Vote fails to impeach Kilbride

With a vote count of 7-23, the 43rd senate body of UCF's Student Government Association decided that the impeachment affidavit filed against President Michael Kilbride did not have merit.

"I was relieved," Kilbride said "A lot of it was based purely on biased media accounts and no real public records or information that proved the points. When you read it, no requests were put in for records. It was all taken from a blog."

The impeachment affidavit was filed against Kilbride on April 6. The Future requested a copy of the document but has not received a response from SGA.

The affidavit's protection means that an officially presented reason has yet to be heard. Kilbride said that the impeachment drew from a series of stories  from KnightNews.com, a campus blog, that called into question the president's purchase of T-shirts for his cabinet.

Kevin Wolkenfeld, the editor-in-chief of KnightNews, said  in an email statement: "KnightNews.com stands by its reporting on SGA spending and puts a great deal of emphasis on presenting fair and balanced news by backing our work up with public records and information from SGA sources."

Kilbride said that, regardless of how the sentence review went, he was ready to prove his innocence and had documents to support.

"I'm glad that it ended this way, so that we're not ending on a sour note because I think it's been a great year for student government and I've been so proud to serve as student body president," he said.

Sen. Tyler Rits was one of the seven who voted for further investigation of the charges.

"I felt that they needed at least to be investigated a little bit even though they are, in my opinion, very minuscule charges that would ultimately end in nothing," Rits said. "They at least warrant an investigation because a student did come up with a concern and that's a student's right and it's our job as senate to at least investigate things."

Something Kilbride and other senators acknowledged after the meeting concluded was that the impeachment statutes needed work.

"The biggest thing is there is an inconsistency in the statute as to what exactly we are considering in the senate meeting in which we consider the impeachment hearing," said Sen. Nicholas Simons. "It's not clear whether or not we're supposed to debate regarding the merits of the affidavit itself, whether or not it falls under the jurisdiction of impeachable offense [or] whether it or not it warrants further investigation."

According to section C of Chapter 703.3 of Title VII: The Impeachment and Removal Statutes, "The Senate will then deliberate on the merits of the Affidavit(s) as being within the jurisdiction of an impeachable offense." Part one of the section states that "Senators may not debate on the validity or plausibility of the Affidavit(s), nor may an additional evidence be presented or discussed."

"I think what you saw tonight, the impeachment statutes do need a little bit of cleaning up," Kilbride said.

Sen. Michael Moesch  said that if someone wanted to resign before a vote to impeach goes through that it's possible.