FAMU Student Body President Impeached

Florida A&M University's student body president, Larry O. Rivers, has been impeached in the culmination of a battle between the Student Government Association's executive and legislative branches.

Larry O. Rivers

Rivers was impeached Sept. 22 at the fifth session of the 33rd Student Senate.

Senate President Michael Morton said that an Ad-hoc Committee will further investigate the grounds for impeachment.

The Senate plans a special impeachment trial. Members of the Student Supreme Court would be the judges; Rivers will have a special student counsel; members of the Senate who brought the charges will have their own counsel, serving as prosecutor; and other members of the Senate will serve as the jury.

However, the university's vice president for student affairs, Patricia Green-Powell, could overrule any verdict.

Rivers, a senior public relations major from Tallahassee, Fla., site of the FAMU campus, was impeached on his 22nd birthday.

The motion, which passed 14 to 1, came after a heated exchange between Rivers and members of the Senate. The Senate disagreed with Rivers’ appointment of Kristen Jackson as an associate justice to the Student Supreme Court.

Rivers told the Senate that when Jackson submitted her application to him during the spring semester, her GPA was above the 2.5 minimum requirement needed to serve as a justice.

And despite the fact that her GPA fell below the requirements after the spring and summer grades were posted, she could still be allowed to assume the vacant associate justice position because Jackson was waiting for grade changes that would bring her average up to requirements.

“Its not her fault that her grade changes have not been processed yet,” Rivers said in a press release Tuesday.

“I don’t see why she should be penalized for something that is beyond her control. Her grade changes will be done soon so this will all be a moot issue.”

Concerned with what senators considered lack of progress in the appointment process, Morton said he approached Rivers about speaking to the Senate.

“I, on behalf of the Senate, asked [Rivers] to come before the Student Senate to address the issues of vacancies on the student judicial branch,” Morton said, noting three vacant positions on the seven-member Student Supreme Court.

Calling Rivers’ conduct “misfeasance,” Sen. Brittani King made a motion to impeach, citing Article IV, Section 5 of the Student Body Constitution. The article states that the executive branch shall appoint qualified students to vacant student government offices, except those of the Student Senate, with two-thirds vote of the Student Senate.

Rivers said he plans to continue with his duties.

“I’m just going to do what the students have elected me to do and that is to serve as student body president,” he said.

He emphasized that with no quorum in the Student Supreme Court, the motion was basically “symbolic.” For the Student Supreme Court, five justices are needed to rule on a decision, yet only four seats are filled.

Even after the impeachment vote, members of the Senate continued their battle during two-minute speeches at the end of the meeting in what many of them called their semester-long “struggle for power.”

“I am disgusted,” said Senior Sen. Robert Clemmon, who was not in the Senate chamber for the vote. Clemmon was against the impeachment and attacked the reasoning of the senators who had voted in favor of it.

Other senators were visibly happy about what they viewed as the Senate standing up to a president they felt was trying to undermine them.

“Nothing about what happened in here was funny,” said Sen. Ryan Morand, as he responded to some senators who laughed as they handled the impeachment issue. “I’m terribly embarrassed about what happened here.”

Rivers is the eldest son of FAMU Professor Larry Eugene Rivers and Betty Rivers. As a freshman, he wrote a history of the FAMU College of Law at the request of the FAMU Division of University Relations/Public Affairs.

Last year, Rivers won election to an nonsalaried seat on the Ochlockonee River Soil and Water Conservation District board of supervisors. The district consists of Leon County, which includes the state capital of Tallahassee.

It took action last spring by Green-Powell, vice president for student affairs, for Rivers to win the presidency. A student Electoral Commission disqualified Rivers and his running mate for campaign violations after they had won first a primary and later a March 6 runoff. The Student Supreme Court upheld the ruling, but after an appeal to the administration, Green-Powell ruled that Rivers and his running mate were entitled to the offices.

Garrison L. Vereen II is a student at Florida A&M University who is deputy copy desk chief of The Famuan. He can be reached at . Elizabeth Broadway, editor in chief of The Famuan, contributed.

Posted Sept. 24, 2003