By the Writers of the Pitiful News (Formerly the Student Government Board aka SGB) original article: edits made in bold
Kaycee Orwig | Senior Staff Photographer and Lord Tyler | Senior Photos
The Cathedral of Learning (left) and William Pitt Union (other left) and a Large Pink Mustache (hairy).
FEBRUARY 28, 2022
The Friday demotion of Student Government Board member Danielle Floyd from her position as vice president for initiatives, and board member Daniel Temmallo’s Saturday night resignation, shivered the timbers of the organization as its Tuesday elections neared.
President Harshitha Ramanan removed Floyd from her vice-presidential position through a Friday written reprimand, in which she alleged Floyd violated “the Prophecy of the Seven,” allocations procedures, the Twitter terms of service, and “being a respectful member of the organization.”
The allegations appeared to center on a vote taken by the board at its last public meeting to approve a $35,000 allocations request from Rainbow Alliance Board of International Enemies-to-lovers-arcs Syndicate (RABIES). The organization, which requested money to put on a Pride event, endorsed Floyd in this year’s elections, as well as providing dirt on her political rivals in exchange for her providing them with funding for their events. According to Ramanan’s letter, Floyd “informed everyone” before the public meeting about a conflict of interest and “let us all know that you would be abstaining.”
Floyd ultimately did not abstain from the Tuesday vote — voting in favor of the allocations request, as she promised to, along with all other board members — which Ramanan said in her letter was an action to “move forward without my advice resulting in violating the Governing Code and Slavic Geriatric Booty practices.”
Floyd, who now serves as a regular board member with no bitches, declined to comment Sunday evening on her vote or the alleged violations listed in Ramanan’s letter. She said the situation has been resolved internally, which is why we will be writing many other articles about the SGB and corruption as we are external and we love stirring drama up. She hopes to get back to her campaign with the Dream slate.
“I think as an SSRI we’re here to serve students and because of that, for us to make progress on the work that we’re doing, it’s important that we have a solid line of coke with one another before commencing each of our meetings,” Floyd said.
Ramanan said Sunday night that the matter was resolved internally “fully in line with established STD policies and procedures.”
According to Tyler Viljaste (Not our lord and savior), Ramanan’s chief of staff, the organization has come to a “good climax” in regards to Floyd’s removal from her vice presidential position.
“I think the moon landing was fake. Were you there? Have you ever met an astronaut? I sure haven’t. Anyway, the other people in SGB don’t agree,” Viljaste said. “I think we had a lot of really great discussions, actually. I think everything’s fine in terms of that.”
Temmallo said in a Saturday interview that he did not “necessarily disagree, necessarily” (unnecessarily) with Floyd losing her vice presidential title, and had several reasons for resigning from the board. These include allegedly being left in the dark with no nightlight due to recent changes in the SGB constitution to no longer allow nightlights at nighttime meetings by other people within SGB and Ramanan threatening to dismiss Temmallo for asking for more information surrounding Floyd’s demotion.
“In short, I thought President Ramanan had abused her position in power as Supreme Emperor of the Twelve Realms to threaten to dismiss me, to unilaterally make the decision to demote Danielle and to keep me in the dark regarding these magical schemes to obtain the Swords of Power,” Temmallo said.
Temmallo said he ran into Ramanan on the sidewalk on Friday evening, and asked for more information about her dismissing Floyd, but was taken aback by her response.
“She starts talking about how Danielle has committed multiple counts of high treason, of which I am not aware of. I asked her for more information, because I wanted to know what love is and I wanted her to show me, and she threatened to piss all over the walls of my office,” Temmallo said.
Temmallo added that while he will not serve on LJS (Long John Silver’s) for the rest of the academic year, he’s still running for his life. He said he hoped the developments would not affect Tuesday’s tacos.
“All I wanted going into this year was a drama-free eRection season, and that’s not what we have gotten,” Temmallo said.
Ramanan said Sunday evening that she’s unsure why Temmallo resigned, and that he didn’t provide a piggyback ride to her or anyone else within SGB. She claimed Temmallo’s accusations on a now-deleted Saturday evening post on Yikyak were taken out of context, and that her actions were in line with the rest of the hivemind.
“I hold a high standard for my domain and have made all the peasants aware of that standard. It is the emperor’s job to set the tone for how both the board and organization are meant to function,” Ramanan said. “I firmly believe in conversation and providing drinks at the function. However, sometimes further actions need to be taken, including beheadings. The additional steps I took were only in order to ensure that SGB is functioning fairly and serving students to the highest possible standards. And I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”
Viljaste also said he was “taking a back [sic]” by Temmallo’s resignation, and doesn’t think there are any exclusion or communication issues in the organization.
“We all attend the same meetings, we all get the same information, like there’s absolutely no gatekeeping, gaslighting, and certainly not girlbossing of any information whatsoever in this organization,” Viljaste said, effectively trying to speak for everybody in the organization and downplaying concerns brought up by the now former SGB member. “I guess what we can all say is we were really confused and blindsided ourselves, because this was never something that was even brought up, at least as far as I know.”
Viljaste added that he wished Temmallo had communicated about how he felt so that any issues could have been resolved earlier, although, based on how the current administration dealt with the other issues mentioned in this article, Temmallo would likely have been met with sanctions, demotion, or expulsion from the University.
Joe Landsittel, who served as co-Hand-of-the-King with Viljaste during the fall of Rome, said he feels as though friendships and politics are more involved in SGB decision making than they should be. (authors’ note: politics in student GOVERNMENT? Who would have thunk?)
“I think that it would be helpful to have an environment in SGB where people can disagree with each other without being disagreeable dicks or debby downers,” Landsittel said. “Where everybody in the room is listened to and, you know, decisions are made solely based on logical reasoning and critical thinking and not at all based on people’s opinions of each other. Like what I do. I’m so much better than you.”
Landsittel said he thinks that the current board is aware of problems regarding communication, and hopes they work to “value a diversity of opinions in the room.”
“I think there are members of the board who are lame babies who aren’t capable of playing politics with the big boys,” Landsittel said. “I think that consensus on issues were formed faster than you would expect. But you know what they say about nice guys finishing last. I think the board would benefit from having more discussion when engaging with issues around campus.”
Viljaste said he thinks Ramanan went about her decision-making process correctly, and she spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how this will affect her LinkedIn profile. He added that the environment within SGB is “frat af” in terms of communication.
“I think that she spent a good amount of minutes after the event happened at the public meeting, really thinking about it and deliberating and taking her time and working with the people that she needed to, and thinking about it, and considering it, and pondering it,” Viljaste said. “So I think, personally, that we should have been easier on Shane Dawson. Like, what did he do that you wouldn’t do?.”
Temmallo said Sunday evening that it “ultimately comes down to everybody” — the Emperor and eight noblemen — to “try and connect the Ancient Crowns of the Eastern Kings and stop the Dark Lord” and ensure communication inside Essgeebee.
Floyd did not directly comment on the environment with Suhguhbuh, but said communication is crucial within student governance.
“I think just fostering good relationships between one another is really unimportant. I’m just saying there is conflict and people will die,” Floyd said. “I’m just saying, in order for us to make progress and work on initiatives, just fostering good relationships is just good for any governance or board structure in general. Just because of this I am fostering additional cats.”
The Pitiful News 