The Undergraduate Student Congress allocated funds, expelled a member and laid out rules for impeachment hearings during its Tuesday evening meeting.
Impeachment hearing protocol
The news: The Outlining Congressional Impeachment Hearings act added a section to the Undergraduate Student Congress bylaws to set rules for hearings regarding the impeachment of any officer of the executive, judicial or programming branches.
According to the bill, any congress member may write a resolution to hold an impeachment hearing, which must outline the impeachment charges. The resolution must be submitted six days before the impeachment hearing and the congress chair will have 24 hours from submission of the resolution to alert each officer subject to impeachment. Once the resolution has been seen by the congressional administration committee and the congress executive committee and has received a recommendation of no recommendation from both, the resolution will be seen during the special orders section of the next congress general body meeting and the impeached officer must be notified by the congress secretary within an hour of the last committee recommendation.
During the impeachment hearing, the charges will be brought up by the congress member who made the original motion, followed by time for questions for both that member and the officer. Any person in the room after questions will be allowed to participate in a debate, during which the resolution author and the impeachable officer will make author’s summations or state their case.
There will be a special executive session after questions during which only members of the Undergraduate Student Congress and any essential SGA advisors shall be permitted to speak. The resolution author and impeachable officer will not be allowed in the executive session.
After impeachment charges are finalized, each charge will be voted on individually and those that receive a majority vote will be forwarded to the Graduate Student Senate.
This bill was amended according to recommendations by the SGA's Office of General Counsel prior to being shown in the Tuesday’s meeting.
What they’re saying: Kyle Martin, congressional administration committee chair and author of the bill, said in response to a question from SGA President Carter Strickland that although the SGA governing documents do not explicitly state what an impeachable charge is, the specific charges against the officer would be brought up in the resolution against them.
Martin said the bill was amended before being shown in the meeting to ensure the impeachable officer’s rights to due process as outlined in the SGA constitution. These amendments included restricting the resolution author from executive session and requiring that the committees that see the bill make no recommendation to avoid bias.
Chair Hope Rhoads, said in response to a question from Strickland about the role of the SGA Chief Justice in the impeachment process, that a final decision is not actually made by the Undergraduate Student Congress.
“How impeachment is currently outlined in our constitution in general, is that the hearing would happen in congress, but the actual trial happens in the (Graduate Student) Senate, so the chief justice presides…,” Rhoads said. “We just hear the charges, decide if the charges are even worth anything before it gets sent to senate.”
Rep. Ben Kuepen made a motion to debate this bill, seconded by Rep. Shrey Kathuria. Congress voted not to enter debate.
The vote: The Undergraduate Student Congress approved this bill with a vote of 27-1-0. Kuepen voted against the bill and Rep. Leo Carter was not in the room during the vote.
Funding student government, registered student organizations
The Undergraduate Student Congress viewed the Primary Funding Act of 2025 for Governmental Organizations and the Primary Funding Act of 2025 for Registered Student Organizations as a block, meaning they were seen and voted on at the same time.
The news: The Primary Funding Act of 2025 for Governmental Organizations allocated funds to student government organizations including the different branches of SGA, Saferide, and employee salaries and stipends. A total of $523,849.40 will be distributed among these organizations.
The Primary Funding Act of 2025 for Registered Student Organizations allocated a total of $395,076.74 among OU’s registered student organizations.
What they’re saying: In response to a question from Kathuria about funding for Campus Activities Council welcome week not being granted, Jacob Schonfield, SGA Budgetary Committee chair and author of the bill, said that every applicant is asked to list their requests for funding based on priority, and welcome week was the lowest priority on CAC’s request.
Schonfield said that the number of members each organization demonstrates is one of the factors for which the budgetary committee accounts, as well as fiscal history.
“Another big, important factor is, how many people are getting to go to these events that different organizations are hosting,” Schonfield said. “Basically, what is the impact that they're having on campus?”
Rep. Elias Hallum asked why fiscal history is an important factor in the allocation of funds. Schonfield said that they try to give money to organizations they know will use it.
“The student activity fee is what gives us these funds, so every single student that goes to OU here at the Norman campus is paying a student activity fee in relation to the number of hours that they're paying for,” Schonfield said. “It's our goal to be good stewards of these funds … if we give funds to an organization that does not use those funds, then everyone that paid a student activity fee that year is no longer getting the benefit from the money that they paid into the system.”
Schonfield said there was $2,008,227.29 requested and there was $581,276.74 to allocate in primary funding.
“Approximately one quarter of the money that was requested is what we had to give out,” Schonfield said.
The vote: The Undergraduate Student Congress approved these bills with a vote of 29-0-0.
Member expulsion
The news: The Session 113 Expulsion Bill No. 2 expelled Associate Ayo Awoyemi from his position due to excessive unexcused absences. Awoyemi was a member of the ways and means committee and only attended one general body meeting.
What they’re saying: Secretary Chloe Harris, who authored the bill, said she reached out to inform Awoyemi that he was up for expulsion.
“I reached out to him and he also did not respond to my email. In that email, I said if he did not respond by last general body meeting Tuesday, that it would be cause for expulsion,” Harris said. “He also never came to the meeting, so I'm going to assume that he is okay with being expulsed.”
The vote: The Undergraduate Student Congress approved this bill with a vote of 29-0-0.
Announcements
During the announcements and comments section of the meeting, Rep. Michael Wintory announced a GoFundMe campaign to support the family of Joe Pal, an OU student and rugby player who experienced severe brain trauma and later died.
“Any awareness on the topic, and look out for any events we might host in the future, fundraising events, (would) be really great,” Wintory said.
This story was edited by Anusha Fathepure.
