Five months after she was beaten by Emma Kallaway in the race to become ASUO president, former EMU Board Chairperson Michelle Haley has filed a complaint aimed at toppling Kallaway’s administration. The two will now face the ASUO’s equivalent of a trial in the fall to determine whether Kallaway gets to keep her position.
A source close to the ASUO said a grievance was expected on Kallaway for failing to make public her plans for her term in office within a month of becoming president, which is required under ASUO rules. However, Haley’s complaint also contained four other allegations, which ranged from accusations that she lied to the student body to scoldings for Kallaway’s failure to read e-mails.
Haley also accused Kallaway of using unfair practices in hiring her chief of staff Ella Barrett and of behaving improperly in talking to former ASUO President Jared Axelrod while on a student-funded trip to Washington, D.C. during the spring.
The dispute will now go before the ASUO’s Constitution Court, the committee assigned to interpret ASUO rules. But before the five-member committee can hear Kallaway’s case, it must first absorb three of the president’s appointees.
Haley said she doesn’t believe the court will give her complaint a fair hearing if it is composed of Kallaway appointees.
“I think it will be very interesting,” Haley said. “I’m not so concerned with actually getting her out of office as I am with just bringing things to light.”
Kallaway said she would be fair in appointing members to the Constitution Court. “Any appointment about Con-Court justices is really going to be far from the grievance,” she said.
The race between the two was conducted on acrimonious terms, and after the election results were in, Haley’s campaign manager said Kallaway’s campaign was “really shitty, really petty.”
Student Sen. Nick Gower, who was the first to accuse Kallaway of not publishing her plans, bemoaned the grievance.
“It needlessly dramaticizes the events that have occurred,” Gower said. “I don’t think that anything she has done warrants being removed from office, especially this early in the year. It’s only going to distract us from the issues at hand, our budget issues this year.”
Gower said he was impressed with a new list of goals Kallaway sent on student mailing lists Friday. “I appreciate the time she took in doing the revisions,” Gower said. ” And what she presented was better than what I had expected and was most definitely professional and articulated.”
Read the full text of Haley’s complaint here.
1 | That Kallaway did not publish her plans for her term in office in the time required under the rules. |
2 | That Kallaway “intentionally misled (the) student body” when she did publish her plans. (Read more here) |
3 | That Kallaway was negligent in reading her e-mails. (Read more here) |
4 | That Kallaway “abused incidental fee dollars” by having a conversation with former ASUO President Jared Axelrod while on a student-funded trip to Washington, D.C. (Read more about the debate here) |
5 | That Kallaway broke ASUO hiring rules in hiring a chief-of-staff. (Read more about her hire here) |