By Akeem Mellis

For several semesters, the Student Government Association Senate has grappled with the issue of reinstatements. It’s a predicament which weighs down individual senators based on intricate criteria, forcing senators to walk on eggshells in order not to attain the two absences required to be placed up on reinstatement. On Tuesday night, one senator stepped on an eggshell, and the senate unreasonably and unjustly punished him for it.

Ian Daly, whose technical sins included forgetting to let the Ethics and Conduct chair know about an excused absence, as well as failing to complete his office hours for the previous two weeks, resulted in a reinstatement vote. Yet instead of following precedent from last semester with several senators, the senate kicked Daly out and in the process undermined the viability of the body.

Now, it is expected that all senators fulfill their duties, as they are representatives of the student body. It is also expected, however, that when matters like this appear before the senate, that senators use their best judgment. The semi-grey area of reinstatements, however, has revealed that some in the senate have patently refused to think for themselves or use common sense.

Current precedent dictated that once a senator is up for reinstatement, he or she is usually granted a second chance as long as they prove that they won’t make the same mistakes that led to their reinstatement. Unfortunately, the senate has been inconsistent with such criteria. Three glaring examples stand out: graduate and former Senator Dave Lavelle, Senator Sean Hutchinson and former Senator and now Inter-Fraternity Council Representative Lamar Cheston.

In Lavelle’s case, as more senior members of the senate will recall, Lavelle failed to appear at committee meetings. Hutchinson and Cheston, on the other hand, did not show up at full senate meetings, and never provided explanations for their absences. Yet, all three were reinstated by vote margins far surpassing the two-thirds requirement needed to remain in the senate. The vote on Daly ended with 17 in favor (my vote included), 10 against and two abstaining, falling short of reinstatement.

This blatant and inconsistent application of the rules revealed one thing: The reinstatement system is flawed.

It is faulty enough that one set of rules can be applied for one senator, yet a different set of rules is applied for another. Given the fact that Daly has done an exceptional job as a senator (he was a candidate for vice president last semester, mind you) a small blemish at the beginning of this semester should not have precluded him from resuming his senatorial duties; after all, second chances were given to Lavelle, Hutchinson and Cheston.

With Daly’s unfair dismissal from the senate, it is clear that the senate must apply the rules equally. In order for this to happen though, the rules must be fixed to ensure that what happened Tuesday night will not be repeated.

Akeem Mellis is a sophomore print journalism/political science student and Academic Affairs chairman of the Student Government Association.