Moving on

Okay, so refusing to follow the Constitution is no big surprise for Student Action. What about Vishal Gupta's attempt to serve as chair?

Despite some concerns that Gupta should not act as chair of the meeting due to possible bias in the case, he said the senate will decide tonight whether or not he should step down from chairing the hearing.

"I personally don't feel that I have any personal or financial interests in the outcome of this trial, but the senate has the ability to overrule my opinion on that," he said.

He was singing a different tune when he thought that the Judicial Council's actions cost him $5,000.

It certainly doesn't help if he was involved in writing the charge sheet. After all, none of the Senators listed on the charge sheet actually attended the hearings, so you wonder where they got their information. I sure hope there wasn't an effort to cover up Vishal's involvement.

Just for fun, I'll pass along the tip I received a while back. A person claiming to be an anonymous SAer suggested that Student Action party chair Jaime Hiraishi sent the following message to a bunch of SA folks.

If you get a call from the daily cal, do not talk to them about impeachment before it happens

More importantly: DO NOT SAY YOU HAD ANY HELP FROM THE EXECS, ESPECIALLY VISHAL! if they get wind vishal advised you in any way they may ask for him to not run the trial, and he should be the chair.

So please, be careful of what you say to ALL PEOPLE not on this listserve. Best friend or not, we cannot take the risk right now.

Geez. What a bossy party. Anyway, I asked a few senators and Jaime herself about this e-mail, and they never got back to me with denials or anything, so while an anonymous tip doesn't hold much weight, there's nothing to weigh it against, and I believe this e-mail was sent.

By the way, remember that Senator Ilana Nankin said "NO" to Solicitor General nominee Joseph Rothberg not because of any actual problem with his neutrality, but because he was vaguely affiliated with SQUELCH! Ilana was concerned about "appearances" for the ASUC, and that the choice of Rothberg would harm the ASUC's legitimacy because of the appearance of conflict. We'll see how far that concern about appearance goes tonight.

posted by Beetle Aurora Drake 11/15/2006 10:54:00 AM #
Comments (6)

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Comments:

I once had an opportunity to ask an ethics professor (well a Philosophy Professor that taught an ethics class) about conflicts of interest, and his words of wisdom were that "one wants to avoid not only actual conflicts of interest, but any appearance of a conflict of interest" regardless of whether you know it to be unfounded or not. As a rule of thumb I believe one should liberally construe any claim of conflict of interest, yet balance this against the possibility that theoretically claimants could be trying to knock out specific justices to get a Court of the composition they desire --- but this obviously isn't a concern with chairpersons of whom you can keep knocking out until you get a suitably neutral one.

# posted by  Anonymous : 12:39 PM, November 15, 2006

 

Well, also you should note that Vishal Gupta is Executive Vice President, which means he chairs the Senate, but doesn't vote in it, so this isn't about affecting the vote.

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 12:42 PM, November 15, 2006

 

Yeah exactly, so there is no viable reason not to accept any even barely reasonable conflict of interest claim. Someone should poke hte Daily Cal writers into interviewing an ethics expert on this, I bet you have one in your philosophy department as well. Doing so would inject the appearance of critical thinking into the article.

# posted by  Anonymous : 6:57 PM, November 15, 2006

 

Vishal has voluntarily stepped down as Chair for the trial, but he has voiced his intention to lead deliberations once in closed session. I cannot explain why this wouldn't be a conflict of interest as well, but that's his logic not mine.

# posted by  Anonymous : 8:10 PM, November 15, 2006

 

Which means he still thinks he can close the session? I guess he thinks its better to do all the shady stuff at the same time or something. Though I guess him being illiterate is no real surprise.

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 8:29 PM, November 15, 2006

 

Oh man! The Double Transgression Theory! It's like when a dog is sent outside because he pee'd on the rug, so knowing he's already in trouble he takes a hotdog off the table on his way out. Brilliant.

# posted by  Anonymous : 10:34 PM, November 15, 2006

 

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