Students’ Association (SA) Senate and sophomore Anmol Almast sparred over notions of constitutionality and reasonability before the All-Campus Judicial Council (ACJC) on Friday, Oct. 16, in the first landmark ACJC hearing since 2010.
Spanning over two hours in the packed Gowen Room of Wilson Commons, the historic hearing—Almast v. Student’s Association Senate—centered on the Senate’s decision to fill a vacant seat via a senator selection committee.
That decision, according to the appeal filed by Almast, occurred during a Senate meeting on April 27 last semester and came in the wake of senior Melissa Holloway’s resignation from the Senate. Holloway had been elected as both senator and SA vice president; she resigned from the former position to ascend to the latter. The Senate reaffirmed its decision in a meeting on Sept. 14.
Almast, the overall next-highest vote-getter in the spring elections after Holloway, petitioned ACJC to appeal the Senate’s decision, feeling that it violated the SA Constitution and that she was the next eligible candidate to fill the slot. In its own interpretation, the Senate resolved that only a senior would constitute a candidate eligible to take Holloway’s spot, given that the Bylaws require the election of three senators from each upperclassman year. Only three seniors had campaigned.
At the start of the hearing, the nine ACJC justices looked out at the appellant and respondent benches stationed before them—Almast with her advisor, junior Tristan Ford; Senator David Stark, representing the Senate, with his advisor, Senator Jordan Smith. Advisors were barred from participating directly in the hearing, though each whispered into their party’s ear throughout.
ACJC Chief Justice Wesline Manuelpillai laid out the format of the hearing—opening statements, a fact-finding session, closing statements and adjournment—and, among other introductions, established that all participants agreed to a code of mutual honesty.
In her opening statement, Almast guided the justices through her narrative leading up to the hearing, moving from her narrow loss in the spring elections to seeing that Holloway had won both her Senate and vice presidency races.
“Since I was the next eligible candidate,” she said, “it made sense that I would be offered the seat.”
Almast detailed her trials navigating a bureaucratic gauntlet: transitioning SA leadership, vague statements about how the vacant seat would be dealt with and inaccessible documents, such as the then-new SA Bylaws. She claimed that SA officials gave her conflicting accounts of which bylaws would be used to address the vacancy, and, confused, she attended the first post-election Senate meeting, where she saw Holloway resign.
In reading both the new and old bylaws, she determined that she, as the next-highest vote-getter, would be tapped for the seat. But, not so. “I then received knowledge that a selection committee was how Senate wanted to proceed,” she said. “I was very appalled at this decision because I was under the impression that I would definitely have been given the seat, if Senate was operating by the Bylaws.”
Stark began his statement with an apology to Almast: “I understand that this whole ordeal has been hurtful, or you felt wronged by this,” he said. “The student government should never make a student feel that way, and that certainly wasn’t our intention.”
He then transitioned into his argument, explaining that no Senate in the past nine years has had less than three seniors and that a lack of seniors would be detrimental to the growth of other, younger senators. Stark said that the Senate believes its decision was constitutional, that no eligible candidate existed and that the creation of a selection committee was reasonable in order to increase the number of senior senators, who would add “significant value to the Senate,” mostly from their experience as students now in their fourth year of college. He cited the historically low number of seniors in the Senate this year as a crucial motive for selecting a senior, and he delved into the impetus for the bylaw changes, which was not to remove the three-senator requirement.
Stark asserted that the Bylaws show Almast is not eligible and cited several precedents for the Senate’s opinion.
Following opening statements, the hearing moved into a fact-finding period, in which justices posed questions to both benches to determine the facts underlying the case. Several of the initial inquiries revealed the vote count of the Senate’s original decision—12 out of 14 voting senators were in favor of the selection committee—as well as the fact that applications for the vacant seat have been submitted by some seniors.
Associate Justice Patrick Mcconeghy, referencing a report submitted to ACJC by Stark featuring Senate Elections & Rules Committee Chair Paul Jaquish’s support for the Senate, asked Stark what he thought the difference was between broad and narrow interpretation.
“In my mind,” Stark answered, “I think narrow would imply without context, and broad would imply with context and with recognition of the intent of the writers and the intent of the people who are executing these actions.”
“So, in your opinion,” Mcconeghy asked, “the decision to create a senator selection committee, would that be a broad or narrow decision?”
“I think the decision … would be something that is consistent with many, many years of how things were done, consistent with the intent of the people who wrote these documents,” Stark replied. “There is so much murkiness going on between the Constitution and the Bylaws that, when we’re talking about narrow and broad, I think what we’re talking about is, are we shooting ourselves in the foot or are we not?”
“If we really want to shoot ourselves in the foot with all these documents,” he continued, “we can certainly do that.”
Soon after, Associate Justice Jacob Tyson asked Stark how the Bylaws prove Almast is not an eligible candidate. In response, Stark pointed to the words “in the matter that is described in Article IV” in the section of the Bylaws describing senator succession, which he argued meant that the next-eligible candidate needed to align with Article IV’s requirement that “the three highest vote-getters from the Sophomore, Junior and Senior classes shall become Senators.”
Mcconeghy, turning to Almast, asked for her perspective on everything Stark had said so far. She rebutted Stark’s valuation of a senator’s experience, saying that “the experience of a senator is not a priority in Senate; it’s all about representing the student body as a whole.” She continued by stating that the three-senator requirement in the Bylaws had been fulfilled, as Holloway had technically been elected in the spring.
“The fact is that, for as long as we have records, that’s never how it worked,” Stark said when asked to respond. He went on to describe how scores of situations in the past have carried out succession in the manner that Almast alleged was unconstitutional, a manner focused on class year.
Almast replied that these instances occurred under the old bylaws; the new bylaws, she said, treat senators as representatives of the student body as a whole, elected at-large, apart from the freshmen class.
At that point, Manuelpillai announced that ACJC would be taking a recess and asked everyone who was not a justice to leave for a moment. The people in the gallery flooded out of the room.
A few minutes later, when the recess had ended and the crowd had funneled back inside the Gowen Room, the questioning resumed.
Almast soon brought up the April 20 Senate meeting minutes and pointed to a moment when Jaquish said: “The Bylaws Taskforce changed the elections rules and discussed what would happen if there was not three people running to fulfill the class year requirement. They decided the best way to finalize this would be to appoint the person with next-highest amount of votes in the at-large elections because they got the votes.” Stark had mentioned earlier Jaquish’s support for the selection committee.
After having Almast repeat her interpretations of the Bylaws, McConeghy asked Stark to directly respond to them. Stark said that the election of a candidate based on criteria deemed important by the Senate is not enough, that to satisfy the Bylaws and the intents behind them, a senator matching those criteria must actually serve a term. He then returned to an example he had used earlier to illustrate this point, but when he asked McConeghy if he understood, the justice replied, “No, actually.”
“So, a person was elected,” Stark said, “and they were a senior, and thus that satisfies what the Bylaws mean when they say seniors should be elected to those seats. That would be the same thing as any position in which we appoint someone who has those qualities, [but] those qualities then no longer exist, and we’re expected to be satisfied by that.”
“I think that’s a very, once again, narrow reading of something that’s clearly not what’s intended,” he continued.
“So, looking at the Bylaws very narrowly,” McConeghy replied, “would Anmol’s interpretation be correct or incorrect?” After Stark paused, McConeghy added, “In your opinion.”
“What do you mean by that?” Stark asked. McConeghy repeated his question, with some elaboration. Stark requested counsel with his advisor, which was granted.
“I think [the interpretation] would be narrow in the sense that the only way you’d have that interpretation is if it benefited you,” Stark said after conferring with Smith. However, he qualified, SA precedent dictates that just an election does not satisfy the intent behind the Bylaws. Stark and McConeghy discussed whether the former was defining narrow by lack of historical perspective, an exchange that ended with Stark saying, “We’re not here to be lawyers; we’re here to make a difference for students.”
Responding later to Stark’s claim that the Senate is concerned with having senators with diverse experiences, Almast highlighted her own background as a commuter, an international student and a female and pointed to an apparent discrepancy in past Senate races, where no comparable attempt was made to increase the body’s female representation. It’s rare, she added, that commuters are elected to the Senate. To refute Almast’s gender-based argument, Stark cited the Constitution’s prohibition of gender discrimination.
A question posed to Stark by Associate Justice Rachel Casper about the alternatives considered by the Senate to fill the vacancy revealed that the Senate had also discussed: holding a special fall election, asking the next-overall-highest vote-getter to fill the seat and leaving the seat vacant. Several questions later, ACJC called another recess. The gaggle of spectators filed out of the room again.
Shortly after the hearing resumed, the fact-finding process concluded. Manuelpillai announced it was time for closing statements.
Anmol went first, restating her arguments and repeating her refutations of Stark’s. “I am not only a voice for the sophomore class,” she said, departing from her previous points, “but a voice for Rochester students of all classes, just like how a senior senator would not only be a voice for the senior class, but for all classes.” She concluded with a call for precedent to settle similar claims in the future, railing against the potential of the Senate to, in her view, further subvert the Bylaws and Constitution.
Stark, in his closing statement, reemphasized the SA government’s intent to see three senators elected from each upperclassman year and the value of having more seniors on the Senate. He cited again several precedents featuring the senator selection committee as a viable option for succession and held that the action was constitutional. Toward the end of his remarks, Stark suggested that, under a narrow reading, the entire ACJC hearing may have violated the Bylaws, much to the ire of Manuelpillai.
“[This] would be exactly as fair of a reading as this petitioner has proposed,” he said. “Let us be honest for a moment: We’ve all made mistakes in writing our government documents, and those documents are not perfect. They were written by 18- to 22-year-olds after late nights of arguing, as long as 11 years ago.”
“Yet, I understand the goal of this ACJC in preparing this appeal is not malicious or deceptive,” Stark continued, “but to hold this hearing fairly and professionally, to do the right thing. Likewise, the decision of the Senate … is made with the desire to serve the student body, to do the right thing.”
The closing statements ended. Manuelpillai thanked all the participants and announced that ACJC’s written decision would be made public on its website within two weeks. “We are adjourned,” she said, and banged her gavel.
Trombly is a member of
the class of 2018.
