The “Vote, dammit.” campaign was forced to withhold a number of voting guides created by the Sam Fox School of Art & Design’s Communication Design: Voice class due to tax code regulations and suspicions of partisan bias.

Despite registering over 25 percent of students to vote in the election, the campaign, which received funding from Washington University, was forced to cease distribution of its voting guides and attempted to recall those that had already been given out because of what the creators saw as minor issues that could be seen as partisan.

While these concerns were small, and few believe the guides were intentionally biased, Washington University made the decision to cease distribution because sponsoring partisan materials posed a threat to the University’s status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

“Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity,” according to the Internal Revenue Service’s website.

Professor Scott Gericke of the Voice class noted that violations of this code could be seemingly insignificant, but could still be claimed as bias.

“Because we didn’t list the Constitution Party as the fifth party in the presidential race, somebody can go to the University and say, ‘you’re a 501(c)(3) university, why are you biased against the Constitution Party,’ which would create a public affairs nightmare,” he said.

Gericke also noted that the he felt the level of specificity required was not properly communicated to the class by the University.

“In general, it’s hard for anybody to produce a voting guide that doesn’t seem biased to somebody, which was never really communicated to us,” he said. “It was a little unsettling when it happened because we didn’t expect it, but it’s been resolved and we learned a lot.”

Vice Chancellor for Government and Community Relations Pam Lokken felt that such expectations were made clear to students, however, when she explained to the class why the guides were being pulled.

“Once the problems with the guide were pointed out to the students they understood what was going on and how difficult it is to do a project like that,” she said. “It was a great exercise for the class, but that was the end of it.”

Lokken also noted that in order to comply with tax code, the University set high standards for the guide.

“Because we are a 501(c)(3), University resources were used and that means the bar for the quality of the voter guide was very, very high,” Lokken said. “[The students] are not experts in elections and candidates and issues. They all recognize that.”

Despite the students’ disappointment at not being able to distribute the guides they had created, Gericke added that he believed it could be a valuable and applicable experience for his students.

“When the students go out looking for jobs, they’re going to run into the same issues, especially because a lot of the students like to work with nonprofits,” he said.