The ASUO Constitution Court will hold an open hearing to rule on a grievance against Senate Vice President Emma Kallaway on April 3.
The hearing date was selected to accommodate sophomore Caroline Marie Beranek, who filed the grievance at the March 18 Senate meeting. Beranek wrote in a March 3 e-mail to the court that she would be unavailable before the beginning of spring term because of commitments to her coursework and part-time job.
Beranek’s grievance charges Kallaway with violating eight ASUO rules related to communication and violating Oregon Public Meetings Law. Kallaway responded to the grievance with a 49-page written response calling for the dismissal of the charges on technical and factual grounds.
The court will hold the hearing over Beranek’s objections that a public hearing would “waste (her) time.” Beranek filed two grievances against then-ASUO President Emily McLain in 2008, one of which stripped McLain of her stipend. In January, ASUO Vice President Johnny Delashaw and former Senate President Athan Papailiou said Beranek had been used by other students as a proxy.
Beranek promised to return phone calls from the Emerald but still had not done so in time for the print deadline.
However, Beranek wrote in a March 3 e-mail to the Constitution Court: “The court is compromising my integrity by granting (Kallaway’s) request; however, to prove that I am not just a ‘puppet’ as some have called me, I will come to a hearing at the beginning of next term and present my case.”
Beranek also called for Constitution Court Chief Justice Kevin Parks to recuse himself from the case because, she wrote, Parks “is a former boyfriend of Emily McLain,” and that “Emily McLain is also strongly connected to Sen. Kallaway.”
Parks refused to comment on the nature of his relationship with McLain, but said it would have no bearing on his ability to hear the case and refused to recuse himself.
“Without any substantial evidence supporting (Beranek’s) claim, it doesn’t seem to me to be one with any merit,” Parks said Wednesday.
Kallaway said Beranek is still mysterious to her. Beranek presented the grievance to Kallaway while the senator was giving a speech before the Senate, then left before Kallaway got a chance to see her face. Kallaway said she still does not know what Beranek looks like and has never spoken with her accuser.
“I really did not want to invade her personal space,” Kallaway said.
In her response to the grievance, Kallaway wrote: “(Beranek) hides behind the veil of anonymity in order to protect herself against tough questioning that could come of an oral presentation, including (questions about) her knowledge of events of the Student Senate and the ASUO Executive, (gleaned) without attending any meetings of either … Clearly, when so little is known about an individual who seems to know so much about student government, but never attends a meeting, it begs the question of whether (the individual) is the true author of the grievance, or if she is just being used as a proxy by some other person who does not wish to be identified.”
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