The Associated Students of Citrus College executive board president withstood an impeachment challenge at the May 3 board meeting.
The resolution to impeach Cameron Wisdom failed 8-4, four votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed to pass.
The issues brought against the president were due to concern for his lack of support for the rest of the board.
Former Student Trustee Juniper Cordova-Goff and three other executive board members presented the issues to Dean of Students Maryann Tolano-Leveque.
“The emphasis was lack of initiative and positive teamwork that was not there,” Cordova-Goff said.
Vice President Rene Gutierrez, Treasurer Larissa Cabrera and Senator Vanessa Salinas were among those with concern over Wisdom’s position.
Tolano-Leveque, who oversees student life, said her approach to the conflict was to ask the students if they would like to speak to the president, have her speak to the president or set up a meeting for everyone to discuss the issue.
After two weeks of discussion between adviser and students, Tolano-Leveque put the issue on the agenda as an immediate action item.
She said she told the concerned executive board students this issue needed to be discussed publicly and will not be revisited once resolved.
“Most of the board was actually blind-sided by it,” Wisdom said. “Three or four people had been given the platform to complain while the rest of the board was really unsure about what was going on and how it gotten to that point so quickly.”
Cordova-Goff said there was a calm 45-minute discussion on the issue before the vote was held.
She said Wisdom was given the opportunity to defend himself and told the board he was dealing with a lot personally.
For some of the members, this was not a satisfactory response.
“Over the past year has been absent has not shown concern for projects or leadership initiative,” Cordova-Goff said. “We felt if the representative is handling a lot at home they should leave their role to give to someone who can handle it.”
Wisdom said in any situation if 11 or 12 members agree on one thing, he is going to be the one to bring up the counter-argument.
“It is not always well received but is something I feel I have to do,” he said. “I’m not always supportive of their causes and if they’re doing something and I’m not there for every event that they do in the quad.”
He said his position is different to where he supposed to act as the agent for ASCC executive board at all times and this sometimes means he is the middle man between ASCC and other constituents on campus.
Cordova-Goff said as a president the board expects him to be leader and take initiative and foster team work, and they felt that is not really present.
“I’m proud of the board,” Tolano-Leveque said. “That is always a difficult thing for any board to do even in the professional world and I thought they handled it in a very respectful way.”
Wisdom remains the president of the executive board for the remaining five weeks of the spring 2016 and the issue will not be revisited by the board.
“It’s not going to be brought up again, whatever came out of this meeting was going to be the final word on it for the rest of the semester,” Wisdom said.
“The vote went the way it did because majority of the board respects me and knows that I’m there to support them.”
The ASCC executive board meets at 2:40 p.m. every Tuesday in the Student Center.
