The effort to oust ASUO President Jay Breslow came to a quiet end Dec. 13, with petitioners failing to garner enough signatures and Breslow remaining in office.
In November, freshman business major Jarrett White and junior sociology major Chris Fosnight alleged that Breslow neglected several of his duties during fall term, including failing to fill vacant Executive staff positions within 30 days and showing political bias during an Oct. 27 ASUO voter participation drive.
Fosnight and White, along with a handful of students, had one month to get 10 percent of the student body — about 1,700 students — to sign a petition supporting the recall. A vote by the entire student body to decide if Breslow would remain in office would have followed.
But two weeks into the effort, Fosnight withdrew his petition, claiming he had priorities more important than the recall.
With Thanksgiving break, Dead Week and finals spanning the timeline of the recall, the effort eventually faded away, White said. The petitioners did not attempt to gather signatures during Finals Week.
“I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t the most organized thing,” he said.
In the end, the petitioners gathered only a couple hundred signatures.
Some of the failure, White said, could be owed to the fact that more time was spent analyzing Breslow’s transgressions than gathering signatures.
But Student Senate President Peter Watts said petitioners could have taken their grievance to the senate. Had three-quarters of the senate voted for impeachment, Breslow would have been removed.
Although ASUO rules are clear regarding presidential duties and what happens if they are not fulfilled, Watts said it is difficult to get 75 percent of any body to impeach a government official.
“I think that Breslow has enough support on the senate to get one-quarter of the vote,” he said.
Even though the petitioners failed to reach their stated goal, White said he thinks they got their point across.
“I’m glad that we did it, still, so the ASUO didn’t think they could just ‘wallygag’ around and do nothing and get away with it,” he said. “I want them to know there are people out there … making sure they are doing something.”
While the prospect of being recalled didn’t change the ideology Breslow uses to guide the ASUO, he said it did make him and the rest of the office more aware of details.
“Even though they’ve had a lot of internal problems, [Breslow and ASUO Vice President Holly Magner] worked hard to rectify them,” Watts said. “I’ve seen a lot of progress in the last month.”
On the other hand, graduate English student Scott Austin, one of the students who helped to gather signatures, said he did not notice any improvements in the ASUO office after the recall effort began. Though nothing has changed, Austin said he does not have the desire to spearhead a campaign against Breslow. He now intends to focus his efforts on academics.
“I guess I’m just tired of student government,” Austin said.
Breslow has taken the recall as a sign that people are keeping tabs on the student government, and he said he will make an extra effort to stay on task in the next terms.
“I thought we had an amazingly successful fall term,” Breslow said. “We’ll try to keep that momentum up and build from that solid base.”