Park, Goldfarb mellow on campaign colour conflict

Is yellow the new gold?

Two University Students’ Council presidential candidates may have to deal with confused students due to similarities in their campaign colours.

While Marshall Goldfarb technically chose gold as his campaign colour and Ray Park chose sunshine yellow, there appears to be little difference between the two.

“Elections committee doesn’t have anything governing choice of colours. If candidates want use the same colours, it’s their own prerogative,” Phil Sach, chief returning officer for the University Students’ Council elections committee, said. “We try as hard as we can before campaign begins to kind of mediate that. But it’s out of our hands — they do what they want with their colours.”

According to Sach, demerit points will not be awarded for the colour mix-up, as choice of colours is not protected by election bylaws.

“Am I mad? Not really. But at the same time, it doesn’t really help me out,” Park said.

While Park felt it might be a little confusing for students, he did not think it would be a major issue.

“It could bring up some conflicts […] but hopefully it’s not going to be too much of an issue […] Hopefully people won’t be too confused,” Park added.

“Ray Park is yellow and although ours appears that way, it’s gold,” Goldfarb said. “It is fairly similar but I’ve had a couple opportunities already to speak to Ray […] I haven’t sensed any problem.”

Park mentioned when an e-mail regarding campaign colours was sent out to the candidates, Goldfarb was not included in the recipients.

“In all honesty, when Phil sent us an e-mail, Marshall was not part of that process because the CRO did not know he was running. I can’t really complain because when I told everyone that my colour was yellow, Marshall didn’t know about it because he wasn’t part of the process,” Park said.

Goldfarb noted nothing could have been done had he known about the colours sooner.

“The problem is we didn’t really know about this until after our colours were picked so everything was finalized, shirts were ordered, etc […] so [there is] nothing we can do about it,” Goldfarb added.