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Brandeis University's Community Newspaper — Waltham, Mass.

Note to Union: Get a clue!

Published: February 12, 2010
Section: Editorials


Last week this editorial board could find no better way to express our dissatisfaction with the Student Union than to depict it in an editorial cartoon as a chicken with its head cut off.

But if the Union was bumbling and disoriented last week, this week it is completely without a clue.

Two weeks ago the Union Judiciary ruled to remove then-Secretary Diana Aronin ’11 from office following her impeachment by the Senate for failing to call a referendum vote for the Senate proposal to create a midyear senator position.

This week, Aronin’s supporters thumbed their collective nose at the governmental body and ran a write-in campaign for that very same office in the special election meant to elect her replacement.

Her candidacy, while ironic, is completely legal under the Union Constitution.

This editorial board has opined on multiple occasions the Union Constitution’s dire need of upheaval.

Aronin’s victory only underscores that need through its well-deserved mockery of the Union.

Regardless of one’s opinion on Aronin’s removal, it is laughable that the Union has no vehicle through which to prevent this electoral form of jury nullification.

While The Hoot does not in any way wish to impede upon the right to vote, we do believe that if the Union is going to take the trouble, and suffer the publicity, to impeach and remove a student from office, that decision should have some staying power.

We do not wish to bar Aronin or any other removed official from running for office; however, the idea that an official can be returned to the very office from which they were removed just one week after that removal is dumbfounding.

Any credible government necessitates consistency, and, thankfully, the Union has the opportunity to create that consistency this year through the Constitutional Review process.

As a governmental body whose credibility and necessity has often been called into question, the Constitutional Review Committee should look into how to better deal with cases of impeachment and removal of Union officers.

We hope this fiasco makes that fact apparent to the Constitutional Review Committee and that they find a way to screw the head back onto the shoulders of the Union.