Last week, the SGA Oversight Committee impeached senators Allen Best, Jon Darlak, Elena Malova, Jimmy Sweeney, and Eddy Valdez. The Oversight Committee, for years, hadn’t impeached any Senators. Before the impeachments of last week, the Oversight Committee, the group that is responsible for ensuring that senators adhere to their requirements, had been lenient when rules were broken, according to several members in the Oversight Committee.
The Committee decided to take action against these five senators because it “felt that senators had continuously been falling behind on their email requirements and, regardless of the constant reminders, the issue wasn’t being fixed,” according to Ryan Tom, chair of the Oversight Committee. “The point of this wasn’t to severely punish anyone,” Tom added, “but rather hold senators to the standards that they had set for themselves.”
The procedure for impeachments is detailed in the bill passed last semester called the Kind and Honorable Oversight Documents Act. According to this document, an impeachment occurs when a senator is found guilty of violating the governing documents of the SGA, including its Constitution or its bylaws. When it comes to their attention that a senator is not performing their required duties, a member of the Oversight Committee can move to impeach that individual at a meeting of the Committee. If a simple majority of Committee members vote in favor of the motion, the motion is adopted.
The section of the bylaws breached by all five impeached senators required them to “send an email to their district within 72 hours when mandated by the Public and Communications Relations Committee members and chair.” At 1:23 p.m. on October 23rd, the chair of the Public Relations committee sent an email to all of the senators specifying the information they needed to convey to their districts. As per the bylaws, the senators must have sent those emails by 1:23 p.m. on October 26th. Listed below are the times that the impeached officials sent their emails, all after the deadline, according to Tom:
- Eddy Valdez: October 28th at 10:45 p.m.
- Allen Best: October 31st at 12:31 a.m.
- Jon Darlak: October 28th at 11:58 p.m.
- Elena Malova: October 31st at 8:45 p.m.
- Jimmy Sweeney: October 30th at 11:22 a.m.
The impeached senators were presented with an opportunity to appeal their impeachment at the SGA meeting on November 4th, 2018. An Impeachment trial includes a presentation of evidence against the accused Official, presentation of evidence in defense of the accused Official, discussion, and finally a vote on whether or not the Official is, in fact, guilty. If three-fourths of the Senate vote that the Official has violated the governing documents of the SGA, the Oversight Committee proceeds with their actions to instill punishments upon that Official. If the vote fails, the impeachment is overturned and no punishment is given.
Darlak was the sole senator to appeal his impeachment. Darlak arrived at Sunday’s Senate meeting prepared with a Powerpoint presentation containing his evidence in defense of himself, which included several examples of emails he had sent to his district, to convey his excellence as a senator. He explained how he regularly sends emails every Sunday, which is more often than what is required of him, and that he did not send this required email because it landed between his weekly updates and because his district had already received all the information he was tasked with forwarding from the PR committee. With a vote of only two senators in favor of his impeachment and all others against, Darlak was absolved of his punishment.
Though many senators attested to the strength of his character as a reason why he should not be impeached, “the trial wasn’t on his character (not at all!),” Mark Krupinski, a member of the oversight committee, said in an email, “but solely based on whether an email was sent on time. Based upon that cut and dry metric, I firmly hold that all five senators who were impeached by the oversight committee did not send out all of the information required by the PR committee in a timely manner,” and deserved to be impeached.
All five senators who were impeached were reached out for comment but did not respond for The Stute.
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