Council debates standards, grounds for impeachment of student leaders

At the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Council meeting on Sunday, April 12, Vice President for Student Life Nate Silver '10 introduced changes to the VSA Constitution that, if passed, would expand the grounds upon which the Council can indict its members, as well as students in other VSA positions.

The Council will vote on the amendments at its next meeting on April 19. In the event that they are approved, there will be a two-week reading period in which the student body may propose modifications, raise concerns and petition against the changes before they automatically take effect. The amendments were drafted by the Student Life Committee, which Silver chairs.

Currently, the Constitution lists the following grounds for impeachment: "dereliction of duty, incompetence, employment of funds or property of the VSA for private gain, violation of the VSA Constitution or the VSA bylaws, or repeated censure." The proposed amendment adds "egregious violation of College Regulations" to the list.

The proposed changes also include the addition of Article VI, which stipulates that the expectations of all VSA-elected and appointed positions will include adherence to the VSA's bylaws and Constitution, as well as to College Regulations.

At the beginning of the discussion it was tacitly understood—and the fact was later acknowledged—that these amendments are a direct response to the situation surrounding former Noyes House President Sean Koerner '11.

Koerner recently served out a punishment of being banned from campus before undergoing a disciplinary hearing for helping to organize an unauthorized party in Kenyon Hall just before Spring Break. During the party, various pieces of property, including an expensive table, were badly damaged.

Koerner resigned on April 9, submitting to pressure from both the VSA Executive Board and the Noyes House Team. According to VSA President Jimmy Kelly '09, Koerner could not have been impeached, since the VSA had limited Constitutional grounds on which to try him.

President of the Class of 2011 Joseph Redwood-Martinez was the first to directly address Koerner's resignation. "We're pointing to a very specific event that happened here, but it's like a big elephant in the room; no one's saying what it was," he said.

Because Koerner had agreed to resign, Redwood-Martinez questioned the necessity of Constitutional changes. "What went wrong with the process this time?" asked Redwood-Martinez. "Something happened, he was asked to resign, he resigned, so where, in having a Constitutional amendment, would that process have gone better?"

Silver rejected an ends-justifying-the-means approach to the problem. "We shouldn't have to work in back channels—e-mails, side conversations—to ask someone to resign from their position," said Silver. "I think that the point of this is to hold student leaders to a higher standard because right now there's nothing in our Constitution that gives us any purview or jurisdiction to interact with the College Regulations process."

The Council largely agreed that broader, formalized grounds for the Council and clear, written expectations of its members are necessary. The debate over the proposal centered on issues of language and specificity.

A particular point of concern was the significance of the word "egregious" in the amendment's description of the type of College Regulations violation that could warrant impeachment.

According to Silver, the word was used to help future Council members distinguish impeachable offenses based on their severity and to allow some flexibility to judge members on a case-by-case basis. "If you [only] say ‘violation,' what sort of safeguard does that put? We won't impeach you for smoking within 25 feet of a building or for a write-up," said Silver.

Still, some Council members worried that the language was too vague and suggested that the amendments include specific violations that would be impeachable. Kelly put down this idea, saying that the College Regulations cover too much to be specified in the amendment. "I don't necessarily think that we need to say that a certain number of things are egregious. We can let future councils decide that a certain set of violations are [egregious]," he said.

Terrace Apartments President Riane Harper '09 suggested that instead of focusing on the violations, the Council might focus on the resulting punishments. Council would then be relieved of having to judge which violations warranted impeachment. "I think what might be a more specific language would be specifying which judicial responses [would lead to] impeachment. So, for example, if the Judicial Board kicks you off campus, you are impeached," Harper said.

Other Council members still defended the vague and adaptable language. "Someone puts up a poster in an area where he's not supposed to. That's violating a fire code," said Cushing House President Mathew Leonard '11. "[Are] we going to impeach someone for that?  No. But I do like the fact that it is vaguely nebulous so that the Council in the future can look at circumstances, so I like this amendment as is."

A major concern of the Council members was their role as public figures on campus, as role models for younger students and as all-around student leaders. "It's much more their public image. If something happened privately, there's a chance that we wouldn't know about it—I don't think it would be worth impeaching, even if it was a serious violation. It's much more what that individual conveyed to campus and to their constituency," said President of the Class of 2010 Scott Pascal.

Kelly later reminded Council members to consider their positions as campus leaders before engaging in illegal activities. "I think it's also a chance for those of us sitting at the table to ask of ourselves whether or not we're being good student leaders. I do know for a fact that there were other members of Council that were in that room," Kelly said, referring to the Kenyon Hall Club Room, where Koerner threw his party.

"I think it's time for you to ask yourselves whether or not you're holding yourself to the responsibility of your position or not, and I hope you are taking this position seriously because we have a dramatically important role to play in the next year," Kelly said.