Posted on 12/10/2003 8:44:43 PM PST by StopGlobalWhining
Last night, Undergraduate Student Government (USG) President Ian Rosenberger recommended the formation of a committee to investigate whether senators who attended College Republicans chair Brian Battaglia's controversial Halloween party should be impeached.
Almost 70 students attended last night's USG Senate meeting to voice their concerns to student leaders, most condemning inaction by USG members who were at Battaglia's party.
Rosenberger told the Senate and the gallery he wanted a temporary committee to make sure he and senators were well-informed about the situation surrounding each USG member's involvement in the issue before disciplining them.
If the proposed committee calls for the impeachment of three senators who attended the party, Andy Banducci, Vicky Cangelosi and Matt Ritsko, they would be unable to perform their duties until impeachment proceedings concluded.
If removed from office, the three would be banned from running for future Senate seats.
Rosenberger told the Senate that although the senators in question were not dressed in offensive costumes, they had a responsibility to speak out against actions that didn't represent their constituencies.
Although Rosenberger cannot determine senators' removal from office, he can request the resignations of Frank Camarota, executive govermental relations director, and Julia Graham, a Supreme Court clerk, who were at the party. However, he said he currently has no plans to do so.
Rosenberger said four of the five USG members implicated in the controversy had issued statements of regret for their involvement in the issue. Graham had not yet done so.
USG Vice President Takkeem Morgan, who relinquished his seat as the Senate chair to avoid a conflict of interest -- a white man in blackface was meant to portray him in one of the offensive costumes -- said while the College Republicans have First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, they should not hide behind them.
So they might be impeached for alleged thought crimes that never occurred? If they go after college students for failure to think, it would wipe out whole campuses.
Sounds to me that you are a victim of "white guilt". Am I wrong? What is the bigoted behavior you refer to? Most of us very conservative white northeners here at Penn State have never owned slaves, so we don't carry around the personal guilt that seems to burden your conscience.
If you have followed the postings in this week long thread, you will see that there was no bigoted behavior by the College Republicans, but they did single out one black student for deserved ridicule.
This individual, the vice president of the Undergraduate Student Government, had been convicted last month, not by a Kangaroo Court, but by a Magistrate of the state government for stealing a bicycle downtown and fined $300.
The one student who showed up at the Halloween party in blackface with a bicycle chain around his neck was making fun of the hypocrisy of that particular individual, and in my personal opinion, Takkeem Morgan deserved it.
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