The judicial board has moved forward in impeachment proceedings against Student Chief Justice Lock Whiteside, according to Morgan Early, a senior in mathematics and communication and member of the judicial board.
"The board has had a majority vote to go forward with the impeachment," she said.
Five members of the board sent a letter to Whiteside, a graduate student in political science, before he was elected for a third term as student chief justice, stating that if he did not withdraw from his position, they would pursue his impeachment.
Later that week, Whiteside spoke at the Student Senate meeting and said he would not resign, and Whiteside sent an e-mail back to the judicial board yesterday repeating that sentiment, Early said.
Because Whiteside told them he would not resign, Early said they will be following through with impeachment proceedings, which "will most likely become an ordeal for next year as well because of the Senate's timeline."
At this point, Early said the judicial board is working with the Office of Student Conduct to recover old e-mails and files that would give "specific statistics" about how many cases Whiteside has sat in on, and how many hearings he served in as an assistant.
With a best-case timeline, the earliest all impeachment proceedings could be finished is in September, according to Student Senate President Greg Doucette, a senior in computer science.
The judicial board will need to get the support of at least one student senator, and four signatures of judicial board members to write an initial bill in the Senate, he said.
When the bill moves to the Senate, he said the Senate has an option of not considering it, as they did when there was a bill to censure Student Body President Bobby Mills earlier this year.
Then, he said it will be deferred to the Government Operations Committee, and if two-thirds of the Senate voted in favor of the bill, the committee can conduct an investigation on the chief justice.
The committee will have two weeks to schedule a hearing with the chief justice, and during the investigation period the committee may change the bill as they see fit, he said.
In a second reading of the bill, Doucette said it would take a three-fourths vote from the Senate to remove a chief justice from office.
While the process will be long, Whiteside said he is prepared to take on impeachment proceedings.
He said he has support within the judicial board from his executive assistant, and "the vote was only with 17 members," with other members not present.
"But they did vote to ask me to resign, and I said no," he said.
Because a lot of senators "truly despise the Office of Student Conduct," Doucette said it may be difficult for an impeachment bill to gain support.
Doucette will be acting impartially through this process, he said, because he is Whiteside's friend, and among other reasons, must make sure the proceedings run smoothly before a set of new Senators.
"My responsibility is to make sure the process is run fairly," he said. "I don't want to engage in a political debate."
