Dennis RomeroA Cal State San Marcos student newspaper editor was arrested and released over the weekend for allegedly trying to rig a student election on campus, where he was running for president.
But Matt Weaver isn't your run-of-the-mill student journo: He edits an unsanctioned, off-campus alternative that has incensed some on the Southern California campus by, among other things, publishing parodies on “top five excuses for rape,” and “top 10 breakup lines to use on a girl you kidnapped.”
Police and campus officials told the Weekly today that …
… Weaver was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of identity theft, violation of California election law, and unauthorized access to computers.
The allegations stems from using (a) log-on(s) not his own to gain access to computers in an attempt to rig the election vote, university police Lt. Robert McManus told us.
Someone on campus alerted police to the alleged tampering Thursday: On 4 a.m. Friday Weaver, who is 20 or 21, posted $50,000 bail and got out of jail, McManus said.
Margaret Lutz-Chantung, spokeswoman for the northern San Diego County campus, told us that administrators had to cancel the election Friday as a result of Weaver's alleged meddling:
We sent a message to our population alerting them that the election was canceled and that we would not be announcing who had won because it had been compromised.
Weaver's arrest appeared to be sweet justice for the many opponents of his paper, the Koala, including the website calloutthekoala.com, which reacted with this:
According to one unconfirmed report, what was suspicious was seeing 300-some votes miraculously appear in a couple of minutes when the university is lucky to see 600-some votes trickle in over a four-day online election. Whatever the true numbers, a red flag flew up, and the campus police found Matt Weaver seated at the computer in question and in possession of equipment typically used to illegally capture keystrokes. Keystrokes, as in student user names and passwords — the data required to cast votes in the student polling scheduled to close that evening at 5 p.m.
The publication marvels at the alleged …
… sense of entitlement one must possess — an “I want it, I deserve it, I will sure as hell take it” assumption — in order to perpetrate such a crime as self-serving election fraud. … [Weaver is] someone who embodies the white, male heterosexual privilege-to-behave-badly that has been so well established by the Cal State San Marcos administration's failure to declare otherwise.
And it summarized what about the Koala that has so many students pissed off:
Credit: The Koala
The Koala published multiple glorifications of rape and an actual guide to rape …
Students even filed a civil rights complaint against the publication, which calloutthekoala says is for profit and part of a privately owned chain, late last year.
Weaver has not been charged, officials told us. His arraignment is scheduled for Friday.
[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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