After an extensive hearing, the ASUI Senate voted against Sen. Danny Bugingo’s impeachment Wednesday, finding that his contributions to the senate outweighed the nature of his rule violation.
Bugingo, who also writes for The Argonaut, was found to be in violation of the ASUI Rules and Regulations due to his failure to report to one of his three living groups, and later lying about it. Bugingo had not visited the group for about two months, said Sen. Zachary Spence.
Director of Student Involvement Shawn O’Neal said each senator is assigned at least three living groups on campus, like a residence hall or a Greek house, to give a report on university occurrences every week.
ASUI Pro-Tempore Mattie Cupps said this type of violation is immediate grounds for impeachment.
As chair of the Rules and Regulations Committee, Spence was tasked with presenting the evidence to the senate. Spence said he and Cupps reached out to the living group in question, which let them know they hadn’t received a senator report until Sen. George Wood took over near the end of March.
When Bugingo was offered the chance to rebut, he said impeaching him was a reasonable conclusion, and apologized for not doing his job.
“Everything (Spence) said was true. If you want to impeach me, the facts are there,” Bugingo said. “Basically, this was me being lazy, me not caring … and for that, I’m really sorry.”
Bugingo said he was unaware of the consequences of his actions, and he would like to work on increased accountability for the senate.
During the general discussion, Sen. Haleigh Sims-Douglas said she would not vote to impeach because she believed putting Bugingo through the trial was enough of a reprimand.
“The fact that he is still sitting next to me right now and that the second that impeachment was brought up, he didn’t drop his seat and run away for fear of whatever, I think says a lot about him,” Sims-Douglas said.
Sims-Douglas said she thought just holding an impeachment hearing set enough of a precedent for how serious future violations would be handled by the senate and it was an “awesome step” in the process of improving accountability.
Cupps agreed with Sims-Douglas, and said there were too many reasons to keep Bugingo on the senate, especially with so few weeks left in the semester.
“I believe that Sen. Bugingo is an asset to ASUI Senate and has brought a lot to us,” Cupps said. “There are so many other reasons why he is a good senator. I just don’t believe the impeachment is the right situation to go with.”
Cupps said she admired Bugingo’s “strength” throughout the process and also thought he had been through enough.
Spence said although he believed Bugingo to be a valuable senator, he thought that impeachment was the right choice.
“We’re here to establish a precedent, and that precedent is whether or not when someone has clearly violated our rules and regulations in a repeated manner we are going to hold them accountable,” Spence said. “Are we going to decide to bring someone to the impeachment table and then not impeach them … or are we actually going to follow through and show students that we mean what we say?”
Spence said the senate’s credibility would be jeopardized otherwise.
In his closing remarks, Bugingo thanked the senate for their due diligence, especially Spence.
“I would have resigned and I wouldn’t have felt comfortable airing out my dirty laundry, I guess, if I wasn’t confident that I would not get a fair process,” Bugingo said.
ASUI Vice President Kelsy Briggs conducted a blind vote that was in favor of Bugingo remaining on the senate.
“I’m glad to live another two weeks,” Bugingo said.
Olivia Heersink can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @heersinkolivia