Student senators walk out on emergency meeting

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An emergency University of Maine General Student Senate meeting held Monday regarding a complaint about the Interfraternity Council (IFC) presidential elections came to a standstill after seven senators chose to leave the meeting and the senate could not meet its quorum.

Several fraternity members contested the election when they said they noticed the Fair Election Practices Commission did not have representatives at the election’s ballot boxes, as is required by FEPC guidelines. Those representatives are also required to check fraternity members’ identification to make sure they are members. Abtin Mehdizadegan, vice president of Student Entertainment, filed the complaint, and Ross Wolland, vice president of Student Government, announced an emergency senate meeting to discuss it.

During the meeting, the senate was presented with a motion to accept the election results and dismiss the complaint, but it failed approval. After more debate, a second motion was presented to scrap the results and initiate a revote, but before senate could vote on that motion seven senators left the meeting, blocking any action.

Sen. Nicholas DeHaas, one of the witnesses listed on the complaint, said he is considering bringing a resolution to have the seven senators removed from senate. He said Monday night he definitely was going to, but by Tuesday he said he will consult with Wolland in case there are alternatives to proposing removal. After the senators — Zachary Jackman, Benjamin Goodman, Elias Elder, Nate Wildes, Pardis Delijani, Warren Varney and Mari Emmi — left, they waited outside the Bangor Room until the conclusion of the meeting.

Goodman said the reason they left is because the meeting initially began with many senators but as the night went on several left and he felt the level of representation wasn’t adequate for a vote to redo the elections. Jackman agreed, saying there was “almost a third of the senate at the meeting.”

“If the motion had passed,” Jackman said, IFC “would’ve gone into a three-week election timeline.”

The senate will return to the issue Monday, where Jackman said he hopes more senators will be available to make a decision.

Wolland refuted Jackman’s recollection of the number of senators, and said the senate meeting was attended by 23 of 35 members, which Vice President of Student Organizations Samantha Shulman confirmed. She said two senators briefly left during the meeting but returned later. Wolland said Sen. Pat Nabozny was the only senator who left during the meeting.

“We were currently debating a motion to do a revote, and at that point in the evening during the debate — we weren’t voting on anything, this is during debate — Sen. Jackman stood up and asked a question,” Wolland said Tuesday. “He asked, ‘What is quorum?’ When I told him it was 18, he — immediately afterward — he and six other members of senate stood up and walked out of the meeting, thus leaving us with 17 members.”

“Not one of those senators made a motion to postpone or made the argument that there weren’t enough people there. Not a single one of them used their power as senator to postpone for one week, or however longer they felt we should’ve waited, or made the argument that this was too big of a decision to make with so few people there,” Wolland said. “There were 23 people there. Far, far above what was quorum.”

Current IFC President Tavian MacKinnon said in an e-mail Tuesday, “In light of what occurred Thursday night, I do agree with the seven senators that walked out of the meeting. These senators understood that the complaints made against the IFC election were centered around personal interests and friendships, rather then an unfair election.”

Goodman said the full senate should consider a revote of the IFC elections instead of a fraction of GSS, and felt the number of people present on Monday were too low for an issue of the motion’s size.

“I don’t have an exact number, but I know that we did lose some over the course of the night,” Goodman said.

DeHaas said the number of senators remained relatively constant throughout the night and that if Goodman was concerned about the quorum he would have left sooner.

“What really disappoints me is that, despite this two and a half hours being invested in this meeting, the entire process will have to be redone” on Monday, DeHaas said. “It throws a whole wrench in the process in the sense that people are now negatively motivated to do what’s right.”

Normally a contested election will be handled by the FEPC, but because the complaint was directed at the FEPC itself, senate took up the matter.

“I asked them, ‘Why did you leave?’ And they just said, ‘We have the right to leave,’” Schulman said Tuesday.

Shulman said the seven senators knew their actions would mean a postponement of the issue.

“I think it was pretty obvious that they were leaving to make it so that we couldn’t move on or do business,” Shulman said.

DeHaas said he feels there should be consequences for the seven senators’ actions.

“They did not make debate that there weren’t enough people there, they simply walked out on their duties as senators and completely disrespected the other 17 senators,” Wolland said. “That’s not including the ex-officio members that were there — that’s FEPC, IFC and all the executives that had been there for two and a half hours who were taking time out of their schedule to meet. That’s not including them.”

“It was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen happen with Student Government and I’ve been here two and a half years,” Wolland said.

Goodman said that, regardless of how many senators there were at the meeting, the short notice and some senators’ time commitments that prevented them from being present contributed to the less than full senate. He said this was unacceptable to him, and that the fraternity voters deserved the full senate’s consideration. He said after senators were shown the breakdown of the election, the debate became a “completely different discussion.”

“I think at that point you need to step back and say, ‘Did all the senators understand the magnitude of the discussion?’” Goodman said. “Scrapping the election is a completely different issue and I think it was important that we had all senators present.”

The preliminary IFC presidential election results listed Colby Malcom as the winner, with 218 votes, and Ian McKinnon with 211 votes.

Student Senate will return to the election issue Monday at 8 a.m.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009, 6:25 pm. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.