Dirt dished as Sabbatical elections get nasty

Desperation to get a specified candidate elected for a sabbatical position has stretched too far in the 2014 elections.

After The Tab reported on Jay Appleyard blacking up for photos and accusations of homophobia, The Tab received another email dishing the dirt on another candidate.

The email identified Harry Wells, a candidate for Experience Officer, in Channel 4’s tv show Baggage.

The email, written under the pseudonym ‘Jeff Bridges’, alleged that Harry had openly admitted to lying to girls to pull with them and urged us to watch the episode.

Having had one potential partner removed, the two remaining boys stood behind their ‘baggage’…

Host Gok Wan questioned Harry about his statement, asking: “So, you tell girls you love them to pull…”

Harry replied: “Yeah, it works.”

When asked about the appearance, Harry said: “It was a great laugh. That did come up on the show, and I”m not particularly embarrassed to admit it – I haven’t always been as mature as I am now.”

The show was also the first time Harry admitted to being bisexual.

Interestingly, the email address provided by the sender of the story was that of Education Officer candidate, Yordan Nikolov.

Having made the connection between the two email addresses, we asked Yordan if he had contacted us with a story.

He demanded clarification on what had been sent. He said it was an “impostor”. He added: “I have no recollection of sending The Tab any story of any kind.”

Harry added that he did not think Yordan sent in the video. He said: “Yordan is a lovely guy and I think he’s also sensible enough to know that my appearance on a dating show with Gok Wan (where I also came out as bisexual on national television) is hardly the most incriminating scoop of the election.”

It became clear that somebody had made a desperate attempt to implicate both Yordan Nikolov and Harry Wells and smear one or both of their campaigns by attempting to use the email address of the former, in the hope that it there would be no research into why the allegation had been made.

It seems as though the impostor was trying to further implicate Harry Wells after students across campus had linked him with the allegations made against Jay Appleyard.

In a statement to The Tab, Harry said: “I made it clear in the original article and later on more than one occasion via social media that although I do disagree in the strongest terms with what Jay did, I’m not prepared to call him a racist or a homophobe.

“Unfortunately, people will of course form their own opinions about who started the debate around the pictures and why, and some of those people seem to think that I have the free time and perseverance to have done that myself.

He went on to categorically deny any involvement with the page saying: “I want to take this chance to stress that not only am I in no way involved with the “Oppose Jay Appleyard” Facebook page, and that I wasn’t even aware of the existence of the photos published in The Tab until it became common knowledge that an article was being written.

“I’ve actually heard that some people seem to think we conspired to make this happen, which is utterly ridiculous.”

Well well well. Union politics eh?