The government of the United States of America was in business for nearly 80 years before it managed to impeach a president, but it took the multicultural student government (MSG) at KU only about a year to accomplish a rough equivalent of the same.
Truth be told, “impeach” isn’t exactly the right word for what happened to MSG President Chiquita Jackson. “Impeach” means to charge a president with misconduct. In February 1868, the House of Representatives impeached Andrew Johnson by a vote of 128 to 47 and turned his case over to the Senate for trial. The Senate was unable to muster the two-thirds majority it needed to convict Johnson, and he served out his term. The same happened to President Clinton in 1999, charged in the House but acquitted in the Senate.
What Jackson experienced was closer to a “coup.” Reporting for the Daily Kansan, Sydney Hoover writes, “The articles of impeachment, which were passed in the committee, were not voted on Thursday night; therefore, the assembly impeached Jackson with a vote of no confidence.”
“We’re a government established on resistance, voicing our opinions,” said new president Antonio Humphrey. “So, if one of us is doing something out of turn, it’s the responsibility of the rest of us to say something.” In this case, the “rest of us” not only said something. They did something.
The main charge against the deposed president was that she paid herself more than twice the $1,000 salary allocated by the non-multicultural student senate–and paid out of student fees–for a semester’s worth of presiding. Jackson claimed she was doing the treasurer’s job as well. Her compatriots weren’t buying.
“It was a bit of a mess,” said former vice president Sneha Verma of the coup. “It was productive in terms of people got what they wanted, and that’s good, but, yeah, it was rushed, it was messy, and it was not protocol . . . hopefully this new leadership can change that.”
Good luck with that!
