UPDATE: CofC Senate Gets Lesson on How to Overreact to a Blog PostÂ
Apologies, but we get our George Street Observer a little late around here.
It appears that, on Feb. 19, the student senate got in a tizzy over student body Vice President Seaton Brown’s unorthodox recusal from presiding on an issue that doesn’t seem terribly important at all for us real world folks, only to have him turn around and try to argue one side of the issue.
Chairs of various bodies recuse themselves all the time when they feel there’s a conflict of interest, but they typically leave the room and leave the fight in other’s hands. It seems Brown’s problem was that he didn’t have a second mate.
His actions led to a resolution for his impeachment which was, itself, unorthodox. Though most votes by the body are recorded, this was done by secret ballot so that senate members could speak their mind without fear of the consequences (if only Congress had this pleasure on the Iraq vote).
Before I could even try to get excited about all of this, I got to the George Street’s website and find that the Senate vote for impeachment was overturned by the Honor Council.
It was revealed during the Council’s hearing that Shafer Brown (my bad) also has a potty mouth.
SGA president Whitney Hinds spoke as witness in favor of the impeachment. She said that she provided Brown with two written warnings as well as numerous verbal warnings in regards to his use of profanity. Most notably she referenced his use of the words “jackass” in a Senate meeting and “hell” during a Faculty Senate meeting.
According to Hinds, this also brought shame and disgrace to the office of the vice president. “I have seen more professional behavior from previous vice presidents,” she said.
The chair of the Honor Council wrapped it up nicely.
“These are all little issues that could have been brought up and addressed solely and on an individual basis.”
18 Comments
Dear City Paper– What’s next, a College gossip column? We want real news, please.
Imagine that, someone wanting to know how someone else voted.
Mr. Hambrick,
I realize that this is a blog and subject to your own opinion, but since this is a local issue (and one which I would really only think would be of interest to college students), I would think that if this peeked your interest enough to write a blog, that you would also be interested enough to talk to the students that were involved instead of relying on assumptions you’ve made from a newspaper article.
I’m glad to see the City Paper comment on things going on at CofC - it is a part of the city like it or not.
Hope those involved did learn a lesson, much as this might just be of interest to college students they are going to end up in the work world (scary thought) - I almost feel like if Mr Hambrick had talked with other students he would have been even more embarrassed at the pettiness of it all.
The votes were not asked for by Mr. Brown, but by other members of the student body. We elect them, therefore we hold them responsible and have a right to know how the handle certain issues that are on the minds of the students. The number of students who attended that meeting was the most in SGA recent memory, obviously very important to many members of the student body. As a student who is involved on campus, I personally felt that this was a personal attack on Seaton Brown, and not only did his action not warrant impeachment as found by the Honor Council, it had the unfortunate consequence of making SGA look petty and against the will of the students by trying to get rid of one of the most popular and accomplished VPs in school history. I also think that maybe before you write a blog on this issue, you should try to read up on the issue. If SGA had read Robert’s Rules of Order properly, they would have saved themselves the embarrassment of the proceedings that took place on Monday. And if using the words “hell” and “jackass” warrant impeachment, I’m damn sure no one would be in politics.
If you want them out of office so you can try to ruin their chance at re-election, frame them for doing something like taking part in a prostitution ring. That seems to ruin political careers.
This article is comical. Do some research before you post something. Like “Another Matt” said before - the accepted practice of the Senate is a voice vote which is not recorded. In this particular instance, multiple senators requested a written ballot. “The Student Body” aka Seaton’s minions requested that names be listed solely so they could know who to remove from their friends on facebook. Award winning huh? Get a real job or at least attempt to cover something newsworthy. This is pathetic.
Well said Brian, Nick, and Matt
this is a freakin blog. if its a waste of time, its definitely not worth spending time on a witty comment.
I think that it is quite proper for the students to know how their Senators vote, and I appreciate those students who were brave enough to stand up and request that they know. We made a mistake by seeking this impeachment, and I think that it is time that we all move on. I would like to offer our appologies to any students who were offended by the actions of their student government. Like Vice President Brown, we in SGA have to be big enough to admit our mistakes so that we can move forward together.
HAHA!
Wait Whitney H is the SGA President right?
Whitney definitely didn’t say that.
Comment Number 10 by Whitney H…. Now that took CLASS!
I’m pretty sure that’s not the SGA president commenting in line 10.
Hello,
My name is Whitney Hinds, and I am the SGA President. While I did see the original blog post, I had not been following the comments over the past couple of days. However, a friend commented to me about the post that I had supposedly made. Having not posted a comment, I decided to check it out. To answer your questions, I did not post comment 10, though it was written as if coming internally from the SGA.
I will comment on the remarks made in post 10. I absolutely agree that it is time to move past this issue. Any student that attended our past Senate meeting on Tuesday would not have known that the organization had very recently been through an impeachment process. Vice President Brown conducted our last Senate meeting in a professional manner and our Senators participated accordingly.
However, I have not and will not apologize for the Senators decision to support the resolution for impeachment from the February 26th Senate meeting. If I was going to apologize, I would do so directly to the student body as a “letter to the editor” in our college newspaper. I have confidence that the Senators thought carefully through their decision and made a professional choice. As the president of the organization, I support their right to make that choice. I also support the decision of the Honor Council to not to take further action against Vice President Brown, and I look forward to working with him throughout the remainder of the academic year.
Why are people so angry at Greg Hambrick for writing about this in his blog? It was definitely an interesting story, and something that wouldn’t be covered in the regular paper. It’s a blog people, if you don’t like this snippet of random news, come back tomorrow.
No apology necessary for the botched impeachment circus.
There’s a lot sga could do to help to help students. This sga has not done that. Sga leadership let this crap disgrace the organization continue to defend the situation they created. For that, we all deserve an apology.
Get over yourselves and get something done.