetical to both the values of our party and the values of our College.
Throughout my time as a member of this club I have voiced disagreements with certain tendencies within the club. In addition to being distressed by the cliquey nature of the club and the exclusion of certain members, I also have been troubled by the club’s nearly exclusive focus on campaigning rather than issue advocacy, poor membership retention, and minimal on-campus engagement. In my opinion, the role of a campus organization, particularly a political one, should be primarily to engage the student population and encourage them to become activists. Megan, another exec named Katie, and I raised these objections in an exec meeting in Spring 2016, but it is apparent that little has changed. It seemed to me that many of the execs at that time were too busy running Students for Hillary to dedicate enough time to Young Dems. Perhaps a similar situation emerged this year, as we did not have any normal meetings for four weeks in a row, including the three weeks leading up to the election in November. That decision totally failed to engage potential activists on campus during a crucial period of the campaign. I am also unsure how an organization that represents the Democratic Party — a party with a large base of support in minority communities — can put together an Executive Board with no Black members, no Latino members, and no East Asian members. This is especially troubling when there are about 15 positions on the Exec Board.
Leadership positions rotate between various members of the clique in charge. The outgoing and incoming Presidents of Young Dems were co-Presidents of Students for Hillary during the primary, and several other execs, including the vice-President, were also members. The outgoing President is studying abroad, so I would not be surprised to see her return to the presidency next year, meaning that the co-Presidents of Students for Hillary would have passed the Presidency of Young Dems between them twice over the course of two years, given their friends other leadership positions, and put one of their friends in the Vice-Presidency — presumably to take over after they graduate.
It is probably not hard to predict, given their harsh history, that the Exec Board targeted me too after I began to voice complaints. The Exec Board is divided into two sections: elected and appointed. I ran for an elected position this past Fall, and, apparently having decided that my dissent had gone too far, some of the elected execs began to spread untrue rumors about me. At first only the other execs were told, and then, on the night of the vote, everybody in attendance at the meeting was told. It is customary for the candidates being considered to wait outside the room where the discussion is taking place, so I unfortunately was not in the room to defend myself.
After some of my friends brought this to my attention, I decided that this was a bridge too far, and so I went to the Dean’s office to complain about this treatment. Fortunately, the rumor was so easy to disprove that the Student Conduct Dean immediately took action and began to look into members the group for potential Conduct Code and Honor Code violations by questioning them. It is clear that launching an organized campaign of harassment behind a person’s back is frowned upon at the College of William & Mary. Interestingly, rumors have been spread about other people who have challenged the Exec Board before. This seems to be their M.O. when confronting opposition.
William & Mary Young Democrats’ pattern of making people feel deeply ostracized and unwelcome, being biased in multiple primaries, creating an Exec Board that does not represent the party or the College, questionable practices in their elections, passing an amendment that gives the Exec Board power to determine who can vote, and more, leads me to conclude that William & Mary Young Democrats must change. I think it is important to emphasize that I do not blame freshmen, or other students serving their first year on the exec board, for what happened, as many of these problems began before the 2016–17 school year. The outgoing president made some reforms, and voiced support for ideas like issue advocacy and inclusiveness, but the vast majority of problems have not been addressed. The Exec Board needs to be held accountable, and this type of behavior needs to stop before more people are harmed by the actions of this club.
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