SUDBURY -- There were three candidates running for the job of student president at Laurentian University.

Two of those candidates suddenly received an email from the Students' General Association saying they were disqualified because of social media posts they had made about the election.

One of those candidates was Darius Garneau, who was leading the election.

"My main thoughts after that were 'hey, even though we got disqualified, at least we did the right thing in posting that.' Now, people know what’s going on and they can make their own judgments about what’s going on themselves," said Garneau.

Garneau said the reason he was given for being disqualified was 'unauthorized electronic campaigning.'

Another disqualified candidate is Benjamin Chartrand, who was running for vice-president of education in the SGA. He says he wishes there was a different outcome.

"I just feel like there could have been a case-by-case analysis of the things rather than blindly following policies that were put in place to make procedures easier," Chartrand said. "They exist there to stop us from running negative campaigns, and the fact that they are using it to infringe us for expressing gratitude or promoting just a little extra information to inform the student body just seems immoral."

SGA offers no comment

Officials with the Students’ General Association offered this statement:

"As the election process is ongoing, the SGA will not make a comment until the election results are ratified."

Some students say they are upset by this and will not stand idly by while the Students' General Association enacts policies that they feel hurt Laurentian students.

"A lot of students have come forward saying that this isn’t right, this is unfair, this is undemocratic. So, basically a lot said 'this is enough we want to hold the SGA to account and we just want better results,'" said Ryan Breen, part of the SGA protest group.

Breen says his group is pushing for another election.

Nearly 100 people attended a rally that on the third floor of the Fraser Building on the Laurentian campus Wednesday night at 7 p.m.