After an impassioned speech in his own defense, which several members of the ASWC Senate, including outgoing first-year Senator Allison Armstrong and incoming Finance Chair Senator Eliot Okantey, admitted contained a number of valid critiques of ASWC, senior Senator Shea Dunda was expelled from the ASWC Senate.
The terms of his expulsion include revoking his voting rights and fining him for the amount he was paid for second semester. The chair of the Oversight Committee, the body overseeing the expulsion process, gave several reasons for Senator Dunda’s expulsion, which all boiled down to Senator Dunda being a “poor representative” of the senior class. In an effort to gloss over their fantastic fumble in this matter, the Oversight Committee disregarded the entire first semester of Senator Dunda’s service, which this reporter finds absolutely ludicrous as the first semester of Senator Dunda’s life cannot be divorced from the second and directly influenced his conduct, which he admits according to the requirements specified in the ASWC by-laws are grounds for both impeachment and/or expulsion.
I am sure you are curious why the Oversight Committee and the Senate decided on “expulsion” and not impeachment; I know I was. Under the terms of expulsion Senator Dunda is allowed to retain his title but not allowed to vote which, as Senator Bryce McKay pointed out, leaves the senior class one vote short (which in the joint session that immediately followed this hearing could have made a difference in a key vote concerning the budget) with no provision in place to fill the vacancy.
A key explication offered by Senator Dunda is something I myself have been puzzling over in the month since the beginning of this year when my close exploration of ASWC began. Senator Dunda was elected under the campaign banner of “Elect the Goblin King.” His campaign was an exercise in the ridiculous, and yet the class of ’07, a class that outgoing Finance Chair Ajay Abraham cited as being one of the most active voting classes in Whitman history, chose this person who advertised himself under the moniker “Clit Beastwood.”
That Shea Dunda is being expelled is not the problem, as he would wholeheartedly agree with; the problem is that the system of ASWC is profoundly flawed and that little attention is paid to fixing the pieces that are really broken, such as Senator and Executive Council accountability in the areas of voting, attendance and constituent outreach.
Senators are required to hold forums, but as senior Senator Chris Chamness stated during Senator Dunda’s defense, he had been lackadaisical in his responsibility in that area. In my rough month of covering ASWC for the Whitman Pioneer I can name several senators who have missed both senate and policy committee meetings. I sincerely doubt this was their first absence.
In my experiences of last semester during the “blackface incident,” it took the one senator that did contact me two days to do so, and I had to actually hunt down a number of other ASWC officials to get their input and aid with the situation.
However, while in my own way, I am voicing the same criticisms of ASWC as stridently as Senator Dunda, I believe the process for repairing said problems are here, as long as there are mechanisms of pressure/accountability from without the organization. First of all, students, yes, it is your senator’s job to hunt you down, to talk to you and solicit your input, but if they don’t, beat down their door. I spent a good chunk of a Monday lying in wait in Reid to solicit the support of the Executive Council for their support with the Virginia Tech vigil.
Our own Pioneer is also a useful tool to apply said pressure and ensure accountability. Though currently I believe this is hampered by having a Senator write the ASWC news pieces and the lack of useful things like voting records, official attendance records that aren’t written on scrap paper and the fact that despite several requests to the Communication Director, I don’t receive minutes until well after my deadline: which makes cross-checking with my audio recordings for inconsistencies difficult.
However, what all of this boils down to, fellow students, is your interest in the process and business of ASWC. I just sat through almost four hours of meetings, almost all of it thrilling. Kids, quite frankly, this shit kicks “Grey’s Anatomy’s” ass most of the time, plus the women there actually eat, oh you know, food, and the guys? Well, they don’t call our (outgoing) Communications Director McOddly Endearing for nothing.
The bottom line here is that Senator Dunda was expelled, and according to the by-laws he most certainly should have been, but it was handled in an exceedingly inept manner. This amateurish effort by the Oversight Committee highlighted some severe shortcomings across the board in the ASWC Senate, and even though one Senator suggested that this matter be looked at in a manner of degrees of offense (Senator Dunda representing a high degree of failure) I find it shameful and proof of the assertions that Senator Dunda made in his defense about the ethical failings of many ASWC officials that several senators, who I have personal knowledge of falling short in their assigned duties, voted ‘yes’ to expel their fellow Senator.
