“We feel compelled to bring a matter of concern to your attention,” Queen’s commerce students Justin Ninness and Dennis Vogt wrote in an email to SAC Chief Returning Officer Scott Tremblay and CC’d to The Varsity on Saturday, March 12. “Queen’s recently elected a new student government executive, whose campaign bears a striking resemblance to that of U of T’s Team Progress.” Messrs. Ninness and Vogt detailed how the victorious party at Queen’s (called the “RHM” party) signed a “contract with students,” just like the Progress ticket at U of T; the Queen’s execs pledged to forgo some of their salary if they don’t keep their promises, just like the Progress ticket at U of T; “[o]ther aspects of the campaign also bear certain similarities…” the duo wrote.

“We are concerned that the recently elected Team Progress campaigned using the intellectual property of Queen’s own executive,” concluded Ninness and Vogt. “We feel that the students of U of T have a right to know about any dishonesty with which their new executive was elected.”

Well.

“My understanding of intellectual property is somewhat vague,” Tremblay wrote back, and “I’m not entirely sure if a contract is intellectual property. This would imply that the people running at Queen’s were the first to use it, and it was solely their idea….”

Which, of course, it wasn’t.

Long before “Team Progress,” and long before the Queen’s executives proclaimed their “Contract With Students,” there was Newt Gingrich and the U.S. Republican Party’s “Contract With America,” which was a campaign ploy widely credited with winning back the U.S. House of Representatives for the GOP-in 1994.

Come Sunday, Ninness and Vogt responded, tails between legs.

“We realize that that this action”-accusing elected officials of intellectual property theft-“may have been somewhat premature,” the pair responded on Sunday evening. “The concerns we expressed yesterday (perhaaps in haste) were sent in response to an email we received from one of the [Queen’s] candidates. She was quite upset upon hearing the news that their campaign had been seemingly duplicated by Team Progress at U of T. Contacting the appropriate people at U of T seemed a reasonable option.

Reasonable or not, Newt Gingrich has so far not commented on the matter.