What’s New?
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor’s student government on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved articles of impeachment against its president and vice president for “inciting violence” against the Central Student Government in the aftermath of two disputed votes and for neglecting their duties by blocking funding for student groups.
The impeachment vote passed 30 to 7, with one abstention and one absence. Alifa Chowdhury, president of the Central Student Government, and Elias Atkinson, the vice president, who both had resisted calls for them to resign, did not attend the meeting and did not respond to requests for comment.
The Details
Chowdhury and Atkinson were elected last spring, along with about two dozen student-government representatives, on a pro-Palestinian platform called Shut It Down. It promised to withhold the funding that student government usually distributes for student activities, including a campus food pantry, MCAT and LSAT prep services, and an airport transportation service, until the university agreed to their divestment demands. University regents have stated publicly that they will “continue to shield the endowment from political pressures” and do not plan to divest from companies with economic ties to Israel.
After the new leaders carried through on their promise and vetoed numerous budgets, the student government defied Chowdhury and Atkinson last month and restored funding for student groups. Protesters who were angry over that vote, as well as another vote rejecting a proposal to send money from student fees to help Gaza universities devastated by the Israel-Hamas war, threatened and shouted at student-government leaders after the meeting. Chowdhury took over the student government’s Instagram account, changed the password so no one else could get in, and sent out a message calling the voters Zionists, according to the articles of impeachment, which referred to that act as “cybertheft.”
The Backdrop
The motion for impeachment was brought by Margaret Peterman, a sophomore who serves in student government and was the lead author of an opinion piece in the student newspaper describing how protesters had “verbally assaulted” and threatened CSG members over the October votes.
“Since their time in office began, they have refused to do the duties constitutionally required of them, have incited violence against members of this body, and have openly degraded representatives for disagreeing with the mechanisms by which they govern,” she said Tuesday during the meeting. “After repeated calls for their resignation from over 40 current and former members of CSG and repeated refusals to do so, this assembly is left with no choice but to impeach.”
In an “executive statement” posted on the “Shut It Down” Instagram page on Monday, Chowdhury and Atkinson said that their group “was never meant to uphold the status quo” and that expecting them to operate like previous student-government administrations is “simply ironic.”
Those who are calling for their resignations “are weaponizing a manufactured narrative to paint Shut it Down as divisive,” the statement said. “Yet, they ignore the deep-seated injustices that have brought us to this moment, hoping to force us out. We see through these tactics and we stand with our comrades who feel forgotten and betrayed by a university that would rather protect its investments in violence than listen to the calls for divestment.”
What to Watch For
Now that articles of impeachment have been approved, a student judiciary court will hold a trial to determine whether the impeachment should be upheld. It’s unclear how the students who reacted so angrily to the votes to restore funding to student groups will respond, and whether further protests are likely.
Mario Thaqi, the student government assembly’s speaker, will become president if the impeachment is upheld in a trial that could start in the coming week. “This has never happened before — impeaching a sitting president or vice president,” he told the assembly after the vote. “It speaks volumes” about their conduct, he added, in dividing rather than unifying students around a cause many students, including himself, believe in.
