“He just didn’t take his job seriously,” said Sarah Golden of senior ASWC Senator Shea Dunda. Golden, a junior and a member of ASWC’s Oversight Committee, oversaw the removal of Dunda from the Senate.

Golden cited Dunda’s election campaign as an indicator. “He ran as ‘The Goblin King.’ It was a joke to him.”

Dunda was expelled because of complaints brought against the senator for missing both Senate and committee meetings.

“This is the first time under the current system that a senator was expelled,” wrote Shayna Tivona in an e-mail. Tivona, a sophomore and the Chair of the Oversight Committee, explained that while senators have been under investigation before, they have never had sanctions upheld against them.

Dunda’s expulsion from the Senate carries with it a fine of $100. Dunda is allowed to voice concerns from his constituency and retains the title of senator, but he is no longer allowed to vote in the Senate.

Dunda defended himself in a speech made to the ASWC Senate on April 29. Although he admitted that his campaign was “offensive and completely unrelated to government, or care for any ASWC going-ons,” Dunda thought that he was representing his constituency accurately. “I won a landslide victory, not just in the senior vote, but as a write-in for the juniors. My constituency, quite frankly, doesn’t give a damn about ASWC. If I were to attend meetings and speak my views, I would be doing a disservice to the lethargy and apathy of those very students I represent. For this reason, I feel that have been an incredible senior senator, with respect to representation.”

Dunda also voiced concern that he was being “discriminated against, disrespected, ignored and excluded as a speaker and a volunteer” by the Senate. He felt that he wasn’t the only one not doing his job, but that the entire system was corrupt. “I deserve expulsion . . . from a broken government, with inconsistent actions and laws, with discriminatory and cowardly members who are either hopped up on their own apathy, drunk and unthinking on their own self-righteousness, or blinded by their adherence to inconsistent, moronic and problematic laws: laws that it seems every year are questioned at the start, and promptly disregarded until the end of the year.”

However, Tivona stressed that the issue wasn’t the ineffectuality of ASWC, but that Dunda had not fulfilled his job as senator. “The Oversight Report concluded that he had violated his senator oath by being repeatedly unexcused to meetings. His lack of attendance made it impossible for him to represent his constituents.”