Impeachment petition filed

Student Union Vice Chair Rowan Armor filed a petition for a writ Saturday, calling for the impeachment of Union President Carl Woog and Executive Vice President Remie Ferreira.

The petition calls for their impeachments based on deceit, misappropriation of funds and failure to produce a set of bylaws in a reasonable amount of time.

According to Tribune Jacob Cote, a writ of mandamus is a legally binding order that directs any branch or representative of the Union to take certain steps to rectify a past constitutional indiscretion, and the petition must specifically call for an impeachment hearing for a hearing to take place.

The Tribunal, the judiciary branch of the Union, must determine whether or not to hear the petition, and the writ takes effect if the petition is heard.

Cote would not comment on the petition’s content or whether Woog or Ferreira had committed an impeachable offense.

Woog said the Executive Board would not present bylaws during Tuesday’s Senate meeting and he feels the Union must reform and reorganize itself to avoid further problems.

‘It can’t look like it does now it’s just not working out,’ he said. ‘I think that our student group is set for self-destruction under the current system.’

Woog said he has considered reworking the entire organization including potentially removing the Senate and Tribunal and he ‘wouldn’t rule anything out.’

‘I bet the student government, the Student Union, next year will look absolutely nothing like it does now,’ Woog said.

While Woog said the Senate is not pointless, it is not serving a purpose at this time.

‘They have the potential to serve a very significant purpose,’ he said.

Woog also said he is considering bypassing the new constitution that administrators recently approved nearly five months after the Senate fought to have the document considered. Woog said numerous compromises made to pass the document left him unsatisfied.

‘In the end, we had a document that no one was really happy with,’ he said.

ARMOR GOES PUBLIC

Armor sent two letters to the editor of The Daily Free Press on Friday, but retracted the first letter after other E-Board members pressured him, he said. The first letter made direct personal attacks toward Woog that included calling him an ‘absolute tool’ and alleging campaign fraud occurred last year.

‘The first one was sent impulsively, and after reconsidering I decided that a more objective, less personal letter would be more appropriate,’ he said. ‘A number of people expressed concern at the heated nature of the first letter.’

Armor said he changed the tone of the second letter, but did not change the content despite requests from E-Board members to review his facts.

‘I asked him to recant the letter, not because of his tone, but rather because he had a few facts misrepresented in that letter that I felt he should have revised,’ VP of Finance Joe Rollin said.

After Woog proposed to have the E-Board run without bylaws at Friday’s meeting, Armor announced his plans to write the letter.

Armor said he feels Woog should not have allowed summer funding activities without the approval of the E-Board, and Ferreira should not have signed Rollin’s name on a requisition form for a parking pass.

‘The first charge of misappropriation is why I’m asking for Carl [Woog] to be impeached,’ he said. ‘The second charge of deceit is why I’m asking for Remie [Ferreira] to be impeached.’

Armor said he felt Ferreira and Woog were both at fault for delaying the presentation of bylaws.

‘They’ve had more than enough time to come up with bylaws that would be appropriate,’ he said.

Ferreira said he felt the petition would slow down the work of the Student Union.

‘I’m also disappointed because I think a writ for removal from office to impeach someone should be filed against someone who is trying to hurt the institution someone who is trying to impede the mission of an organization,’ he said. ‘And this whole summer, I have been committed to improving BU as a whole and the student government.’

Armor said he filed the petition because he felt the Union will not accomplish anything under Ferreira and Woog’s leadership.

‘Carl decided he wasn’t going to have bylaws and I feel that’s just one more way of having no restrictions on the E-Board and I really feel that Carl and Remie have got to leave those positions of power,’ Armor said. ‘I really don’t feel that the Union can get anything done other that self-masturbatory [expletive deleted] as long as Remie and Carl are EVP and President.’

Ferreira said he was not surprised about the petition being filed.

‘I hope that the Senate doesn’t impeach me I think that the Tribunal will probably find me guilty,’ he said.

Ferreira said he would not resign if an investigative committee forms against him, but would resign if the Dean of Students investigation, led by Assistant Dean Allen Ward, calls for his resignation.

Woog also said he would not resign if an investigative committee forms against him because he felt the Union’s actions over the summer were justified.

‘I’ve spent a lot of time on behalf of the students building positive relationships with people on this campus students, staff and I want to put that to good use,’ he said.

Rollin said Armor’s accusations of misappropriation of funds was inaccurate because of funding procedures in place over the summer that required four of the six E-Board members in Boston to approve all allocations.

‘The policy on the summer expenditures was that money spent over the summer would not be in excess of the surplus,’ he said.

ADDITIONAL ALLEGATIONS

Senate Chair Joel Fajardo said this was not the first allegation about improper funding procedures. Fajardo said he specifically remembered similar allegations against Ferreira last year concerning a document signed by Ferreira instead of the VP of Finance at the time, Michael Bodek.

‘I do not know if Remie signed Bo’s [Bodek’s] name on any documents,’ he said. ‘However, I am aware that he used an improper funding procedure last year as well.’

Ferreira denied ever signing his own name in place of the VP of finance last year.

‘As far as I know, Bo signed off on everything,’ he said. ‘I don’t ever remember signing off on anything.’

Rollin said forgery never took place in previous years, but many E-Board members signed their name in place of the VP of finance’s name to push funding requests through the Student Activities Office.

‘That’s happened for years,’ he said. ‘It was a problem for my accounting it was a problem for Bo’s accounting.’

Rollin was VP of Finance until November last year when Vanessa Tebescheff the EVP at the time resigned for personal reasons. Rollin became EVP and Bodek replaced him as VP of finance.

Bodek, who graduated in 2003, said he was unaware of the situation while Rollin was VP of Finance last year, but knew the situation occurred numerous times while he was VP of Finance.

‘Before I became VP of Finance last year, people were under the impression that it really didn’t matter whose signature was used,’ Bodek said.

Bodek said he brought the issue up during an E-Board meeting and explained he did not agree with the procedure.

Fajardo said he was not surprised the issue came up again.

‘My guess would be that this started happening again over the summer when the rules seemed to be more relaxed, and it has probably continued from there without any wrong intentions,’ he said.

Bodek also said he believed Ferreira did not intentionally do anything wrong and merely wanted to expedite the process.

‘It’s not an issue of people changing it’s just an issue of someone just doing something,’ he said.

Rollin said he felt the parking pass controversy surrounded a one-time incident that had nothing to do with those of previous years.

‘That was an internal problem and it was dealt with and it was handled between ourselves this is a completely circumstantial situation,’ he said ‘This is not habitual. It was a problem that happened a year ago and we fixed it.’