For the past six months, Student Council has quietly, but consistently, been dealing with a controversy surrounding the job performance of Vice President for Organizations Catherine Tobin. Since Tobin took over the April office allocations process by which office space is allocated to University Contracted Independent Organizations, her competence and the particulars of the process itself have been questioned.
After complaints from CIO members, allegations of incompetence by Council members and investigations into where the process went wrong, Tobin, Student Council President Lauren Tilton and their peers in Council discuss the controversy and its resolution.
April's allocations process:
a timeline of events
Controversy concerning the process and Tobin arose last semester after members of Council raised concerns about inaccuracies in a space allocations meeting that took place April 3. Concerns about Tobin's job performance became public after information emerged that executive members held a closed meeting in August and discussed ways of addressing Tobin's performance, up to and including impeachment.
During the April allocation meeting, members of the committee reviewed all the CIO applications and then began to vote on the space allocations, according to Executive Vice President Melissa Warnke.
The committee consisted of Warnke, College Rep. Andrea Diamond, Michael Winn, former representative for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and former Graduate Rep. Gavin Reddick. In addition to those members, Victoria Ingenito, then an appropriations member and former College representative, and Nick Jordan, head of the Board of Audit and Management, were members of the committee.
According to notes from the meeting, Tobin was present but was only required to vote in the event of a tie. Tobin said Chris Husser, assistant director for student involvement, was present briefly at the meeting as well.
Diamond said the application review process took longer than expected and she and Warnke were not able to stay until the end of the meeting. She said she was unsure about exactly how many application votes she was absent for, but she did know that she was not present for the voting concerning the requests of the Virginia Pep Band, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Team, International Relations Organization and Alternative Spring Break. After Diamond and Warnke left, four members were left to vote on allocations. Notes from the meeting, however, show six votes for each organization, votes Diamond says she and Warnke were not present for.
"Votes were recorded as us having voted on several organizations when we were not present when votes took place," Diamond said.
Upon learning of the extra votes, Diamond said she was concerned but believed the error could be a result of a "procedural rush."
Diamond said matters at the meeting had been rushed, guidelines were not clear and unintentional errors occurred.
Tobin said this week she had made a mistake in counting votes. Tilton has referred to the miscount of votes as a "clerical error" made by Tobin.
The controversy begins
After the original meeting, other concerns were raised involving specific bylaws. Members of Council said some of the bylaws were not properly followed at the meeting, such as the lack of a presence of a Newcomb student employee. According to current Council bylaws, the Space Allocation committee is required to consist of a total of five members, including two members of the Appropriations Committee and two members of the Representative body. One Newcomb student employee is also required to be present at committee meetings.
Ingenito said Diamond, Winn and Reddick fulfilled the requirement for representatives while she served as a required member of the Appropriations Committee.
It is unclear whether or not Jordan qualified as the second appropriations member. According to Tobin, Jordan also qualifies as a member of the Appropriations Committee because he has attended appropriations meetings in the past and because of his status on the Board of Audit and Management.
Tobin said the Board technically serves under the Appropriations Committee, enabling him to act as the second Appropriations Committee member. Jordan, however, said he does not consider the Board to be part of the Appropriations Committee, but added that he could not be positive this assumption is correct.
According to Council's Constitution, one must either serve on the Council's representative body or go through an application and interview process upon recommendation by the VPO to be considered a member of the Appropriations Committee. Once the interview process is completed, a majority of Council must approve the new member.
Jordan neither serves on the representative body nor completed the approval process stated above; however, it is possible that Tobin misconstrued his former position as EVP and current position as head of the Board to qualify him as a member of the Appropriations Committee.
Council Parliamentarian Chris Alexander said under current bylaws the Board "exists as an independent organization" separate from Appropriations that "works closely with the Appropriations Committee and takes recommendations from the committee".
Jack Wilson, former parliamentarian and current vice-president of administration, provided similar information.
In addition to the confusion surrounding the appropriations representatives, a Newcomb student employee was not present at the meeting. Though Husser is a Newcomb Hall employee, he is not able to qualify as the employee representative because he has already graduated from the University.
In an interview Sunday, Tobin said she learned before the allocations meetings that the bylaws required a Newcomb student employee to be part of the committee to make the voting process official. She explained that she discussed the problem with the committee members and tried to find a solution.
"We were in the Student Council conference room and asked the [student] employees from across the hall to come over, but they were busy," Tobin said.
According to Tobin, the committee came to the conclusion that if there were any questions that needed to be answered they could ask Husser based on the fact that he is a graduate of the University and employee of Newcomb. Tobin said she had attended previous allocations meetings in which these rules were not followed.
Tilton later said these experiences may have led to Tobin's confusion over Council's bylaws.
The process or the VPO?
While Tobin admitted that she made mistakes during the allocations process, she maintains that various factors out of her control and not her job performance caused the controversy.
According to Tobin, the space allocation process began later than usual, and she was concerned that delaying the meeting would rob groups of the time necessary to appeal negative decisions.
In addition, Tobin said she should not have been responsible for the allocations process, but instead former VPO Anna Popova, who had begun the allocations process earlier that spring, should have followed through with the CIOs.
"Anna started the process," Tobin said. "She should have been there. Instead she went MIA."
Tobin said the VPO was constitutionally required to serve until the end of the spring semester, but instead Popova "stopped answering her phone."
Popova graduated from the University in spring of 2007. Popova could not be reached for comment.
Information from other Council members indicates that Tobin's explanation may have changed since this spring. In an undated e-mail from Warnke obtained by The Cavalier Daily through the Freedom of Information Act, Warnke wrote to Tilton that Tobin made two conflicting excuses as to why there was not a Newcomb student employee representative present at the meeting. According to Warnke, Tobin first said she thought she followed the bylaws during the meeting and did not discover her error until afterwards. In an April 7 e-mail also obtained through FOIA, Tobin offered Warnke a different explanation, stating that she did not check the bylaws until right before the meeting began.
"I knew about the student employee [problem] and that it would be incredibly late notice," Tobin wrote.
Tobin added in the e-mail that she did not attempt to secure a Newcomb student employee upon realizing one was needed.
In an e-mail sent later that day, Tobin said she would make up a bill with allocation results for Council to approve the following Tuesday. Tobin wrote that "for our sake, we should suspend the rules and confirm the office space on Tuesday."
Bills are usually tabled for a week after introduction to Council so that members have time to consider them and to give groups affected by appropriations decisions time to appeal, according to Tilton.
Tobin wrote in the same e-mail that suspending the rules "seem[ed] like the best way to be as in accordance with the bylaws as possible."
Tobin said in a Sunday interview that drafting the bill was a "time-saver" because bills always take time to draft before they are presented to Council. She said time was crucial in the process because the process as a whole had been started later than usual and CIOs needed to have time to appeal if they so desired.
Reworking the system
amidst mixed CIO reactions
According to Tilton, a bill from the original allocation meeting was scheduled to be introduced at the April 10 Student Council meeting -- the same meeting in which Council transitioned officers. Tilton said she was made aware of potential problems with the bill between the transition ceremony and the beginning of the meeting. She said she immediately withdrew the bill from Council consideration after learning of the problem.
According to Tilton, at some point between April 3 and April 13, members determined that under the new constitution, which had recently been approved and put in effect, a Newcomb employee was not needed at allocations meetings. Tilton said the constitution supersedes the bylaws in situations where they conflict.
"It's a parliamentarian issue," Tilton explained. "After the first hearing it was determined that certain areas [of the constitution] negated the bylaws."
After the bill was withdrawn, another meeting was held April 13, during which members of the committee verified their votes on the office space allocations, Tilton said. All original members of the committee were there with the exception of Jordan, who sent a proxy. Warnke and Diamond, who had not voted on a number of CIO requests during the first allocations meetings, were allowed to vote in all allocation matters in this session. A Newcomb student employee also attended the meeting.
The presentation of the bill was delayed until April 24 after events memorializing the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings postponed the next meeting until the following Tuesday, Tilton said.
According to Tilton, the bill containing the verified votes was presented to Council April 24. Appeals were also heard that night from the Pep Band and IRO in regards to their dissatisfaction concerning the results of the space allocation meeting. The Pep Band appealed the committee's decision to deny them space, while IRO appealed the space the committee had allocated to them.
After hearing the appeals, Council voted to send the bill back to the allocation committee to reconsider their decisions, Tilton said.
Soon after, controversy arose concerning the appeals process. After the April 24 meeting, Josh Cincinnati, a Cavalier Daily guest columnist and IRO member, wrote a column in which he claimed Tobin had denied that the appeals process even existed, which explicitly goes against Council's bylaws.
Cincinnati's experience, however, was not indicative of all IRO's experiences with the appeals process. In an April 4 'Facebook message' provided to The Cavalier Daily by Tobin, IRO member Maria Li asked Tobin about the appeals process. Tobin replied within 24 hours of the message, directing Li to the Council Web site where the appeals process is detailed.
The allocation committee met again on May 1 to discuss and vote on the appeals. During this meeting, members voted to give the Pep Band office space, to change IRO's original office assignment and to revote on allocations. Because the decisions were made after the last Council meeting of the semester, Council did not approve the bill containing the changes until September 11, Tilton said.
A job well done?
Throughout the space allocations process, various members of Council became increasingly concerned with Tobin's ethics in handling the situation. Some members e-mailed Tilton to convey their frustration and concerns relating to Tobin's overall job performance.
Jordan expressed his opinions to Tilton in an e-mail obtained through FOIA, writing that there had been a number of occasions where the "rules were not adhered to," something that became "problematic when you are dealing with money and/or CIO's". He added that although there are a large number of rules for the process, the "VPO needs to follow them closely and responsibly," which, he wrote, had "not been the case" during the year's appropriations.
In a May 18 e-mail also obtained through FOIA, Warnke wrote that Tobin "blatantly violated bylaws". She wrote that Tobin had "repeatedly alienated CIOs and the very students we [Council] wish to serve by failing to communicate or have dialogue with groups," and "by maintaining a punishing attitude towards them." In addition, Warnke claimed that Tobin had "failed, repeatedly, to complete tasks that are required of her position."
Warnke also wrote in the e-mail that she did not feel that she could continue to work with Tobin in a professional capacity.
"It has come to the point where I really cannot be fine with her being allowed to keep her position," Warnke wrote, adding that if Tobin did not resign, she would move to impeach her.
"If she does not offer, or is not compelled to offer, her resignation, I will move to impeach her through the rules and ethics Board," Warnke wrote. "This impeachment will pass. Clearly, it would be more beneficial for [C]ouncil to take care of this privately and immediately."
In an interview last Sunday, Warnke said while she still stood by her statements, the comments made in the e-mails were opinions formed from the information she had at the time.
When asked if the inadequacies experienced during the recent allocations process was a testament to Tobin's overall performance as VPO, Warnke replied, "Yes".
In an interview last Sunday, Tilton said she made it her job as Council president to address any concerns raised by members of Council. Tilton said in looking at allegations she sought to separate concerns about procedural mistakes from personal attacks.
In order to fully address concerns raised about Tobin's job performance, Tilton drafted a list in early August of complaints made against Tobin. This list included the initial allegations that Tobin had failed to meet expectations regarding the space allocations process, including failure to read the bylaws and the Constitution, a miscounting of votes at the initial meeting, a failure to properly inform IRO mmebers of their right to appeal and specified failures to respond to CIOs and members of Council. Tilton said she made the list for personal use, in order to organize complaints to discuss with Tobin and with other members of Council. Tilton said she mdae Tobin aware of the allegations. Tilton said in August that after carefully reviewing the complaints and Tobin's job performance, she concluded that the allocations process, not Tobin's work, was to blame.
A matter of ethics
In late August, executive members of Council discussed these allegations against Tobin in a closed meeting. Tilton, Warnke, Wilson, Chief of Staff Ryan McElveen and Ingenito were all present at the meeting. Jordan also attended part of the meeting. Tobin, however, was not present at the meeting.
Tilton explained that the meeting was closed because she felt it was her responsibility to determine the root of problems with the spring's appropriations process. Tilton said she hoped to distinguish between what was procedural and personal, adding that discussion of such personal accusations is not to be taken lightly.
According to earlier interviews with Ingenito and Tilton, possibilities discussed for dealing with the allegations ranged from setting performance guidelines for Tobin to pursuing impeachment or forced resignation.
Ingenito said "it was concluded that impeachment was not our course of action." She added that members discussed possible replacements for Tobin.
According to the Student Council constitution, cases like Tobin's that concern the "adjudication of alleged Constitutional or governing Bylaws violations or disputes of the Student Council" should be handled by the Rules and Ethics Board; however, according to Tilton and her interpretation of "institutional memory," the Board has not been in existence for the past three years.
"There was a bill last year [to reinstate the Rules and Ethics Board] but it got tabled when the proposed members were no longer able to be part of the it because of changing positions in the University community," Tilton said.
Tilton explained that members on the Board cannot be officers in other organizations around the University, which is why the original bill was tabled.
The current Council is in the process of forming a Rules and Ethics Board but has been delayed because of nominees gaining new positions in the University, Tilton said. She added that a bill proposing the Board would be presented to Council in the upcoming weeks.
Tilton said since the Rules and Ethics Board was not created when allegations arose concerning Tobin's performance, the executive members took on addressing the concerns as their function.
"Once the Rules and Ethics Board is created we will address what parts of the issue are bylaw issues and which are personal issues," Tilton said. She added that the Board would review issues concerning Tobin in regards to how bylaws and process were followed.
Tilton said she is enthusiastic about moving forward with the semester.
"We've worked together to set mutual expectations and establish responsibilities," Tilton said. "We are moving forward as we all work together to keep the best interest of the student body at hand"
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