A special session of the student body senate was called to decide on the removal of Sen. Patrick Cherubin who was impeached Feb. 7, said Sierra Scott, UCF student senate president.
Senators will hear both sides of the case and a two-thirds majority vote will be required in order for the removal to go through, according to UCF statutes. There were no senate impeachments in the last, “at least five years,” Scott said.
Cherubin had been charged with harassment, malfeasance and misfeasance, according to the affidavit filed. But the removal case will go forward with only the misfeasance charge following recommendations by UCF Attorney General Robert Hill, Scott said.
Following an advisory opinion request by Cherubin, Hill recommended that only the misfeasance charge go forward because the other charges are not punishable by impeachment, according to statutes. According to title VII of the impeachment and removal clauses, neither harassment nor malfeasance are considered as a basis for impeachment unless there was a sanction against the student from the Office of Student Conduct, which did not occur in this case.
Cherubin said he believes senators were mislead during the impeachment hearing, because the fact that some of the charges are not impeachable offences was not made clear to them.
“Harassment is beyond the jurisdiction of what the senate can investigate,” Cherubin said.
Senate legislative Chair Joseph Davis told senators during the hearing that if members believed that only one of the charges in the affidavit needs to be investigated and is an impeachable offence, they should go forward with the impeachment.
Hill recommended that the other charges be filed with the Office of Student Conduct, but it’s not clear that they were filed. Hill declined to comment citing the ongoing case.
The removal hearing will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Student Union’s Key West Ballroom.
Clarification: A previous article did not make it clear that Hill’s decisions/recommendations are just opinions that the senate is not required to follow. Also malfeasance and harassment are not impeachable directly, but can be if a sanction is filed against the student from the Office of Student Conduct.
