The Chandler Eby Witch-hunt
BREAKING: Following the publication of this article, The Rival received information from an anonymous source that Paul Relyea has resigned from his post on the AUSG Judiciary Board effective December 18th or at the confirmation of his sucessor. Relyea, who also previously served as the AUSG comptroller last academic year, no longer appears on the AUSG website.
By Matt Romano
The “Abolish-AUSG” Senator-elect Chandler Eby received an email at 1 AM on Friday notifying him that the AUSG judicial board secretly voted 3-1 that he was unfit for office.
The evidence cited by the board in the email was entirely Instagram posts, most of which were memes from Eby’s own account @eby4senate. Just over a month after the former dark horse candidate’s populist campaign achieved a hard fought victory, the board came to the decision without communicating with Eby in any way beforehand. The primary allegation against Eby is that he incites harassment by using Instagram to call out his fellow AUSG members for actions and statements they publicly make.
A screenshot of a campaign ad put out by the Chandler Eby for Senate campaign. Eby’s campaign used memes to accuse AUSG of being an ineffective organization that deserves to be disbanded.
“In my post that I posted this weekend, I called Paul Relyea a misogynist, which could come off as a smear,” admits Senator-elect Eby. “But last semester he publicly called out a candidate for AUSG, he compared her to Miss Piggy from the Muppets.”
Relyea reached out to The Rival to refute Eby’s claim stating “I did not compare any candidate for office to Ms. Piggy, in fact I posted numerous different muppets on my story last semester, as part of an inside joke with my roomate from freshman year. Something I informed Mr. Eby of after he first came forward with the accusation.” Relyea also sent images to The Rival indicating that the screenshot provided to The Rival was posted to his personal Instagram on July 30th, long after the Spring elections. Relyea did not dispute his resignation or circumstances of the AUSG Judiciary vote.
Relyea and the rest of the senate will decide if they want to officially remove Eby from the senate next semester. Some of these senators were not even elected, like Brock Mullins who recently introduced a transphobic bill to remove tampons from men’s restrooms in addition to a bill that endorses Christian creationism in AU college classrooms. Instead of being elected, they are appointed by Speaker Jeremy Ward who gave a speech on the senate floor in November accusing his political enemies of trying to “gang-rape” the judiciary board.
“They’re in AUSG. You’re supposed to know who these people are and what they do. And I’m calling them out because they’re the ones who publicly did these actions,” asserts Eby who brought attention to Ward’s use of potentially triggering language. “Even if I’m not successful in abolishing AUSG, they’re burning down their own reputations. I haven’t even lit a match, and they’re running around the house dousing it in gasoline.”
Eby believes scandals like this scare honest people away from AUSG, leaving one big group of friends (or “circle jerk” as Chandler says) that operates in its own self interest. For example, about ⅓ of AUSG’s $100,000 budget goes to their own stipends. The cabinet of the executive board, who are not elected by the people, are usually friends of the executive board, and are handed some of our tuition dollars every semester to do stuff like persecute Chandler.
“My mom, she’s scared. She’s like, ‘this account that’s going around @dearchandlereby or whatever that’s trying to ‘own me’ and call me out or whatever, it requested to follow my mom and she’s like ‘Chandler what is this? Why are these people coming after you, what does this mean?” confesses Senator-elect Eby, whose mother is concerned but supportive. “She’s glad that I’m not giving in. She kind of wants me to just drop it, but at this point, I’m not just gonna bend the knee to these losers.”
The account @dearchandlereby recently posted videos accusing Senator-elect Eby of being racist for his comments against President Brodie on his Instagram. The only posts present on his page related to Brodie are about her connection to alleged misogynist Paul Relyea and an article claiming that Brodie previously used accusations of racism to intimidate her political opponents.
The AUSG Judiciary Board could not be reached for comment.