ASG Unanimously Passes Impeachment Process
ASG voted unanimously to pass a bill to revise the current impeachment process for ASG members.
There have been complaints in the past that the current impeachment process is too vague, said Sen. Amy West, author of the bill. If a student had wanted to propose an impeachment, the current process is so confusing that the student would have no idea as to how to begin, West said.
The old process required seven stages, which was so difficult that no one ever made it that far, said Senator Grant Addison, co-author of the bill.
The new process is modeled after the American government’s national impeachment system and will make the ASG impeachment process more coherent, West said.
The new process is also based off of the impeachment system at LSU, West said.
ASG members learned about the impeachment processes at other colleges when they attended the SEC Exchange Conference earlier this year. This is an annual conference where student governments across the Southeastern Conference exchange ideas and programs in use at other universities.
“This is not something we are doing because there was someone in office who we wanted to impeach,” West said.
The goal of the bill is to model the process after a more real-life experience, West said. The idea was to modify the system so that it could be applied to a real-life situation, rather than just using a process that would only work for this particular group on campus, West said.
Under this new process, a bill of impeachment must be proposed by one author and at least four additional sponsors. In addition, a simple majority must be acquired by both the Senate and the Graduate Congress for the impeachment to be “classified as New Business at a special Joint Legislative Session,” according to the bill.
The bill also mandates that an impeachment will not be heard by a committee. Instead, ASG Senate and Graduate Congress members will hear the case and vote, with a two-thirds majority required in order to convict.
Other ASG proposals include a bill to modify the current warning system for parking violations and a bill to lower the fine for parking in a space not authorized by a permit.
A new warning system was proposed in light of the fact that “students often pay hefty fees for first-time violations without knowledge of the regulation,” according to the bill.
This bill asks that the transit and parking department allow a more consistent warning system for first-time parking violations.
The second bill proposes to lower the unauthorized permit parking fee from $50 to $30. The bill states that since “the penalty for ‘parking on U of A property without permit’ is a $40 penalty,” it is not fair that a driver without a permit should pay a lower fee than a driver with a permit.
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Anonymous
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Alex
