A Public Engagement student has claimed that an internal University Student Senate election, which unseated him from their executive board on Feb. 16, was unconstitutional.
The student, Rudy Hinojosa, had just begun his second semester as co-chair of the student government and said he believed his seat was secure until the end of the school year.
After an election his colleagues held on Feb. 16, he was not re-elected to the leadership committee. Hinojosa stopped attending meetings after the loss, missing so many that his colleagues unanimously impeached him on March 30 on constitutional grounds.
“It was a major screw-up. Not because they impeached me, but because they were able to impeach me,” Hinojosa said. “[It’s] an affront to the core values of the university.”
The issue became the wording of the constitution itself, which says leaders’ terms “shall begin on the day of their election to such position, and end following official handoff to the USS for the next academic year.”
Hinojosa said that language afforded him an academic year-long tenure, but co-chair Kabeer, who goes by a single name and is in his second leadership term, disagreed.
“It’s always been a semester-long position, never a yearly position,” Kabeer said. “We stay the co-chair, or the treasurer, until the next semester, until the next executive board election happens.” Serengeti Timungwa, who served as co-chair during the previous academic year, also said co-chair terms had been one semester.
The vote in question re-elected Kabeer to the executive board along with Nina Nichelle, an NSPE student, and Alexandra Letellier, a Parsons strategic design and management student.
Hinojosa claimed his fellow senators “used the relative vagueness of the language” to “push an election, just because that’s how things had gone in past years.”
The student senate met on April 6 for an annual review of the constitution. Senators aimed to update some processes involved in USS elections and to clear up any confusions in the wording of the document.
At the meeting, several senators raised concerns over the document’s wording. However, changes have not been made, as no senators proposed new language.
The senate also decided to delay revision to the articles that Hinojosa claimed were used to dismiss him unconstitutionally until further assessment by USS faculty advisor Maureen Sheridan, according to Kabeer.
Changes to the constitution have been frequent in the past, according to Dan Schulman (‘10), a New School alum who helped found the student government and served on the executive board.
But to him, the constitutional dispute is beside the point.
“It’s not really about technicalities. Your time bickering about this is hurting students,” said Schulman, who now works for a real estate tech startup in San Francisco.
Schulman emphasized the responsibility the USS has to students. The senate, which is funded by fees paid by every student, paid out more than $100,000 to student projects in the last academic year.
“This is just a distraction. There’s a lot of work to be done. It’s not worth the leadership’s time. Get over it,” he said.
“Everything should be done in good faith and in service to the student body. It’s the duty of that person to recognize that people don’t want them in power,” Schulman said.
Photo by Anna Del Savio