Smoker Race Opens After Rules Debate

The first posters for the Freshman Smoker Committee campaign should have appeared this morning at 6:30 a.m. in the Union.

Plans were set last night for porters to open the building to 27 campaign managers one half hour earlier than usual so that appeals could be made at breakfast on the opening day.

The opening of the campaign was preceded by a candidate orientation meeting where members of the Union Sub-committee on Elections explained what chairman Edward B. Dunn called "strict rules" and a Student Council-suggested system of preferential balloting.

Explaining the expected election standards, Dunn said Pete Edelman's Yardling ad "for crudity, lewdity, stewdity" was "as low on the ladder as we will let go by, the nadir." He insisted that material has "get to be clean enough not to offend women and parents."

Harold Hestnes, another member of the Union subcommittee, protested that actual censorship of offending material would be contrary to a specific vote of the Union Committee Nov. 31. The vote defeated a motion to require Sub-committee approval of all election material.

Dunn admitted that material could not be censored, but said that candidates would be "asked to change it." Union Committee Chairman Merom Brachman '58 added, "There will be as much beer, as much good entertainment as in the past. We want to squelch after effects."

Candidates at the meeting objected to the Council's plan of a "preferential system of ballot counting." They claimed that only the first names on a ballot counted. Each voter lists eight names in order of preference.

Answered Brachman: "It has definite bad points but is supposed to be good . . . the Student Council prescribes it. Don't you worry about counting, we haven't."

While the balloting system could not be changed, the other election rules were changed by the Rules sub-committee in a number of specific cases.

To strengthen the financial foundation of the "Yardling," candidates were permitted to buy ad space which appeared before the official opening of the campaign period. As mimeographed material, the "Yardling" would ordinarily have been closed to campaigners.

Similar exceptions were made for carbons of typed propaganda and the use of "gimmicks."