The unconstitutional impeachment of a UTRGV student senator that failed
And the suspicious absence of coverage by the campus newspaper who sent a reporter, photographer to the hearing, didn’t print story.
A student senator at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley was unsuccessfully and unconstitutionally impeached, per the student government and U.S. Constitutions, earlier this semester, after condemning an antisemitic campus protest in December. He says he was not allowed to know who filed the complaint, nor what it said. He was only given a memo describing the charge, which alleged he used the student government logo in a political statement without ‘proper authorization’.
The process took less than a month, between his being notified of the impeachment and the charge being read to the student senate, Feb. 16. Even as the article of impeachment was read to the senate, he was not allowed to be in the meeting room. The entire Feb. 16 ‘trial’ was done under the secrecy of “executive session.” He was not even allowed to know what the final vote count that exonerated him was. Other senators were threatened with reprisal if they discussed what occurred during the executive session online.
Moreover, the student-body has not been made aware of this story by their weekly campus newspaper, despite them sending a reporter and photographer who remained for the entirety of the two-hour-long meeting, took notes, photos and interviewed people, including the accused. The reporter told an interview subject that the story would be published the following week. But none has, as of yet, seven issues later.
Having emerged victorious, he’s now running on a slate of candidates prepared to bring big changes to student government, called the Vaqueros Movement.
The Student Government Association and campus newspaper at UTRGV have both been the subject of much controversy in recent years. During the 2014-15 merger between the two legacy institutions, the way the transition was being handled became a contentious issue among students, faculty, and staff at both major campuses. Many viewed the willingness by the student government administration of that time, at both legacy institutions, to side with university administrators as a betrayal and consequently lost faith in the association. Since then, SGA has faced more ebbs than flows, with several vacancies left unfilled every academic year and every semester.
The highly controversial football referendum in 2021 was the most recent major blow to SGA’s credibility. Similarly to the merger, UTRGV’s SGA played the role of being extensions of university administration’s policies and aims, which again many saw as a betrayal and further evidence of corruption. Current students who were around during the referendum remember how it went down. To this day, students and alumni can be heard and seen referring to the existence of a football team in a negative light, usually counterposed to the immediate issues they’re facing on campus. “We don’t have a parking garage but they’re going to buy a football stadium,” is a common refrain seen in comment sections online, usually in response to news stories about the football team’s well-funded development. And now, in a much more impactful and profound manner, corruption and violations of students’ rights within SGA has expressed itself through what is arguably the most consequential issue of current international affairs.
The people of the Rio Grande Valley have indelibly left their mark on the question of the war in Israel, ever since Oct. 7’s systematic massacre, rape and torture of Jews and immigrant workers. Bourgeois Muslims and middle-class RGV leftists, which includes some Stalinist-minded and ultra-left Jews, have formed a coalition to advance the demand to destroy the Jewish state as their primary political objective, on the one hand. On the other, a coalition of secularists, dissident socialists, conservative working-class people, a broad base of Jews from various traditions—reform, secular, orthodox; and several other unaffiliated people who are simply appalled by antisemitism, have come together to say “never again” is now. These two irreconcilable forces clashed Dec. 5 at UTRGV-Edinburg, leading to Alexis Uscanga’s unconstitutional but unsuccessful impeachment, after he joined my counterdemonstration and courageously, at great risk to himself, as it proved, condemned the rally for what it truly was.
The campus newspaper, the Rider, has also been the subject of some controversy since Oct. 7. They published a two-part series on the situation in Israel, in light of news that the University of Texas System had canceled all travel to the region. The paper promoted Hamas’ political slogans and demands via the interviewing of political science professor, Nicholas Kiersey. The author, Ali Halloum, selectively reported facts unflattering to Israel and took for granted figures given by Hamas, while ignoring any unflattering facts against, and any inconvenient statements made by, Hamas leadership. Kiersey accused the Israeli government — a government born out of the horrors of the Holocaust, many of its citizens being Holocaust survivors, some of whom, having survived the Nazis, were killed in terrorist bombings — of being fascist and committing genocide. I lampooned them in a letter to the editor which, to The Rider’s credit, they published.
Current students and alumni had asked me to look into it, disappointed by what their campus sheet was printing. After my response, Kiersey’s been quiet, and Halloum has been aptly reassigned to sports. My debate challenge to Kiersey, issued in the Rider, was rejected by him and the university’s political science department, in emails written in reply to my initiation.
In general, the Rider has done good work since the founding of UTRGV, its predecessor (The Pan American) in Edinburg also covering up scandals in its last years, I say as a former writer for it. I was also in SGA. I filed articles of impeachment, as a Senator-at-Large, against the then sitting SGA president and vice president in 2014-15 for the reasons referenced above, which the Pan American also refused to cover at the time, but for different reasons. In contrast to Alexis Uscanga’s case, the articles of impeachment I filed were slow-walked and were not submitted anonymously. I proudly put my name to them, stood by them, and still stand by them. Those tasked with managing the proceedings at the time, being guided by university administrators who wanted it to go away, ran out the clock, procedurally, such that by the time the articles had moved from the judicial branch to a standing committee, time had run out in the semester to rectify the mishandling of the process that ensued.
SGA advisors, Rebecca Gadson, who is now the dean of students for the university, and Delma Olivarez, who currently reports to Gadson as she did back then, lied to the standing committee reviewing the articles of impeachment, instructing them that their job was to determine whether my complaints warranted impeachment – a question which actually belonged, constitutionally, to the Senate – when in fact their only job was to determine whether the charges, “if found to be true,” or “valid” violated the SGA Constitution. Thus, an administrative coup d’etat of student government, in the person of “advisors,” occurred. The Pan American, led by Andrew Vera, wasn’t interested in the story as he didn’t think it was important enough to cover.
Then and now, the campus newspaper has assumed the place of not covering any unfavorable story to sitting student governments. The key difference being that when the Pan American refused to cover Alberto Adame’s abuse of power as SGA President, Editor-in-Chief Vera (who had been nominated by Adame to sit on special committees, including the ‘committee’ that acquiesced to President Guy Bailey’s controversial mascot decision during “community input”) decided to not send reporters and rejected the story from the very beginning. This time, however, The Rider did send a reporter and a photographer to cover the event. Why do that, have them conduct interviews, take notes, then not print the story?
As someone who’s been working as a journalist since 2015, taken a deep and academic interest in the Middle East since 2011, who not only opposes antisemitism but has also taken a deep interest in the history and culture of Jewishness, I began writing about the current situation in Israel on Oct. 7. I published my first article on Oct. 10, calling what had happened the first pogrom of the twenty-first century. I had written a second piece, focusing on Hamas’ political responsibility, before writing on local actions in opposition to Israel’s existence, led by Foot Not Bombs RGV and a rabidly antisemitic Maoist group calling itself “Red Star Tx”. So, I had been tracking and reporting on these antisemitic actions since late October, when pro-Hamas demonstrators gathered at Archer Park to call for the destruction of Israel, veiled in euphemistic slogans, as well as subsequent events which grew more brazen and brazen as time went on. The Dec. 5 rally in Edinburg was the culmination of all these antisemitic actions that this coalition had been working up to, ever since the Oct. 7 pogrom.
As I wrote in my report about the rally, it was mostly composed of non-students. The minority of students that composed the rally was mostly made up of the RGV Muslim Students Association who, like a fifth column, praised and announced the fact that their members spoke at the rally, in a Facebook post which they have since deleted, having not announced beforehand any indication whatsoever that they planned on supporting the event. This during a time when many were wondering who was behind the event and more importantly who supported it. As an alum of the institution who was active in the student government and various organizations, continues to take an interest in political developments occurring on campus, and as someone who’s reported on higher education, I counter-protested the rally. I held a placard of the Israeli flag and another calling on Hamas to quit using human shields. If Mariam El-Haj, who isn’t a student either, can organize a rally on campus with lots of others who aren’t students, then I can counter-demonstrate. And if masked, pro-Hamas demonstrators can express their hateful incitement against Jews at my alma mater, then I have not just the right to counter-demonstrate but the duty to.
I stood far enough from their rally but close enough to remain in sight. Several students came to my side and stood by me, thanking me for my initiative, expressing their agreement with my views and political demands. Senator-at-Large, Alexis Uscanga, was one of them. He shouted back chants of his own and then joined our little counterdemonstration that had been accumulating.
Since writing about the Dec. 5 protest, in which I praised Uscanga for his courage to speak out against antisemitism on campus, I’ve kept up with him. He made an announcement regarding his impeachment hearing, leading up to it. I attended the senate meeting where the question of his impeachment would be decided, stayed for its entire duration, and also recently reviewed SGA’s constitution and bylaws in recent days. (I sat on the legacy institution student committee that drafted the founding UTRGV SGA constitution.) I also contacted The Rider, the dean of students, the sitting student government president and vice presidents, chief justice, a Graduate college senator who supported the impeachment, as well as the Muslim Students Association at UTRGV for this report.
“The moment has finally arrived, and let's be honest, we all knew it was only a matter of time this would occur since I first stepped into office,” Uscanga wrote in his first public statement about the impeachment, Jan. 26, online. “This past week, I got notified that an anonymous member of the Student Government filed articles of impeachment against myself, with the main reasoning in favor of removing me from the highest Student Leadership position in our University being that I am one of the most outspoken conservatives in the Senate, and that I hold strong conservative positions. It seems one cannot exercise their 1st Amendment right to express oneself without being targeted for it, and while I am not shocked, this is 100% a witch-hunt! If only they put this much effort into ACTUALLY doing anything, then I'd probably let it slide, but No.
“The reality is that I, alongside a small group of members of the Senate have been the most active on YOUR BEHALF, to improve life on campus and work together to pass legislation that will further our University's efforts in being the best in Texas, but we continuously encounter lots of roadblocks. I am grateful for y'alls support, and I will fight through this and win. I wasn't elected to sit around and make my resume look pretty, I was elected to lead and that's exactly what I intend on doing. May God bless y'all for your support towards myself in this fight!”
Just as there was no newspaper coverage afterwards, there was no news coverage leading up to the hearing either. Why wouldn’t the student newspaper let the campus know there’s an impeachment against a student senator for public comments he allegedly made? Word of Uscanga’s statement certainly got around campus, as it was forwarded to me by a third party who alerted and alarmed me to the impeachment. The only announcement of the impeachment meeting came from Uscanga’s social media pages.
“Tomorrow, at 2:30pm in UTRGV Brownsville's Sabal Hall Room 2.112, the Student Senate will be presented the articles of impeachment to decide whether I remain as not just Senate Sergeant At-Arms, but as your Senator At-Large for Edinburg,” Uscanga told his followers and constituents Feb. 15, over two weeks after his initial announcement. If I knew about it, the Rider knew about it, which they had to, having sent a reporter and photographer.
“God willing, the Student Senate will see my case against impeachment, and we can hopefully move on from this obvious targeting to finish representing the student body who elected us,” he went on.
“I will continue to be working on making our Student Government a lot more transparent, and for students to get further involved in decision making. We have so much potential in improving our University even further if we are able to move on from the sham impeachment. The meeting will be live-streamed on the UTRGV Student Government Association Facebook, or you can also attend the meeting in-person. Thank you all for your support! God bless y'all,” Uscanga concluded.
I arrived at Sabel Hall, commuting from Edinburg, about 20 minutes after the meeting started. By the time I arrived, there were around 30 people standing outside of the room; all were there to support Alexis. Several of them spoke at the beginning of the meeting, providing opening statements during the public comments section.
Also outside the room was Ms. Silvana Villarreal, “A&E” reporter for the Rider. ‘A&E’ if I’m not mistaken stands for arts and entertainment. That was my beat when I wrote for the Pan American. Villarreal told me she’d only heard about the meeting a couple of days before it occurred. She also mentioned she recognized my name from the letter I wrote about Halloum’s coverage. We briefly exchanged quips about it. Having conveyed my view of the suitability of Halloum covering sports, which elicited laughter from her and her photog, she replied, with a mischievous smirk, “Well, that’s debatable.”
She took copious notes, remained in constant contact with somebody on her phone, resembling someone keeping their editor updated; interviewed people including Alexis, stayed the entire time, and said her story would be published the following week when asked by an Uscanga supporter she had just finished interviewing. While the consideration that an arts reporter may not be suited to write about politics arises, Villarreal has actually dived deep into politics in some of her articles, not to mention the fact that Halloum can go from writing about Hamas one week to writing about home-base the next. ‘Cross-beat’ reporting, as it’s called, is common in the profession of journalism. Their non-coverage remains a mystery, as the Rider did not respond to my request for comment.
The only reason I can think of as to why they didn’t publish the story of Uscanga’s impeachment is because the outcome that they expected did not occur. Given their liberal, pro-Hamas bias and function as mouthpiece for SGA executives and university administration, they hoped Uscanga would get impeached. Consider what would have happened had he been impeached. You can already imagine the headlines and how they wouldn’t have been fair to Uscanga. But that’s not what happened. Their responsibility as the student newspaper was to report on the impeachment trial, and all that led up to it, regardless of outcome.
Alexis was outside of the meeting room for quite a lot of the hearing. A few minutes after my arrival, he stepped outside, explaining that the senate was in “executive session”, as they were hearing the article of impeachment, as well as voting on a set of questions to ask Uscanga, similar to a cross-examination in a courtroom. He would be notified when to go back inside by the SGA Supreme Court justice who kept a close eye on him, as she also texted away on her phone, scolding me at one point for taking a picture of the executive session from outside the classroom window. During this time, Uscanga informed his supporters and friends what the situation was inside, up until his removal. He said they were trying to get him for using the student government logo without ‘proper authorization’, which he used in his social media statement after the Dec. 5 protest. He explained he was not afforded a copy of the charges against him, as well as the anonymity portion of it all.
There was the suspicion among some that the sitting president and her vice presidents were behind the impeachment. I reached out to them for comment but they, too, did not respond. Odalys Saenz, current president, is running for re-election against Noah Trstenjak who is running with Mikaela Johnson and Uscanga as his Vice Presidents. They’re running on a slate with other senators on a platform of bringing deep and serious changes to SGA. Juana Jimenez is joining Saenz for re-election as “External VP”. They’re joined by Gregorio J. Zuniga for internal VP who’s replacing Ihssan Al-Qudah, who comes from an Islamist family from Jordan. His older brother, Yahia Al-Quda, played a leading role in turning student government into a mouthpiece of administration during the 2021 referendum. It’s likely Al-Quda was behind Uscanga’s impeachment, given the staunch antisemitism and support for Hamas that his father expresses online. One wishes to not have to speculate on such matters but given the anonymity of the impeachment and their refusal to go on record, there’s no other choice. One is duty-bound, in any case, to report such relevant findings such as endorsing and sharing anti-Jewish propaganda. If Al-Quda was behind the impeachment, he should have the nerve to come out and say it and clear up these speculations. Or, if he didn’t, they should disclose who was behind the anonymous impeachment and end all speculation.
After explaining what had happened up to that point, Uscanga’s supporters and friends began to speak amongst each other, all explaining to the other how they met him. Uscanga is an outspoken conservative, having been a volunteer for former Republican District 34 Congresswoman, Mayra Flores, who is facing off against current incumbent, Vicente Gonzalez, in November, in a rematch. He’s a person of principle and integrity who stands up for what he believes. (Gonzalez and his ilk have attacked conservative Latino voters like Alexis which in part fuels the attacks against him.) Others who had worked with Uscanga on conservative political campaigns in the past attended the hearing to support him.
The Supreme Court justice, Rotcey Magdaleno, would let Uscanga know after what seemed to be more than an hour of waiting outside that the senators were about to begin voting on his fate. At that point, he and his friends began a prayer, led by one of Uscanga’s allies. The prayer, which lasted a couple of minutes, was followed by a few more minutes of suspenseful waiting. Then, the chief justice blurted out that the impeachment attempt failed. Everyone in that packed hallway celebrated, shook hands, high-fived, hugged. Uscanga, who was immensely distressed the entire time, appeared as if a thousand pounds had been lifted off.
When I later spoke to him more specifically about the procedure, Uscanga told me that he was made to appear before the “internal affairs” committee as a matter of obligation, per the impeachment guidelines of the SGA Constitution. Indeed, one does have to appear before the committee before it can be moved to the student senate, which is a violation to the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to not testify against yourself. I was a dissident of the Constitutional committee, opposing the Constitution which was ratified in a student vote. I believe it needs to be re-written with a stated stipulation that any SGA Constitution must not violate any of the U.S. Constitution’s provisions. Regarding Uscanga’s impeachment however, how it was written didn’t matter; they threw the entire Constitution out the window.
Having mentioned that I wrote to the student newspaper, the sitting student government presidents and vice presidents, the chief justice, the dean of students and the UTRGV Muslim Students Association, the only person who spoke with me that supported the impeachment was Maliha Alam, a Graduate College Senator, who I know from previous personal encounters. She strongly supported the impeachment against Alexis and stands by it. In a texting conversation, I asked her if she knew who filed the article of impeachment against Uscanga. Her response was, “Can’t say, sorry. And obviously what he did, was wrong.” I pointed to her implication/suggestion that she knows who did it. I next asked what the alleged charge, which was so “obviously” wrong, was. She said, “You were there, you know it.” I replied that I was not allowed inside and therefore didn’t truly know what the charge was. So I repeated my question.
She replied, “He used the sga logo for preaching his personal belief,” going on to add, “I feel sorry for the people attending the thing without even knowing what he did. He should have been honest” not explaining what she meant in alleging dishonesty of Uscanga without any evidence. I next asked what provision of the constitution or bylaws he violated. Halam’s response was to refer me to the “SGA Program Coordinator”, somebody named, Kourtnie Hernandez. I did not contact Hernandez, as I had already contacted her boss, Rebecca Gadson, who did not respond to my request for comment.
(Update: Immediately after my article went live, Becky wrote to me and said she’d pass on commenting and leave it to SGA. Hot potato anybody?)
I tried asking Halam if she thought Uscanga should have been given copies of the charges against him and she dodged the question by deflecting to SGA “advisors” when I called her on facts and constitutional citations. When asked if she voted in favor of executive session, she said she “didn’t remember details.”
The attempt to impeach Alexis Uscanga was unconstitutional from beginning to end, from disallowing him to face his accusers, to not being allowed to know the accusations against him and thereby failing to prepare a proper defense; to being compelled to testify against himself, and then, in one final insult to his rights, not even being afforded the knowledge of the vote that found him innocent of wrongdoing. Uscanga’s impeachment can be seen like an absurd parody of the already absurdist Kafka, perhaps a consequence of substituting Kafka and Orwell’s novels for contemporary gender studies trash novels, among the youth.
Uscanga says he thinks votes on his impeachment were occurring anonymously.
Elected SGA representatives who supported Uscanga’s impeachment have dodged factual questions and made erroneous allegations without even the pretense of justification, as demonstrated by Alam. Despite being rigged against him, Uscanga emerged victorious and has no plans of slowing down.
After Uscanga’s victory not just for himself, but for freedom of expression, I suggested to him that he run for president. He reacted in shock and said in no uncertain terms that he had far too much on his plate the next school year. I believed him and said to myself hey, maybe some other time in the future, he’ll do it. In a move unexpected to both of us, he was offered a Vice Presidential role by Noah Trstenjak, who is a presidential candidate in this year’s 2024 SGA elections.
Together, Uscanga, Trstenjak and Mikaela Johnson, are running on a platform of progressive change within student government, moving above and beyond the corruption it’s been known for and continues to be known for.
“Noah is running to amplify the voice of our Student Government Association,” his statement read. “Ensuring transparency of work done by the SGA towards the student body,” is his top priority.
Johnson is running alongside Trstenjak and Uscanga “to further the work done in SGA” started by Uscanga. At a March 22 student senate meeting, the passage of legislation calling for an SGA “legislative tracker” was brought forth by Uscanga and finally passed after months of delay, he said. He described it in a statement.
Senator-at-Large, Tristan Skyler Howell, who voted during Uscanga’s trial, told me he was threatened with official sanctions by Odalys Saenz, Al-Quda and Jimenez, if he dared to share details about the impeachment with the public. Howell is on the Vaqueros Movement slate, running for re-election as senator. Also on the slate is an extremely impressive student for the college of Sciences, Juan Pablo Hernandez, who took the initiative and founded the first ever Neuroscience Society at UTRGV this current Spring semester.
One of their recent posts summarized their campaign well: “Vaqueros movement is much more than a candidacy of our executives who seek to make our Campus more vibrant, increase opportunities, and make SGA for the students again, but it’s a Movement to work to get things done alongside our Senate candidates.”
It’ll take a movement to transform the student government association from an instrument and extension of administration back into an instrument and extension of the vast majority of the student body, as it once was. The Vaqueros Movement are the ones to do it.
jonathansalinas@substack.com