News-Letter

It's now December and the StuCo senior class needs to get things done. Senior week needs to be planned, a graduation speaker needs to be chosen and council members have to do their individual jobs. As it stands, the senior council cannot move forward with their responsibilities without senior class President Payal Patel resigning her post.

This is no easy request. In past years, StuCo has fallen victim to infighting and personal vendettas. Just this year, we've seen resignations and had to wait months for a StuCo president to be installed. A reshuffling at the highest levels of student leadership is a tall order for a council that needs to avoid controversy and perform its duties effectively. But so vital are the duties of the senior council and so far has the situation devolved, that Patel can no longer serve as the senior class president.

This drama began early in the school year, when other members of the senior council claimed that Patel was unwilling to call upon them to help plan Disorientation or choose a graduation speaker, even after they requested to be included. Members of the senior council feel that Patel has consistently failed to exhibit the traits of a good leader, fostering a culture lacking trust and communication.

According to the senior council, Patel wrongly assumed that they did not want to be involved in certain decisions. Whether this assumption was correct or not is immaterial; Patel should have involved members from the start. It is a class president's responsibility to involve their class council in important matters. Evading teamwork should have been a last resort.

If Patel had felt that members were unwilling to uphold their responsibility to serve the senior class, she should have sought resolution with those members and with StuCo advisor Jeffrey Groden-Thomas. Cutting them out of the loop is not just poor manners, it's poor leadership. Patel has no right to deny senior council members of the responsibilities we have elected them to bear.

Members of senior council approached Patel to address her leadership, and although she agreed to run a more inclusive ship, many claim that she never followed those pledges with action. Frustrated, they privately called for her resignation. Five members of council drafted a list of grievances that they showed to Patel, saying that they would present them to a closed-door session of StuCo if she did not tender her resignation. Her alleged response: "I will never resign." For the good of the senior class, we hope she will reconsider.

The members wanted this matter to be dealt with in-house, tactfully, without dragging Patel's name through the mud. But her inaction has forced them to make the matter public. In what is clearly a show of petty retaliation, Patel has submitted a petition impeaching senior class Vice President Brian Drolet, loaded with empty charges and straw-grasping, aimed at discrediting Drolet rather than solving any of the senior class' problems.

This desperate and somewhat false attempt by Patel to undercut her peer member, one whom every member of the senior council publicly stands behind, has shown Patel's intention to put herself before StuCo and the student body she was elected to serve. By lashing out, Patel has clinched her own departure, because she will surely face eventual impeachment if she elects not to resign.

We sincerely hope that she will save StuCo and the student body the trouble, so that the senior council can focus on doing their jobs, rather than infighting. We ask Patel to rescind her petition against Drolet and make the difficult yet mature decision to resign.

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