Sensible Censure

With the Undergraduate Council’s election-season controversy finally over, the UC took measures last Monday to repair the damage in its wake. A majority of the council voted to officially censure Vice President Kia J. McLeod, marking an appropriate end to a debacle that undermined the legitimacy of both the Election Commission and the UC. We congratulate the body for recognizing that McLeod’s actions “violate[d] ethical standards,” and hope that it takes strides to avoid further election confusion in the future.

The UC’s decision to censure its vice president was bold and unprecedented—but necessary nonetheless. Since it passed major internal reforms in 1995, the UC has never censured one of its members. Thus, we applaud the council’s use of this constitutional provision despite a lack of precedent. It provided the proper forum to show disapproval for McLeod’s actions, which included authorizing an inappropriate email that was sent from the ucpres@fas account. The message’s premature and unproven accusations were distributed in negligence of UC and EC procedure, generating confusion and uproar that harmed the reputation of those named—and the entire council. The UC’s official slap-on-the-wrist was the right course of action to address McLeod’s “abuse [of] the power of her office.”

The decision to make this censure public provides a bookend to the council’s most talked about issue this semester. The verdict against McLeod was a crucial step for the UC, allowing it to move forward with other business and try to rebuild legitimacy. An internal censure would have done little to clarify the UC’s stance in regards to the email, and was therefore an insufficient option. Although questions about the institution’s credibility remain, especially in regards to elections, it was important for the UC to recognize its own failures, mitigating the damage that had already been done.

We hope that the UC will remain proactive in ensuring that a similar situation does not happen in the future. To avoid such debacles, the council should strive for a less divisive election process. Specifically, the UC should take measures to decrease the involvement of EC members in presidential and vice presidential campaigns. While looking to the past and reprimanding those at fault is important, the UC must commit to avoiding this situation in years to come so that representatives can spend their time on business that the student body has elected them to carry out.