By Samuel Rubenfeld
In the wee hours of Friday morning, with the sting still throbbing from the night’s election results, the losing ticket allegedly exacted its revenge on the previous administration.
Jared Berry and a few members of his campaign allegedly ransacked the Student Government Association office after a night of drinking following the results of the election, according to an interview with a student who said he was in the SGA office at 1 a.m. Friday morning.
“The room looked like it had been vandalized,” said Timothy Spence, a freshman forensic science major. “Banners were on the floor, and papers were scattered throughout the room. It looked like something a 5yr old would do if he didn’t get his toy.”
His roommate, Jimmy Wells, a senator who is friends with Vice President Akeem Mellis, brought him to the SGA office to see the results when they both came upon the scene on the second floor of the Student Center.
The results, originally posted on the SGA office door, were torn to shreds on the floor. A picture of Berry and former President Peter DiSilvio, which was in the president’s office, was torn in two, and DiSilvio himself saw the shredded remains in his garbage can Friday afternoon.
The office desk, which DiSilvio built himself, had the letters “JAKB,” believed to stand for Jared (Berry), Ashley (Kowal), Kate (Legnetti) and Brent (Weitzberg) scrawled into it with a screw. The frame of a painting of DiSilvio and his original Vice President Carlos Cruz, who transferred before serving, was broken and the painting itself was removed.
A plexiglass case containing pictures of the SGA Cabinet had all of the photos of members of the Brent Weitzberg-Berry campaign, removed, save for Tyler Greenpope, academic affairs chair. Spence said that he and Wells saw Jared go into the president’s office along with a female, where they heard rummaging.
“Those who did certain things, some of them have confessed to what they have done,” Jared Berry said in an interview, denying his own involvement. He refused to say who in fact committed the act, adding that University administrators do not know anything about what happened.
Weitzberg denied having any involvement as well, directing inquiries “to those who were involved,” without identifying them. “It had to do with other people and its not right of me to comment on their business,” he said.
President Sean Hutchinson distanced himself from the incident. “This is exactly what student government shouldn’t be about,” he said.
Because of unforseen developments in the story, The Chronicle was unable to contact the Dean of Students’ office by press time.
“That was when I lost my mind,” DiSilvio said, of when he walked into the office Friday afternoon. “It was not an attack on Hofstra property. It was an attack on me.”
Asked why anyone would attack him, DiSilvio said the act was politically motivated as well as personal. “I became president and did not do what they wanted to do,” he said. “It was personal because certain people never got over my second election, stop the vote or anything that’s happened between then and now.”
Editor-at-large Delia Paunescu contributed reporting to this story.