by Joe Harris
senior editor

The student court found in favor of one out of four grievances brought forth concerning January's Student Government Association meeting, Wednesday.

The grievances were brought forth by Steve Wolfe, interim SGA vice president. The grievances asked the court to rule on the following matters: the legality for the Court to issue a ruling on Jan. 19 signed by Sarah Kraus, who was not a justice at that time; the legality of having two meetings one after another within a five minute time period; the legality of expulsion and the freezing of funds due to the fourth absence; and the legality of the Assembly to hold an election for vice president before the expulsion of Darwin Butler.

The one grievance the court found in Wolfe's favor was the legality for the Court to issue a ruling on Jan. 19 signed by Kraus. Even though it was found in Wolfe's favor, it still has no impact on January's SGA meeting results. The same ruling was voted on again and was signed by three current judges.

"We were simply asked for a ruling about the constitution, about the legality of acting president, the interim vice president and which constitution and bylaws we are under and that did not change from the 19th to the 26th," Rick Eccher, chief justice of the Student Court, said.

The other three grievances, if found in Wolfe's favor, would have changed the outcome of the January SGA meeting. In that meeting, a motion was passed to close the meeting and start another one five minutes later. This way groups missing their fourth meeting at the first meeting's close would be expelled and a quorum might be achieved in the next meeting with the lower total. A two-thirds total quorum was needed to start impeachment processes against Butler, the SGA president. A quorum was still not met at the next meeting, however, during that time the SGA assembly elected Michael Rankins permanent SGA vice president to take over for Wolfe, who was filling in during Butler's absence.

Wolfe's other three grievances questioned SGA's ability to hold meetings five minutes apart from each other, the legality of expulsion and freezing funds due to the fourth absence and the legality of the assembly to hold an election for vice president before the expulsion of Butler. If any of these grievances were to have been in Wolfe's favor, then Rankins' selection as vice president may have been overturned.

Grievance two, questioning the legality of having meetings five minutes apart was not found to be in Wolfe's favor because of section three of the SGA constitution. Part of section three holds that the assembly itself can determine the agenda by petition of one-third of the assembly.

"The assembly has the authority to hold a special meeting at any time as long as one-third of the assembly votes for that," Eccher said. "I was present at that meeting. There were less than 90 organizations represented, the count was 36 organizations at the [first] meeting so when D. Mike Bauer [SGA chair] called to question the first meeting and the opening of the next meeting five minutes later, that was clearly constitutional because everybody voted for that. There were no abstentions and no nos."

Grievance three, questioning the legality of automatic expulsion and the freezing of funds, was also not found in Wolfe's favor because of SGA constitution section three, subhead A which states that member organizations missing more or having proxied more than three times would be automatically expelled from the assembly.

Grievance four, questioning the legality to hold an election for vice president before the expulsion of Butler, was not found in Wolfe's favor because of section two of the SGA constitution which states that no member shall hold more than one office at a time.

The Court found that Wolfe has been acting as both the acting president and interim vice president since Butler's arrest in October. Eccher said Rankin's election insures SGA that it will keep going in case either of the two were to be impeached.

"If we're in a situation where one person was both the acting president and interim vice president, and hypothetically that person was impeached, the student government would end," Eccher said. "The reason for that is the president presides over all SGA meetings and over all executive committee meetings. So the executive committee could not even be called in an emergency to act for the SGA assembly because there would be no one to preside."

Wolfe said he disagrees with the Court's decision about grievances two and three.

"Two meetings one after another just doesn't look right when we are supposed to have regular meetings during the year," Wolfe said. "The Court said that more than a third voted for the meeting five minutes later. [The constitution] says a petition. If you look in Webster's dictionary, a petition is written; and with the four absences, in all practicality you cannot count two meetings I had earlier in the year for absences, the two that I called quorum."

Wolfe said he would personally stand up and argue to the Court on the behalf of any organization who was expelled from SGA and lost their funding due to absences.

Rankins said he was positive that the Court would uphold the results of January's SGA meeting.

"I was familiar with the constitution and how it describes the process of electing a vice president in the assembly and the circumstances under which that was to have been done," Rankins said. "The rules seem to have been followed to the best of my knowledge and the circumstances of the election were appropriate so I had assumed that these rulings would be the case."

The Student Court has not decided on Butler's status with the SGA. As of press time, the Court has not been presented with anything in writing asking for such a ruling.