After Week of Turmoil, Student-Body President Is Impeached at Texas State

Texas State University’s student senators on Monday found the student-body president guilty of all six articles of impeachment brought against him, capping off a tumultuous week of protests over allegations that he — and the university whose students he represented — was racist.

The president, Connor Clegg, whose term was to end on Thursday, struck a defiant tone during the meeting at which impeachment was considered. At one point he urged the senators to find him guilty. Siding with him, Clegg said, could jeopardize their safety, given the angry protests directed at him.

“When you’re successful, you make enemies,” Clegg said during the meeting, which was livestreamed by the student newspaper, The University Star.

Clegg angered many minority students at Texas State by demanding that the newspaper be defunded and its editorial board step down after a student, Rudy Martinez, wrote a controversial opinion piece titled “Your DNA Is an Abomination.”

Clegg used the student government’s official Twitter account to make those demands, a move that violated the rules, the impeachment articles said.

“Over the course of his tenure as president, Clegg has repeatedly chosen to present his own opinions, agenda, and personal motives above those of the university student body,” the impeachment articles stated.

The university’s president, Denise M. Trauth, publicly criticized Martinez’s column, which was meant to encourage discussion of white privilege, as racist.

Later, screen shots surfaced of social-media posts by Clegg that Trauth denounced as “offensive and racist.” Clegg apologized for the posts, where were made in 2014 and 2017.

The impeachment trial followed a 48-hour sit-in at a student center by protesters who argued that Clegg’s leadership reflected a broader pattern of insensitivity to the growing number of minority students at the university, in San Marcos, Tex.

Clegg had dodged impeachment twice before, starting in February, when the student government’s supreme court found him not guilty of any violations, according to a timeline published by the Star.

After that decision was successfully appealed, an impeachment vote was scheduled for last Wednesday. It couldn’t be held, though, because 19 of the 40 student senators failed to show up, denying it a quorum.

Growing Diversity

Angry students began a sit-in that continued until Friday afternoon.

It ended after Texas State officials met with the protesters and agreed with most of their demands, which extended far beyond their objections to Clegg.

Clegg, who has three days to file an appeal of his impeachment, drew boos from the packed crowd when he said the protesters’ actions, which amounted to “holding the campus hostage for three days,” had caused many to lose confidence in the university.

All 40 senators showed up for Monday’s vote after the president chastised Wednesday’s no-shows. Trauth said some senators had legitimate reasons for not attending, but others didn’t. Their absence, she said, “undermines the integrity of our student-government processes.”

Clegg was not immediately available for comment after the vote, but he took a lighthearted approach initially on his Facebook page.

During the trial, he defended his actions and said he was simply sharing concerns that others had brought to him. He said he had sought to represent all students during his presidency.

Texas State has celebrated the growing diversity of its campus, where white students now make up 47 percent of the enrollment, Hispanic students 36 percent, and black students 11 percent. In 2012 white students made up 57 percent of the enrollment, Hispanic students 29 percent, and black students 7 percent.

At the same time, it has been rocked by threatening and offensive graffiti and fliers left by outside white-supremacist groups.

In a letter to students, faculty, and staff members on Friday, Trauth outlined steps the university was taking to make it more inclusive, some of which were underway before the protests.

Among them, Texas State will hire a lawyer with experience in immigration issues who will be available this summer. In the meantime, it identified immigration lawyers who will provide pro bono services to students.

It will offer a Latina/o-studies minor in the fall of 2018 and an African-American-studies minor, which it expects to offer the following fall. The university also created a new position, special assistant to the provost for inclusion and diversity. And it is examining how to improve the way student government works, and setting up a campus-climate task force to act on the findings of a survey conducted this past fall.

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.