My letter to UT-RGV Rider on Uscanga Impeachment
Campus newspaper publishes my letter correcting key fact regarding student senator's impeachment coverage. He was framed up in February for condemning antisemitism.
A student senator at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, formerly known as the University of Texas Pan American and UT-Brownsville — both of whom merged in 2015 to form a medical school, was persecuted for condemning what he viewed as a radical outburst of antisemitism on his campus.
He posted an image of a statement, in which he criticized a protest at his school, onto his Instagram story. An Instagram “story”, like other “story” functions on other social media applications, are only viewable for 24 hours, after which they vanish, unless of course one takes a ‘screenshot’ of the image. Depending on your privacy settings, your ‘story’ may be viewed by anybody or only people you allow. The student senator’s settings allowed anyone to view his story, as he posted it onto a public Instagram account specifically setup for political activities and statements, called @teamuscanga. His name is Alexis Uscanga Cadena.
A day-and-a-half after the pro-Hamas rally at the UT-RGV Edinburg campus, an unknown student filed an article of impeachment against Uscanga, on Dec 7, the same day the campus newspaper published flattering video coverage of the rally. We know this because UT-RGV was compelled to release the article of impeachment April 9, subject to the Texas Public Information Act. The university delayed the procedure on April 3, in the middle of a contested student government election which would have been affected by the disclosure, stating they’d “need more time to make the information available,” without offering a reason for the delay.
Hitherto the inevitable disclosure, which came a week after their delay, the article of impeachment had been withheld from public scrutiny by student government executives who did not want the public or the student body to understand the nature of the frame up against Uscanga. The university redacted the student’s name, citing FERPA laws, but I am appealing the decision with the State Attorney General’s office.
The article of impeachment cited his Dec 5 Instagram story and included a ‘screenshot’ of it, pointing to the hardly noticeable fact that the student government logo was present in the statement, effectively as a watermark. The impeachment article then cited the student government mission statement, asserting without argumentation that Uscanga’s Instagram story subjectively violated the student government mission statement for its use of the student government logo for “personal purposes.”
Student government executives, aided by Dean of Students Office employees called “advisors”, also withheld the name of the person who filed the article of impeachment. They said the student requested to remain anonymous, thus violating the spirit of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right of all accused to face their accusers. Uscanga was also not allowed to receive a copy of the impeachment article against him, given only a “memo” broadly describing the charges and accusations, which also violates the spirit of the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee giving the accused the right to know the charges being made against them, in order to form a robust defense.
Violating the spirit of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well, the accused was compelled to appear before an “internal affairs” committee who in effect acted like police investigators who used statements he made while testifying to the committee to indict him. He was also not granted an attorney or any kind of university advisor. This is a flat-out violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee against self-incrimination and right to an attorney. Once the trial came along, which (as said above) failed, Uscanga was disallowed from even knowing the vote count of the verdict that failed to remove him from office.
Uscanga’s impeachment was intended to instill fear in those who think like him.
At the sham impeachment hearing was a reporter and accompanying photographer for the campus newspaper, The Rider. The university’s student media as a whole, including their other student media outlets, have won journalism awards and won again very recently. They have done decent work over the years, ever since the founding of the new university. However, they did not print Uscanga’s story for 8 weeks, during which time student government elections took place. Considering the student newspaper’s rapid turnaround time when it came to favorably covering a pro-Hamas rally, their abnormally long turnaround time regarding the kangaroo court that tried a student representative who condemned that same rally is suspect. Especially when you consider the fact that Uscanga ran in those elections as a Vice Presidential candidate, as part of a slate of candidates who campaigned against student government corruption that bows to whatever the current needs of university administration may be.
Not only was The Rider’s highly produced anti-Israel coverage published by the end of the week, only two days after the events; it appears to have been published in coordination with the article of impeachment against Uscanga, which was dated for the same day as the video, Dec 7, at 7:59 a.m. Remarkable. Could the campus newspaper have possibly coordinated with those who organized his unconstitutional and unethical impeachment? I never in my wildest dreams would have suspected this and I’m shocked that it’s now an option, a possibility.
Had the campus newspaper covered Uscanga’s failed impeachment, including the violations of his rights, as well as the fact that he was now running as an executive candidate under a platform of revolutionary reform and change to student government, in other words, had it done its job, there’s no question it would have had an effect on the results. If the campus newspaper is found to have been coordinating with Uscanga’s persecutors, this would constitute the greatest scandal involving student government and student media in school history.
UT-RGV administrators sent out via email what they said were certified election results April 5. An image of the announcement published onto the “UTRGV Student Life” page claimed Uscanga and his “Vaqueros Movement” ticket, led by Noah Trstenjak at the top of the ticket, lost 855 to 582 votes or 59.50% to 40.50%.
An interesting occurrence in the votes was the earning of almost 1,000 votes by Senator-at-large-elect for the Edinburg campus, Andrea Gaytan, who received more votes than the winning President. Gaytan ran on the Vaqueros Movement slate and campaigned her heart out for Uscanga and Trstenjak. Senator-at-large-elect for Brownsville, Hannah Martinez, also received more votes than the President-elect, Odalys Saenz, with 879 votes over Saenz’ 855. Thus, two Senators-elect received more votes than the President-elect, strongly suggesting there is more student trust in the legislative branch than there is in the executive, and for good reason.
The Vaqueros Movement is looking into ways of calling for transparency of the elections by organizing momentum to demand an independent audit to look into them, as they suspect that the opposing ticket was unfairly aided and bumped by the university administration who favored the ticket who supposedly won — a fact I have meticulously and conclusively documented in recent weeks.
First, the student government executives seem to have been at least partially involved with Uscanga’s impeachment, as they articulated and spelled-out the indictment against him, in the article student media finally published about the impeachment, 8 weeks after the events and one week after elections closed.
Second, after agreeing to a live-streamed debate between the executive candidates, campus media and university administration informed them that the debate would instead be pre-recorded and published at a later date. The debate was pre-recorded on Thursday March 28, 4 days before voting opened on Monday April 1. Wouldn’t publishing the debate the weekend before elections have been a good way to inform the student body about where the candidates stood?
The pre-recorded debate wouldn’t be published until Monday evening, 8 hours after polls opened, April 1. By then, university administrators who sided with the executive ticket who targeted Uscanga, which stood for re-election, had manned voting booths at the student unions of both main campuses in Edinburg and Brownsville during peak hours, around lunch time.
We — me and the Vaqueros Movement candidates — spoke to students who voted at the union who said they had no idea who the candidates were, some voting for the ticket who persecuted Uscanga, led by Odalys Saenz as the presidential candidate. They regretted their vote, wishing they could have it back, after we explained to them the significance of this year’s elections, showing that there must have been others who voted for Saenz’ ticket who wouldn’t have, had they’d known more.
As elections neared, Saenz’ ticket was allowed to post up campaign flyers several days before the Vaqueros Movement’s campaign flyers were “approved” by the Student Government Association (SGA) “advisors”, according to Vaqueros Movement co-founder and central leader, Alexis Uscanga. Many of the Vaqueros Movement flyers would be vandalized and torn down, as would some belonging to the Saenz ticket. There’s no question there was institutional favoritism at play towards Saenz’ campaign.
Despite this enormous scandal unfolding before our very eyes, the campus newspaper casually and quietly published an article regarding the Uscanga sham impeachment, only online and not in print, again, 8 weeks after the matter, and a week after elections closed, April 8, making zero reference to the elections, nor the Vaqueros Movement slate, nor the fact that the debate — which was unquestionably won by Trstenjak, Johnson and Uscanga — was not published before elections opened. It only focused on the trial, nevertheless managing to get a crucial fact crucially wrong:
Rather than explaining how Uscanga’s Instagram story in question addressed the campus protest, The Rider claimed that it addressed “the Israel-Hamas war.” This false statement was followed by the SGA senate chair, who ran with Saenz as the ‘Internal VP’ candidate, Gregorio J. Zuniga, being attributed with the suggestion that Uscanga utilized the student government logo “for personal purposes,” a demonstrably false statement.
I sent in a letter-to the-editor explaining their mistake, which was published April 15. Elected student government winners are scheduled to be installed Wednesday, April 17, at 3 p.m. in Brownsville.
jonathansalinas@substack.com