"Anonymous" article of impeachment released
In major blow to student gov secrecy at UTRGV, the university had no choice but to fork over the “article of impeachment” filed against a heroic student senator for condemning campus antisemitism
In a major blow to student government secrecy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), the university had no choice but to fork over the “article of impeachment” against the heroic student senator, Alexis Uscanga, after they delayed the disclosure process last week, in the middle of elections. The sitting administration, aided by SGA “advisors,” fought to keep it under seal at all costs.
The document was not officially provided to Uscanga, which would be a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to know the charges made against him. This “article of impeachment” was also not made available to the student body or the public, again, at the insistence of student government executive leadership, headed by President Odalys Saenz, who said the petitioner requested to remain anonymous. This right here is therefore the first time the public gets to see this mysterious indictment that a kangaroo court used to prosecute Uscanga.
However, as one can see in the letter, anonymity was never actually requested. Student government leaders have withheld knowledge of the author’s identity as a secret for their privileged cliques, threatening anybody else who does know of the author’s identity with reprisal. The impeachment article author’s identity is not actually a secret within SGA; it’s only a “secret” to the community.
Shouldn’t the student body and public know?
Notwithstanding, UTRGV Senior Legal Officer, Bennett S. Bartlett, communicated Tuesday, 9 April 2024, at 4:36 p.m., that the university redacted the name of the person who submitted the complaint “pursuant to Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) Regulation 34 CFR subpart D.”
I plan to appeal this decision with the state attorney general’s office. I’m confident my legal argument, which I will not share at this time so as to not give the university a leg up, will carry the day and UTRGV will be forced to release the name of the person who filed this “article of impeachment.” It’s only a matter of time but we will eventually know the full truth of this scandal.
The sitting state attorney general, Mr. Kenneth Paxton, is actually very much despised by authoritarian types who also write Kafkaesque and Orwellian secret indictments, and secret evidence, like Uscanga’s anonymous impeachment author and the shadowy forces behind them. They hate him for his tendency to side with those requesting transparency of public institutions, like me. Paxton was also unduly impeached on “Trumped up” charges last year, and also like Uscanga, was acquitted by the Texas senate.
The Trumped-up Paxton impeachment posed a grave threat to free speech, the consequences of which can be seen in the Uscanga case. The “logo” business referenced in his impeachment is nothing but an excuse to go after him. It’s part of a broader, systematic, organized campaign — led by wealthy Muslim families who support antisemitic, fascist dictatorships in the Middle East, and their anti-Israel allies worldwide — to attack free speech by intimidating those who oppose them and their blood lust against Israel, into silence.
Student government representatives at other universities across the country who have also spoken out against the rise of antisemitism on college and university campuses have faced similar Trumped-up impeachments like Uscanga’s. They have also successfully defeated them. An attempt to remove a pro-Israel Jewish activist from his student government position at Tufts University in Boston was withdrawn earlier this year, after similar attempts to persecute him.
In an interesting corollary case, students at Indiana University impeached sitting Arab-Muslim student government president and vice presidents for not “supporting all students,” as the article alleges against Uscanga, for their failure to condemn antisemitism, which is what Uscanga was actually doing in this case. Electoral fraud was also suspected of the soft-on-Jew hatred executive in a report published to their campus newspaper, but which has since been scrubbed.
Student government transparency has been an ongoing issue at UTRGV ever since its founding in 2015. That’s nothing new. However, what is new this time around is that the usual and common lack in transparency one can always count on from SGA has fused with a simultaneous campus-wide coverup of antisemitism, something happening nationwide.
Even though the UTRGV Rider finally wrote about Uscanga’s impeachment, after sitting on it for 8 weeks during an election in which Uscanga ran as Vice President, Silvana Villarreal still got a crucial fact crucially wrong. She wrote that Uscanga commented on “the Israel-Hamas war” in his Instagram story, when he actually strictly addressed the Dec. 5 protest’s antisemitism, as even the impeachment article makes clear.
That’s a distinction with a difference, especially when the insinuation is that Uscanga used the barely noticeable watermark logo for “personal purposes” which is of course false. If the article of impeachment had not pointed out the logo, most people would never have noticed it, strongly suggesting that they were fishing for anything they could possibly get on Uscanga. “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime,” as the saying goes.
Note also how the article of impeachment was sent first thing Dec. 7, when the protest in question occurred last thing Dec. 5. It was filed before the Rider published its flattering video of the antisemite march and before my write-up. When I filed articles of impeachment against the sitting SGA President and Vice President in 2014-15, I did not submit them anonymously and spent weeks writing and revising them. This was filed less than 48 hours after the hate rally and Uscanga’s subsequent condemnation of it.
The impeachment article lists “using his SGA office” as an offense, thus within the current student government, doing your job can be an impeachable offense.
Furthermore, this anonymous author writes that Uscanga “failed to explicitly clarify that the statements made were his personal opinions”. Really? Uscanga “explicitly” clarified that the opinions expressed were his own by virtue of him signing his name to the statement, as well as, you know, publishing the statements. If Uscanga is publishing opinions, in his own name, in his own handwriting, on his public social media pages, then who else’s opinions could they be? When you sign your name to a statement, guess what that means.
The anonymo who wrote this “article” then goes on to say that Uscanga’s post on his Instagram story, which they had to be snooping in on in the first place in order to be offended by what they saw, is “detrimental” to student government, “as it directly contradicts” the mission statement of the association.
They quote the mission statement and then blanketly assert without a single line of argumentation or evidence that his Instagram story violated the SGA mission statement, when in fact, Uscanga lived up to it in every way outlined. [This is an example of how the quoted text, which is supposedly being “refuted,” actually is more convincing than the critic doing the “disproving.”] The student senate apparently agreed.
If I had written this article of impeachment, which would receive an F in any English 1302 course and wouldn’t even be able to get past the door of any philosophy classroom, I would probably want to remain anonymous as well.
What’s actually detrimental to the student government are kangaroo courts designed to violate the civil rights of oppositional student representatives, like the Feb. 16 “trial” constituted in Brownsville. What’s detrimental to student government is passing zero resolutions in an entire term, which can be said of President Saenz. Uscanga was actually the only senator to author, introduce and pass resolutions this past SGA term. Despite promising to do so, Saenz has not signed them, to the great “detriment” of the student body and student government.
jonathansalinas@substack.com