An Iowa State political science professor compared the Government of the Student Body elections to those in communist North Korea.

“Everyone gets shot if they do something wrong. This is not North Korea. This is the United States,” Professor Steffen Schmidt said on WOI Radio’s “Talk of Iowa” program Tuesday morning.

Last weekend, presidential candidate Brad Lozan and his running mate Melissa Cross were fined $50 because a campaign poster was found by GSB Election Commissioner Ryan Flaugh at Santa Fe Espresso, a coffee shop in Campustown.

Candidates are only allowed to campaign in a “campaign zone,” an on-campus area that includes most university-owned property, the Memorial Union and the interior of fraternity and sorority houses.

Todd Swanson and Amber Powell, another executive slate, were also fined $100 because friends wore campaign buttons to an off-campus bar.

The “campaign zone,” Schmidt said in a deep voice, is ridiculous. “We are a university that teaches about constitutional law and the First Amendment. This is the most idiotic policy I’ve ever heard of. I would have a very big lawsuit if I were these students.”

In an interview with the Daily after the program, Lozan said Schmidt’s assessment was correct.

“This particular rule is one of many stupid GSB rules which inhibit not only freedom of speech but other laws of this country,” he said.

Schmidt said Swanson and Powell’s fine was equally outrageous. “No one can tell an American when they can wear anything,” he said.

But Flaugh said he’s simply enforcing the rules.

He said the zone was formed after former GSB President Dan Mangan posted signs off campus in 1995.

Flaugh said Mangan’s signs were excessive, so the university authorized GSB to restrict campaigning.

However, Tricia Sandahl, last year’s GSB election commissioner and a current graduate senator, said Flaugh’s just wrong. “That’s absolutely incorrect. The campaign zone was my idea,” she said. “There is no way the administration said this. That is a rule I wrote.”

She said the intent of the zone was partly to prevent littering problems on campus and partly to allow candidates to be more open to new ways of campaigning, such as meeting with students when passing out flyers.

“It didn’t restrict actions of candidates,” Sandahl said.

The zone has been a source of controversy since its inception, Sandahl said.

“We discussed the responsibility taken by the actions of supporters, but that can only go so far,” she said. “There’s a very subtle difference.”

Sandahl said the only people the zone restricts are the candidates.

If Santa Fe Espresso officials put up the poster, she said, it would not be a violation. And Swanson and Powell should never have been fined, she said.

“I have no idea what [election commissioners] are doing. If their campaign button is seen off campus, that is not their fault,” Sandahl said. “The buttons are absolutely protected speech. I just know it is. You cannot impose on that.”

Cross, Lozan’s running mate, defended the zone despite her slate’s fine. “Rules are rules. We need to have rules, but there needs to be a limit on them,” she said. “If you didn’t have rules to follow, it would be mass chaos.”

Swanson has said he plans to appeal the fine, which even Lozan said was excessive.