Recent revelations about the past of Undergraduate Student Government (USG) presidential candidate Mahmoud Ablan have caused The Daily Collegian's Board of Opinion to first reconsider and then retract its endorsement of his ticket.

Ablan ran on his credentials as a student leader, as the president of Penn State Schuylkill's Student Government Association, as diversity affairs director for the Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG) and as a member of the Commission on Racial/Ethnic Diversity at University Park.

Since the board decided to endorse his and vice presidential candidate Kyle Aucker's run to oversee USG, numerous sources have contacted the Collegian to question his performance, as stated to the board, when he was part of CCSG.

Ablan failed to state during his interview Sunday that he had not finished his term in CCSG, and information-gathering procedures throughout the campaign failed to uncover the omission prior to the board's decision.

According to a follow-up interview with Ablan last night, he admitted that his term on CCSG ended prematurely. However, he said he left CCSG because he was used as a "scapegoat" during an internal CCSG controversy.

He followed that statement in yesterday's interview by saying that whenever he is disrespected in a situation, he leaves that situation.

That in and of itself is not the mark of a leader, especially within an organization such as USG, which is well known for its political wrangling, infighting and frequent disrespect between members.

An alternate version of Ablan's departure from CCSG creates additional questions.

Joe Curigliano, president of CCSG during Ablan's tenure, said that while Ablan performed "well" during the fall semester of his term, he began to miss meetings due to surgery he had during winter break. He allegedly continued to miss mandatory, routine sessions, such as a CCSG retreat on Jan. 30 and 31 of last year. Curigliano said he was given little to no notice of Ablan's absences following the surgery.

Subsequently, Curigliano said he sent Ablan repeated messages notifying him that he would be removed from office if he missed a Feb. 4 CCSG meeting without reason.

When Curigliano received no response from Ablan for failing to attend the meeting, he announced at the end of the Feb. 4 meeting that Ablan's resignation would become effective immediately because of his "absences and lack of communication."

Ablan's reasons for leaving contradict others' statements both in detail and chronology. The CCSG controversy Ablan cited as his reason for leaving did not begin until Feb. 23, well after Curigliano said he removed Ablan from his position.

Also, Aninya Williams, who worked under Ablan on the CCSG diversity committee and is now the committee's director, backed up Curigliano's assertions, as did Wendy Flynn, Senate chair at Penn State Schuylkill.

Although he said he would be available to answer follow-up questions last night, Ablan did not return repeated calls to clear up discrepancies.

The Collegian based its endorsement on an interview conducted Sunday afternoon. If Ablan had been completely forthcoming with the board, or if the board had collected all the facts before the interview, its endorsement would stand.

Ablan was not forthcoming, and board members made an inadequately informed decision, and have consequently done the Collegian's readers a disservice.

The board will not further this disservice and officially retracts its support for Mahmoud Ablan and Kyle Aucker for USG president and vice president.

This retraction does not change the board's opinion regarding the other five executive tickets. And to avoid another ill-informed decision, it will not revisit which candidates would best serve USG next year.

The Board of Opinion will reevaluate its methods for interviewing and endorsing USG executive tickets to avoid repeating these mistakes in the future.

Those measures will include looking at all areas of how this newspaper covers student government elections, from initial fact-gathering interviews with prospective candidates to the final executive endorsement by this board.

The mistakes will not happen again.