The Students Should Decide

If the first construction project of the present Undergraduate Council was to rebuild its currently dilapidated image, one wonders if the blueprints call for a wrecking crane. More than one month after allegations of campaign violations surfaced, newly elected council president Fentrice D. Driskell '01 and vice president John A. Burton '01 have, disappointingly, failed to address adequately a number of critical issues. But equally disturbing is the recent decision by council members to "impeach" Burton and place him on "trial"--an inappropriate action that subverts the vice president's accountability to the students and, in all likelihood, will serve to speed the process by which the council's reputation is reduced to non-recyclable rubble.

The allegations against the Driskell/Burton campaign are certainly serious. Burton has admitted to taking more than 100 buttons from the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters' Alliance (BGLTSA) for campaign purposes, calling them a "freely available resource" that any student could take. However, by most accounts, this is not completely accurate--access to the buttons required a key and BGLTSA board members have said they would not have allowed other students to take the buttons.

In a statement to The Crimson published on Jan. 21, Driskell took a step in the right direction by directly responding to these allegations. According to Driskell, one BGLTSA board member had contacted him about the buttons, and "a misunderstanding ensued when other board members were informed after the buttons had already been used." However it is the nature of this "misunderstanding" that needs to be explicitly addressed. According to the BGLTSA, Burton never had permission to take the buttons and any representation of the buttons as a "freely available resource" to the election commission would have been inaccurate.

The only way for the public to sort through this finger-pointing is for Burton and Driskell to make a formal and honest statement to the student body describing exactly what happened. Such a frank statement of facts should clear up, once and for all, whether Burton willfully misled the commission. If so, the students--not the council representatives--should decide whether or not such acts are truly serious enough to warrant removal from what is a primarily bureaucratic office.

For this reason--that popularly elected officers of the council are accountable only to the students--the "impeachment" motion passed and postponed at last night's council meeting is troubling and inappropriate. (The council constitution does not specifically name an "impeachment" process.)

While we can certainly understand the frustrations of Kyle D. Hawkins '02 and John P. Marshall '01, the motion's sponsors, in getting information from the Driskell and Burton, the motion is flawed in a number of ways. First, the motion itself lacks a certain degree of legitimacy. The vast majority of those who have signed onto the motion ran on or worked for rival campaigns, and it is hard to believe that political bitterness is without influence. The BGLTSA has also publicly condemned the motion, further damaging the motion's credibility.

But more importantly, a popularly elected officer of the council--especially one who has been elected by a wide margin of student votes--should be accountable to the student electorate, not to some internal bureaucratic mechanism. To think a "trial" conducted within the council, itself a body lacking in legitimacy, will yield anything close to the truth is foolish. To proceed with such blatant disrespect for the will of the students is dangerous. We are dismayed that the council voted last night to proceed with the motion even after a significant minority supported killing it on these philosophical grounds.

From this point, both the body of the council and its leadership need to move past the current finger-pointing and begin the long and arduous task of rebuilding the organization once known as the student government. The "impeachment" controversy has obscured the more important tasks of the council. In particular, the council needs to take a critical look at its election commission that, by all accounts, performed its task with utter ignorance and surprising incompetence.

Similarly, the recent UC Books project, led by Paul A. Gusmorino III '02, is an example of a valuable student service that has been overshadowed by the recent stubbornness and short-sightedness on both sides. Amidst the rubble and ruins, the council is still capable of good things. We hope the rebuilding project can begin soon.