CU Student Government’s Legislative Council votes to unanimously censure Student Body President

 By: Suvu Singh and Cooper Baldwin

CU Student Government’s Legislative Council unanimously voted to censure one of the three student body presidents, Rachel Hill, for “violating the spirit and intent of the CUSG Election Code to protect free and fair elections, concerning the neutrality of CUSG officials working at a polling event sponsored by the Election Commission,” according to the motion. 

The motion, introduced by Graduate School Senator Jake Carias, came after Crisol Guzman Corral, a former candidate for the student body president position under the Butterfly Effect ticket alleged Hill yelled “vote no on constitutional amendments,”“very aggressively,” towards their campaign table and a student they were speaking to, regarding constitutional amendments that are on the ballot at an election “kick-off” event. 

Initially, the motion to censure Hill was for “violating the CUSG Election Code and its spirit and intent to protect free and fair elections; concerning the neutral CUSG-sponsored polling stations established by the Election Commission,” however, after debate and disagreement, it was changed to the updated motion which was ultimately passed. 

“The Tri-executive is in a position of such great import within the CUSG system. You’re the highest elected official, and one of the individuals with essentially the most amount of power and also a guiding force for what is supposed to be the values and a representative for our system,” Carias said. “I’ve never heard of this type of behavior from prior Tri-executives during an election campaign, during an election period.”

Megen Princehouse, the CUSG Office Manager, claimed she cannot recall a student body president being censured in at least the past decade. 

According to Guzman Corral, Hill’s actions contributed to her ticket withdrawing from the election. 

“The actions caused my ticket to feel that space wasn’t for them. They felt like they were being attacked in a space that was supposed to be neutral. They felt like it was completely disrespectful and honestly, I felt like it was completely out of line,” she said. 

Butterfly Effect ticket’s campaign manager, Noelia Salazar-Acosta, claimed she was told the candidates cited time-commitment issues as reasons for withdrawing to her in a private conversation.

Salazar-Acosta further clarified the candidates reached out to her after her interview with The Bold to notify that the incident Guzman Corral cited also contributed to the ticket withdrawing. 

“Butterfly Effect have told me in one way or another (at least partially) that there is some truth to the kick-off event contributing [to the ticket withdrawing] since Monday,” she said in a statement to The Bold.

“I stand by my statements made in regards to CUSG, but I am also a big believer in truth and seeing the whole picture,” she added.

Following the kick-off event incident, the Election Commission of CUSG banned Hill from tabling for elections for violating Section 902.1 of the Election Code, according to Election Commissioner Poornima Ramesh. 

During the meeting, Ramesh argued, “President Hill was signed up as a neutral member of the CUSG body and that is explicit in the code where they cannot advocate for anything while they are fulfilling that neutral role. So in that sense, there is a clear violation of the election code,” she said.

According to Hill, she spoke to Guzman Corral about the incident in a private conversation where she apologized. Guzman Corral acknowledged the apology however she claimed the censure is to set a precedent to ensure this “doesn’t happen again.” 

“I reached out to her yesterday and gave her a call, first of all because I was really confused about what the issue even was. She explained it, I apologized and she accepted the apology,” Hill said in an interview with The Bold.

“We debated this for two and a half hours. The Legislative Council came to the conclusion that I did not violate the election code. Then, they amended the motion to say that I violated the spirit of the election code,” Hill said. 

“A censure is about calling out what went wrong, identifying the problem and identifying the perpetrator. Being clear that this was wrong, and saying it was wrong and making a statement that it was wrong. That is the purpose of this. We [the Legislative Council] have no other power to enforce these things,” Carias said.