Candidate Protests Fine for Early Campaigning as Free Speech Violation

Starting today, Jahantab Siddiqui has one week to run for student body president at the University of Maryland. He's painfully aware of that, because he was fined almost $600 last month for campaigning early -- after his name was accidentally published in a student newspaper.

So now as he launches his campaign, he's also trying to convince the student elections board that the fine was unfair, an unconstitutional restriction on his freedom of speech.

"It's impossible to imagine a more blatant violation of the First Amendment than this," said Jamin B. Raskin, a Democratic state senator from Montgomery County and a constitutional law professor at American University. He is supporting Siddiqui.

But many students and faculty were angry at what they saw as Siddiqui seizing an unfair early edge in the campaign, said Bret Cullinan, chairman of the elections board. "This gave him a huge advantage" because none of the candidates' names was public yet.

Some people wanted him to be disqualified from the race, he said. "I feel like Jahantab got the easy end on this one."

The role of student body president is an important one, the most visible symbol of the 35,000 students in College Park. The president lobbies administrators as well as city, county and state leaders. And the Student Government Association oversees the $1.4 million student activities budget at U-Md.

This year, the campaign period was shortened from two weeks to one, after much discussion about whether campaigns were becoming too expensive and intrusive, said Emma Simson, the current president.

Siddiqui, a junior from Columbia, has been active on campus since he was a freshman, lobbying in Annapolis and Washington on the cost of higher education.

He decided to run a few months ago, and in late March, a reporter from the student newspaper contacted him to talk about the shorter campaign period. He said he agreed to talk anonymously. But the next morning when he woke up, his name was in the paper.

And four or five hours later, he said, he got an e-mail announcing he would be fined $585.60.

The student paper, the Diamondback, confirmed that the publication of Siddiqui's name was an error.

Cullinan says it was a clear-cut violation of the rules: "It was blatantly obvious that it was campaigning."