After a suspension of Student Council procedures, two failed motions to delay voting and 90 minutes of contentious debate, Council unanimously passed a resolution last night condemning the reported Sept. 8 vandalism of fourth-year College student Amey Adkins' car.
"This resolution is an important statement against hatred and bigotry," Council President Noah Sullivan said. "This is not going to be an empty resolution."
Council suspended its rule to automatically table all resolutions for one week after they are introduced so that the resolution could be voted upon last night.
Consensus on the resolution, however, did not come easily. Some members of the representative body expressed concern about the appropriateness and timeliness of the resolution.
Council Chief of Staff Daisy Lundy questioned whether there should be a resolution at all.
"The legislation has good intentions but is a little late and a condemnation statement at this time will not help," she said.
She also said more information should be reviewed before a condemnation.
"It is very important not to be silent on this," College Rep. Dan Hartzman said. "We need to condemn these issues. We risk alienating minorities at the University if we don't."
While most members of the representative body supported passing the resolution, some felt that more information needed to be gathered before Council could vote on it.
Two motions to delay voting procedures for a week were introduced, but both narrowly failed.
"We need to articulate what was done wrong and fix it," said Sullivan, who strongly supported tabling the legislation. "We need to know what actions were taken to make a wiser decision."
Sullivan said tabling the resolution would allow Council to develop what he called a "more comprehensive, proactive" approach.
College Rep. Jequeatta Upton disagreed.
"We don't need to delay this resolution for a week," she said. "Tabling this resolution would be detrimental to Student Council's image."
Additionally, after prolonged debate, two amendments were made to the original resolution.
The first amendment highlights that the administration did not inform the Board of Visitors and student body of the incident in a timely fashion.
Lundy said certain administrators "dropped the ball" in this case but have acknowledged where they had erred.
"We need to accept the fact that no one knows how to react to and handle these situations," Lundy said.
Engineering School Rep. Adam Steadman urged caution in faulting the administrators.
"We need to be careful in who we criticize in the resolution," Steadman said.
With the second amendment, Council pledged to work with the deans and the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs to improve the response in the event of similar incidents.
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