I am writing to The Daily Free Press because a number of things I have seen and heard in my closeness to the Student Union have inspired me to take action to change things. Primarily, I feel that the resignations of Carl Woog and Remie Ferreira are long overdue, and if they don’t feel moved on their own to do the right thing and gracefully resign, we should forcibly unclench their hands from their precious positions of power and impeach them.
Quite simply, both Carl and Remie have failed to follow internal Student Union procedures a number of times and defend their actions by saying that they are elected officials and therefore ‘represent the will of the student body.’ Egotism aside, over the summer the Union was operating under bylaws that did not permit Carl or Remie to spend more than $250 without the vote of the Executive Board, which includes Carl’s whole cabinet, the Senate Chairman, and the head of each of the four special bodies. The Senate Chairman and heads of special bodies never received a chance to vote on several key expenditures in excess of $250, such as a pair of doors for the Student Union office, a parking pass for Remie Ferreira, and a new Student Union logo that alone weighs in at over $1,000 – something you could have paid a COM student $15 and a bag of Fritos to make. The heads of special bodies have said that they wouldn’t have voted to make these expenditures. Who’s representing the will of the student body?
Regardless of the procedures Carl and Remie didn’t follow to make the expenditures that they made over the summer, the money spent is still unjustified. $333 dollars for a parking pass. Remie’s reason for getting the parking pass is because his family said that the two parking tickets he got at the beginning of the summer were unacceptable, and that he’d have to come home for the summer if he got another. He even said that if he’d had the $333 dollars at the time, he wouldn’t have made the funding request for it and written Joe Rollin’s name on the document (an act that is clearly not forgery). But what is Remie’s reason for the public? Student Union business. I do not, however, see transporting a blender from to the George Sherman Union as a valid Union expense. Tuck it in the crook of your arm.
The issue of forgery is pretty clear to me. It’s not technically forgery because Remie printed Joe Rollin’s name instead of signing it, and it wasn’t a check per se, so much as a document to request a transfer of funds. That still doesn’t make it right, and it still doesn’t mean you should be fooled into thinking that Remie Ferreira didn’t actually sign the name of last year’s VP of Financial Affairs on documents.
The final straw for me was today when Carl Woog declared in our business meeting that the e-board wasn’t going to have bylaws. His rationale: we fight over bylaws too much. I explicitly remember the e-board meeting two weeks prior where he agreed to a number of concessions in the bylaws that would limit some of his powers of expenditure. And now, today, he proposes a set of bylaws consisting of a blank sheet of paper a document that gives him no restriction and sets it all up by using a Matrix ‘free your mind’ metaphor. Free my mind? No bylaws for the executive board spells big trouble when it comes to how it’s going to operate in the future. Despite the e-board’s fervent opposition to a lack of bylaws (even trying to appease Carl by asking for just one bylaw, that all decisions of the e-board be passed by majority vote) he still continues with this horrendous plan.
File a writ, somebody. I’m going to. I’m going to file a petition for a writ of mandate against both Remie and Carl, and I hope that other undergraduates at this school see what is going on and take me up on my offer to do the same. All it takes is one decision from Tribunal to give Senate the option to impeach. If you don’t agree with your leaders, don’t be led by them. And especially, don’t be fooled by them.
Rowan Armor UNI ’06
The writer is Senate Vice Chair of the Boston University Student Union.
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