On Monday, Oct. 10, Marvin Lopez ’23 resigned from his role as Vice President of Student Assembly, citing that “misguided and malicious responses to the errors of several assembly members, including [himself], have impacted [his] ability to perform the business of the Assembly to the best of [his] abilities.” His resignation came shortly after he was informed that Student Assembly President Emily Jiang ’25, Class Representative Mason Schroeder ’23 and Secretary Lena Kink ’25 had filed articles of impeachment against him. Alongside Lopez, Parliamentarian Allison Sheehan ’23 and Representatives Chris Akuleme ’23, Josh Zeledon ’23 and Evelyn Molina ’23 resigned. This comes nearly a year after 10 members of the Assembly, including five members of the Class of ’23, resigned. After the most recent resignations, Lopez filed articles of impeachment against President Jiang. Lopez shared the impeachment articles with

The Spectator

, which are provided with annotations below. The following is

The Spectator

’s investigation into the impeachment attempts and the factors leading up to them.

Following Lopez’s resignation, an email from Student Assembly, written by President Emily Jiang ’25, but approved by all of Student Assembly, was sent to the student body. The email states that the resignation letter written by Lopez included “multiple falsehoods and unproven, accusatory statements against [Jiang] and other members.” A follow-up email was sent by senior Class President, and former SA treasurer, Felix Tager ’23, to the senior class.

Decision to impeach

On Sunday, Oct. 9, Lopez received an email which included a petition for his impeachment, submitted by Class Representative Mason Schroeder ’23, Secretary Lena Kink ’25, and Student Assembly President Emily Jiang ’25. The document includes supporting statements from three other members of the Assembly, who wish to remain unnamed.

The petition for impeachment against the Vice President highlighted a number of reasons for why he should be impeached including:

“Continuously fail[ing] to successfully and efficiently complete various tasks assigned to him, such as efficiently chairing meetings, not completing tasks he has been assigned, or election proceedings.”

“Failure to adequately communicate with “Student Assembly President Emily Jiang ’25 as well as other members or prospective members of the assembly.”

“The allegation that Lopez broke quarantine protocols, lowering the credibility of Student Assembly and decreasing faith in Marvin’s ability to serve as Vice President and a role model for other students.”

“Defamation of members of the Assembly.”

“An overall lack of accountability…which continuously hurts the Assembly…result[ing] in students not wanting to join or stay on Assembly, hurting the Assembly’s longevity.”

Many of the complainants in the impeachment petition cite mismanagement of meetings and failure to chair meetings effectively. Per the Student Assembly Constitution, the President — not the Vice President — holds full responsibility for chairing meetings. When asked about the constitutional obligation to chair meetings, SA President Jiang described how the Constitution is written in such a way that “a lot of stuff falls on the president in way that’s very unfair to both the President and the Vice President…the VP doesn’t really have to do anything, or doesn’t get to do anything, while the president has to do everything…so we [Lopez and Jiang] decided we would split a lot of our responsibilities even when it was not constitutionally stated.”

Jiang continued, “A lot of the president’s constitutional duties, which — there’s a lot of them — we decided to split [between Lopez and Jiang]…or ignore, which sounds bad, but there’s a lot of stuff in the Constitution that just seems unreasonable.” Other aspects of the Constitution, such as the holding of weekly two-hour office hour sessions, have not been upheld. Notably, the SA Constitution states that the President is responsible for “informing the participants about a point of order or specific parliamentary practice when requested,” indicating that the President should be well-versed in these issues (Article II Section 4.G.)

Complainants also accused Lopez of failing to provide adequate training of new members; Schroeder wrote in the petition that “we barely know voting procedures and completely lack knowledge of how to create bylaws, make amendments and create and pass resolutions.” Student Assembly Constitution states that the training of all SA members are to be held in the first two weeks of every semester, and should be prepared by the entire Student Assembly Executive Board. President Jiang commented on the two-hour informational session, saying that “We did agree two hours was excessive. The entire assembly agreed on this because we tried to do two hours last year. And like, what am I gonna talk about?”

Others assert that Lopez mismanaged elections, with one class representative stating that “I reached out to [Lopez] during first-year elections via email asking for clarification on a certain portion. He never responded back and it made me unsure of how the Student Assembly functions.” Two other students cited in the Petition also criticized Lopez’s management of the elections. There is an official process outlined in the Constitution for students to submit complaints about elections to the Vice President. Lopez asserted that no complaints were filed during this period and President Jiang noted that they were similarly unaware of any complaints being formally submitted.

Jiang was not initially involved with the impeachment petition against Lopez, noting that Schroeder, the primary author of the document, “reached out to me for comment” at which point Jiang’s testimony became “half the document” leading them to decide to be a co-writer alongside Schroeder and Klink ’25 (Klink denied to comment for this story). Jiang emphasized their desire not to participate in the impeachment process, noting that they “don’t want to be the driving force for quote-unquote drama.” They initially agreed to write a comment for the petition, “and then I kept writing, and I kept writing, and I kept writing and I was like oh damn, actually a lot more has happened that I was trying to ignore.” They noted that the impeachment attempt and subsequent attention given to Student Assembly drama is “the exact opposite of what I wanted to happen.”

For Jiang, the constitutionality of Lopez’s behavior was not the primary concern. “Most of my complaints and issues are not constitutionally related. And I know people are going [to say], ‘Oh, well you can’t impeach someone for something that’s not related to the Constitution.’ But… I don’t think the Constitution serves the best interests of Student Assembly or the students.”

Tager noted that precedent, not the Constitution, matters more for the workings of the Assembly, despite the overall impeachment attempt citing specific matters in the Constitution. He noted that in the Constitution “it says the President helps plan the agenda…but in the past administration, it was the Vice President doing that…it was the Vice President chairing the meetings,” he argued, referring to former Vice President Eric Santomauro-Stenzel.

Tager, Schroeder and Jiang all asserted that Lopez had been unexcused from more than three meetings, constituting grounds for dismissal from the Assembly. Tager noted that adherence to committee attendance policies was “for some reason, just not being followed.” Tager and Jiang both stated that a number of members were likely in violation of the Assembly’s attendance policy, and thus could be dismissed. Jiang and Tager did not express a desire to dismiss any other members of the Assembly for absences and Schroeder was unwilling to state whether he believed all members with more than three unexcused absences should be dismissed. The Student Assembly Constitution notes that it is the obligation of the SA Secretary to inform members when they have missed meetings and document total absences. Lopez received no emails from the Secretary informing him of unexcused absences.

Carepackages

Nearly three pages of the impeachment petition against Lopez consist of Jiang’s criticisms of Lopez’s work during the care package process of Spring 2022, an indicator of how severely this conflict damaged the relationship between Jiang and Lopez.

Tager argued that the main point of conflict between Jiang and Lopez surrounded “care packages” distributed by the Assembly during finals season last spring. According to Tager, Student Assembly “had balanced the books really well last year, to the point that we had…$50,000 leftover.” The surplus budget led to the decision to purchase care packages, but also resulted in accusations that Lopez was taking credit for other people’s ideas. Tager argued that “Marvin actively, consistently, would take credit for the care package idea…he would actively try to gaslight us into believing that he created [it].” Jiang also mentions that Lopez took credit for the care package idea in the impeachment petition against him.

Jiang agreed with Tager’s assessment of the “care package controversy,” noting the idea had originally been Tager’s and that the two of them chose to “loop him in” on it. Tager’s frustration with Lopez grew during this period as, according to Tager, Lopez continually failed to complete tasks. “We needed to order things ahead of time, and Marvin kept claiming that he was going to do that, and then didn’t.” Tager, Jiang and Lopez all cited conflict over the ordering of juice pouches for the boxes. Lopez, noting his unwillingness to help with ordering juice, stated “we had less than a week left to get this together, I’m not going to go out and buy thousands of Capri-Sun pouches a week before when I had proposed this a month before.”

Notably, the articles of impeachment filed against Lopez repeatedly assert that he failed to do jobs assigned to him, though Tager noted problems with follow through are an issue plaguing the entire Assembly. “I don’t think it’s just Marvin,” stated Tager. “I think this is a general thing that a lot of people [do] in the Assembly…[they] take on a million tasks but then don’t follow through with any of them.”

Further conflict surrounded the contents of the care package, with Lopez arguing they should primarily consist of food while Jiang and Tager voiced concerns about food allergies. “I was very adamantly against [food in care packages] because we do not know students’ dietary needs. The last thing we need to do is give someone with celiac disease a bunch of crackers” remarked Tager. Lopez felt that the concerns about allergies were overblown, noting that Student Assembly was worried about “someone having a reaction or eating something they weren’t supposed to eat, [which] I thought was very silly…we’re adults, I’m not just going to eat anything given to me like I’m a baby.”

Where Are We Now…

On Oct. 11, Lopez sent a petition to impeach Jiang to the Student Assembly executive committee citing instances of constitutional breach and mismanagement under their administration. This petition did not gain traction further than being read by the executive committee.

In his email to the senior class, Tager wrote that “While the drama may be the focus of what people think of when they hear about the Assembly, it is not the whole story. This is a bump in the road but I promise, it is not the end of it.” Moving forward, Student Assembly is holding elections on Nov.16th for the 2023–2024 President/Vice President — as well as special elections to fill the vacancy of three Class Reps for 2023, two Class Reps for Class of 2024, and one Class Rep for Class of 2026. All students are eligible to vote.