UPDATE (10/12/17 – 9:20 a.m.): Article has been updated reflecting a response from Stewart.
CUSG Vice President Jaren Stewart left Monday night’s Senate meeting with what appeared to be a failed motion against him to hear matters of impeachment.
However, a procedural error may hold that in the balance.
According to CUSG Senate President Leland Dunwoodie, there was an accidental reversal in the rules regarding the voting process in relation to objections.
“Where I went wrong is that a two-thirds vote is needed to sustain the objection,” Dunwoodie said. “I thought it was that two-thirds is needed to overrule the objection … It was an honest mistake; I truly apologize.”
According to the CUSG Senate handbook, an objection made to kill a motion must have a two-thirds vote in order to be sustained. However, with the error, senators voted to overrule the objection.
The vote was 35-26, six votes shy of the 41 needed to overrule. However, as a result of the error, the objection was incorrectly upheld, thus killing the motion.
Dunwoodie says that a senator could have called him out of order due to the error. None of the senators called the error into question.
Had a senator called Dunwoodie out of order, Dunwoodie says he then would have checked the Senate handbook to see if an error had been made.
“[I would’ve] said ‘Yep [sic], you’re absolutely right. My fault,’” he said. “Because I banged my gavel to adjourn the session and no one called me out of order, the motion still stands as if everything was done correctly and as if the articles of impeachment were not heard.”
Dunwoodie says that a simple majority vote is now needed to rescind the objection since he has now publicly acknowledged the error. A senator would have to move to rescind the decision from Monday night at the subsequent Senate meeting.
At this time, Senator Miller Hoffman, who originally moved to make a motion to hear articles of impeachment against Stewart, is unsure of his next plans.
“I am unsure of introducing articles again,” he said. “New information is being acquired everyday and I will stay on top of it.”
When asked about the grounds of his motion to bring forth articles of impeachment, Hoffman said, “I have an obligation to handle matters of this caliber in the fashion of a procedural hearing. There have been strong allegations and past events that need to be brought to the attention of Senate to determine [Stewart’s] ability to lead this student body. To further reiterate, my purpose for introducing was to provide a firm, fair and procedural hearing. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Student Body Vice President’s character and/or politics. Any claim otherwise is without a shred of evidence and is a complete conjecture.”
The Tiger reached out to Stewart; he declined to comment.
The next CUSG Senate meeting will be on Monday, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. in the Student Senate Chambers (near Core Campus).