Apr 9

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave…

Columbia, Ivy League

DEVON GRANDY (New York, New York)

Columbia’s student government seems to have suddenly gone “all Kenneth Starr up in this” lately, as impeachment proceedings have sprouted up across the board in recent weeks. Join us on our tour of Columbia’s dysfunctional student governments as we travel from the depths of the School of Engineering and Applied Science to the lofty heights of General Studies, all after the jump:

The Spectator, Bwog and IvyGate all give us the skinny on the impeachment efforts surrounding General Studies Student Council President Niko Cunningham, who, among other charges, is accused of lying, blundering, and slacking. Usually it’s a bad sign when the Spec paraphrases any student body official’s time of office as a “reign of deceit.” GSSC voted in majority to impeach Cunningham last night but was unable to garner the two-thirds vote needed to accomplish the deed. Another vote occurred this week in which twelve voted for impeachment and three against, gathering the necessary majority but raising questions about whether or not quorum was met, as fifteen of the twenty-two council members were present for the vote. In an interview with Bwog Cunningham claims that his departure from the meeting prior to the vote eliminated the two-thirds necessary for quorum, while the Spec (or at least its Commentariat blog section) states that Cunningham was indeed impeached. At this point nothing is certain, although Cunningham’s removal from the GSSC website paired with Vice President Nancy Sauders’ new title of “Acting President” demonstrates at the very least that the GSSC webmaster is not rooting for the incumbency.

UPDATE: The Spec has an official article out stating that Cunningham was indeed impeached, regardless of his arguments over the constitutionality of the vote. We’re not sure how Cunningham intends to go accomplishing his plan of “not recognizing the vote,” but BOTO wishes the former President great success in making GSSC meetings extra-uncomfortable and extra-contentious.

Not to be outdone, the Engineering Student Council (the SEAS governing body) voted on not one but two impeachment proceedings Monday night. Apparently it all began with University Senator Amit Bedi (SEAS ‘09), who was impeached by a unanimous vote for neglecting to appear at mandatory Council meetings. Beti, who relevantly enough wasn’t present for the vote and thus unaware of its occurrence, resigned with dignity via the proper channels by sending a text message reading, “Just tell them that I resign right now.” Oddly enough, Beti may not even be eligible to be on the Council, as he is currently taking the semester off to recuperate from mono. One would think that somebody on or connected to the Council would be responsible for checking these things, but we here at BOTO have stopped expecting rationality at this point in the story.

It gets weirder: that second impeachment proceeding was brought against Rajat Roy, the council member who initially brought proceedings against Beti. It turns out that Roy, who is a member of the same fraternity as Beti, decided that his fraternity brother’s absences from the council meetings were inexcusable and merited an appropriate response: Roy emailed his frat and offered a cash bounty for those who reported seeing Beti, with monetary bonuses for providing photographs. As such, ESC decided against impeaching Roy for inappropriate behavior by an eleven-twelve vote.

The basic moral of this story? Fraternities and engineers should be kept far, far away from politics, and that’s that.

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