The Student Government Association is elected by the students. I’ve attended many SGA meetings this year, and the issues that are discussed are generally simple problems that students are experiencing.
Rumors recently stated that the SGA President, Aaron Blank, was going to be impeached. He was not. However, a committee was formed to investigate some of Blank’s actions. At the SGA meeting on February 28, 2001, Heather Josti, VP of Finance, read to the entire SGA what the committee found.
Josti said that the committee found Blank “lacked effectiveness in weekly SGA meetings.” She also said the committee wanted Blank to submit his rules for order and parliamentary procedures to Michael Miller (an SGA advisor in the Student Center), so that meetings could be run more smoothly. That was why a committee was formed to try to impeach Aaron Blank.
Blank wrote a speech which he read to the SGA early in the meeting. He spoke of how he was proud of the actions of the 2000-2001 SGA and that by their help, May Weekend was saved. He also said of the SGA that “our weaknesses became our strengths.”
Blank went on to cite an example of a justifiable offense in which SGA members should be impeached. The example was from Ohio State University, where SGA members tried to conceal a $2,250 expenditure for a night out on the town. When the Ohio State student newspaper got wind of this, these SGA members sabotaged 10,000 copies of the paper so that the information about what became of the money would be limited to students. “That’s an impeachable offense,” said Blank. “I have done nothing illegal.”
Now, the only question is, if that was the sole reason why a committee was formed to impeach Blank, there must have been some other meaning behind it? Obviously there was nothing Blank did wrong, except in the opinions of a few, he may have been to laxed in his control over the meetings. Of all the meetings I attended, I never noticed a “lack of effectiveness.” When the SGA later voted on the finding of the committee, 25 of 37 SGA members thought Blank had done nothing wrong and the recommendation for Blank to take steps to improve the way meetings were held was dropped.
Why was this hard working person’s, who had represented the student body extremely well this year, name dragged through the mud? Look no further then jealous seniors of the SGA.
I’m not going to mention names, because I do not know all of these people personally, and I’m sure that they really do have good intentions most of the time. But, what they brought upon Aaron was unfounded and immature. Bill Clinton was impeached because he had sexual relations with a White House intern half his age and lied about it. These people seemed to think Blank was just as wrong as Clinton and those Ohio State SGA students.
To fully understand the deep ceded anti-Blankess of certain seniors, you have to attend one of these meetings. The room the meetings are held in has three long tables where the SGA students sit.
Then, separately slightly apart from connected the three long tables, sits Blank, and four other members of the SGA who head certain departments. At the very edge of the uncompleted square shape, directly in front of Blank, is where some of the seniors sit. They are so close to Blank that it seems they are starring down his every move, waiting for him to slip up some insignificant parliamentary procedure worked, then embarrass him by corrected him with an egotistical tone.
If you could have only been there. If you could have only seen the egos fly around the room and the jealously that nobody from their class (the senior class) ever became Student Government President. I swear it was almost comical.
Supporters of Aaron would try to say something no his behalf and were interrupted by certain seniors who said things like, “That is not relevant to the motion,” and “That is not pertinent to the discussion.” I thought for a moment I was in the British Parliament and could see men dressed in white Whigs that spoke with Shakespearean words that needed extra thinking to contemplate.
It was hysterical how some people who used big vocabulary words to cover their own back from rebuttal. Certain seniors could obviously dish it out, but couldn’t take it. This was just the 2001 SGA, and certain seniors were being attacked and backed into the corner by everyone else in the SGA who were only trying to stand up for a president they believed in.