The Tim and Adam Show: Low Stakes Poker

By Adi Sivaraman and Jared Zelski | Monday, July 16, 2007

Student Assembly saw a record turnout of roughly 140 voting members and several dozen additional spectators Tuesday night for the long-anticipated vote of no confidence in President Tim Andreadis. The voting community consisted of the regular Assembly “insiders,” a strong showing of members who attended the constitutional three meetings to gain voting privileges, and an unheard of turnout of 70 organizational representatives—including the much vaunted but seldom seen Evelyn Waugh Society.

Andreadis, given the circumstances, did an admirable job remaining stoic throughout the night. He opened the meeting by addressing the obvious reason for the above average turnout at what many in the student body have come to see as a mostly useless student governing body. Despite the charade of business as usual, the atmosphere was tense as everyone impatiently awaited the expected urging of Andreadis’ resignation. It was left off the agenda despite passing a standing committee the week before 5-3.

The meeting place for the General Assembly was moved from its usual location in the bowels of Carson hall to the large lecture room in Dartmouth Hall. Before any shots were fired, the factions were apparent; with the President’s sympathizers sitting in the front, closer to the stage, and the reform-minded voting bloc further towards the back, it was clear that party lines had been drawn.

The roll call revealed 70 new organizational representatives at the meeting. The new members were generally believed to be almost exclusively supporters of the Andreadis Presidency. Almost without exception they were new to the Assembly and had made no effort to influence College politics during the last term.

Seen as an attempt to stuff the ballot box, Michael Herman ’07 moved to veto the voting rights of the organizational members for whom this was the first meeting and who had not been represented in the Assembly in terms past. The reasoning for the motion given by Herman and his supporters was the suspected intentions of the new members to influence the Assembly vote just this once. He argued they had no intention of remaining involved over the course of the whole year. Herman, striking a Hamiltonian pose in front of the angry mob of illiberal opponents he faced, defended the motion by arguing that the new members should have their voting rights suspended for at least one week, thus guaranteeing that the sans-coulottes would not seize control of the student governing body. Most of the opponents argued that old members should have “good faith” in those now wanting to join. Herman’s measure was, however, struck down by more than a two-thirds majority.

After the attempt to strike new organizations from the voting role, all 11 of the Executive Board’s members proceeded to introduce themselves. The reason for this was unstated, though painfully obvious, and afterwards the Assembly got down to business.

This was followed by a PowerPoint presentation of the Student Assembly’s progress in its push for the “Dartmoose.” The Assembly was divided as the presentation moved forward. At one point the point man had to leave the stage, shaken by the heckling his hard work was receiving. Upon the unveiling of the “official” sketch (a “cool” moose giving a thumbs up with his Dartmouth jersey on), a person in attendance loudly pointed out that moose don’t have thumbs, filling the hall with laughter the rest of the presentation was lost in loud arguments between audience members, accompanied by the requisite cheering or hissing.

The first piece of legislation on the docket called for the transfer of control of the Uh-Oh blitz system from the Student Assembly to the Office of the Register. Adam Shpeen ‘07, the leader of the grassroots movement to reform the SA, ended the charade and presented the legislation for which all were gathered.

Shpeen attached an amendment to the Uh-Oh resolution for a vote of no-confidence in President Tim Andreadis. The amendment was multifaceted and presented a range of criticism against the current presidency. Specifically, it stipulated that given Andreadis’ campaign promises to address sexual assault through a zoning plan that never materialized, his inflammatory and false blitz about a nearby sexual predator on the prowl, his unilateral efforts to undermine the progress and reforms the Assembly overwhelmingly passed last term, his targeting and marginalization of students associated with The Dartmouth Review, his intentional sinking of the vital COS reform, and his overall incapability to unify the campus, accomplish anything, or fairly represent the Dartmouth student body, the Assembly should strongly urge Andreadis to resign.

This came as little surprise. The movement to remove Andreadis has been in the works for at least a few weeks and been at the center of campus political debate for the better part of January. The movement, spearheaded by former vice president of academic affairs Adam Shpeen, rapidly snowballed into a very significant threat to Andreadis by virtue of the fact that many Greek organizations, pragmatists, and others looking for a more effective student governing body supported it. Though SA, and Andreadis in particular, are no strangers to criticism, the organic nature of the movement, combined with its meteoric rise in support, presented the Executive Board with a very real threat.

The aims of the movement evolved with the nature of the constituency that supported it: originally simply a plan to impeach the current president, the movement, in its current form, aims to remove the existing Executive Board, suspend the assembly for a limited period of time and call for campus-wide elections of a committee to draw up a new Assembly constitution. Additionally, in line with its aim to curb wasteful spending and achieve tangible results, the movement also aimed to somehow unify SA, COSO, and Programming Board both politically and financially.

The reform movement, however, has not been without critics of its own. Assembly loyalists have accused the movement of being grounded in a personal dispute between Andreadis and Shpeen that resulted in academic and potential professional ramifications for the latter. Shpeen attempted to clarify this matter at the meeting Tuesday: “What you did to me, Tim, I believe is wrong. But this has nothing to do with me or you.” Regardless of Shpeen’s motivations, the reform voting bloc as a whole was unequivocal about its genuine intent to bring about positive change.

The Parliamentarian, the sole individual in charge of the rules and procedures of the General Assembly, brought the first objection to the Shpeen’s amendment. He claimed the amendment was an independent piece of legislation and didn’t propose any actual action, thus requiring a higher threshold (two-thirds as opposed to a simple majority) to pass. This argument, however, was soon shown to be misconceived; the amendment specifically called upon the assembly to urge Andreadis to resign. In addition, an amendment by its very nature is attached to a resolution; in this case, a resolution calling for the transfer of the Uh-Oh blitzes. As soon as this was clarified, the amendment was brought up for debate.

As soon as the speaker’s list was opened, dozens of people crowded onto the list, hoping to influence the vote to attach the amendment to the resolution. The arguments, generally speaking, can be consigned into five categories: Andreadis defending himself, procedural objections to the amendment, ad hominem attacks on Shpeen, those intent on listing of the achievements of the current Executive Board, and the arguments for reform brought up by Shpeen and his supporters.

Andreadis’ defense (as opposed to previous defenses) lacked in personal attacks or grandstanding; this was, unfortunately enough, taken care of by many of those who spoke after him. He went through the list of allegations in the amendment, one by one, and attempted to refute them. He did, however, defend his conduct during the “Rally Against Hate” last term by indicating that he thought what he did was not only acceptable, but just.

The procedural objections proved to be the least productive. Instead of bringing up tangible arguments against the constitutionality of the amendment, most speakers simply made normative claims. This is presumably because either a) the amendment was constitutional or b) no one in SA knows what the constitution says. In either case, the result was a slew of people who told Shpeen that it was “wrong” to bring up the vote in the way that he did and that he “shouldn’t have” done it that way. All the while, Shpeen sat patiently waiting for a warrant, save some sort of false moral righteousness that never materialized.

The next category of speakers was that whose members personally chided Shpeen. Despite Shpeen’s protestations that the reform movement was not a personal vendetta and that the size of the movement was evidence enough that he, if not fully genuine in his claim, was effectively correct anyway. Nonetheless, speaker after speaker insisted on characterizing the entire movement, and not just Shpeen’s role in it, as personally motivated. The speakers varied from the functionally illiterate to one individual who possessed an impressive amount of oratorical flair. They all, however, seemed to miss the point. One speaker even went so far as to claim that alcohol was an illegal substance.

This group was closely related to the one that followed it; just as the former group focused on Shpeen’s own disciplinary record, this group sent up the red herring of Andreadis’ own friendly stance to many groups on campus. In a characteristically middle-school political mindset, they failed to realize that the movement had issue with Andreadis’ presidency, and not Andreadis himself.

Finally, Shpeen and his supporters were allowed to speak. Speaking on behalf of the movement, Jack Groetzinger ’07 clearly articulated the many shortcomings of the current presidency, including its inability to be relevant in the eyes of the administration and its ineffectiveness in achieving scarcely anything.

Near the end of the speaker’s list was Shpeen himself, who as the leader of the movement addressed the Assembly directly. Having a mountain of disingenuous criticism piled against him, Shpeen started by outlining the goals of the movement, denying any personal vendetta. He went on to elaborate his vision for a more constructive, effective SA, and how that required the resignation of the current President. He criticized Andreadis’ inability to deliver on his campaign promises of a sexual assault zoning plan and further accused the president of attempting to drum up support by inciting panic in the wake of his false rape blitz. He outlined the double standard employed by the president: Andreadis endorsed a pong tournament for underage Assembly members and then turned around to report his political opponent Shpeen for also serving alcohol to minors. He made a compelling case linking the removal of Andreadis to actual reform of the Student Assembly.

The final group was sympathetic to the removal of Andreadis and reform of the Student Assembly but felt uneasy that the legislation had been introduced as an amendment and not as separate legislation. The reformers pointed out, however, that the Executive Board had specifically tabled this legislation, which under normal circumstance would have come before the General Assembly on Tuesday night. Nevertheless, many Assembly members maintained their idealistic qualms with the manor the legislation was brought forward.

The final vote came to 90-44 in favor of doing… well, nothing. Andreadis shall remain in office. It should be noted, however, that the tally indicates the total number of voting representatives was 134, of which 70 were organizational representatives. Speculation is now rampant (post meeting) about what the end result would have looked like had Herman’s attempted veto succeeded. The question, as to how prevalent the push on campus for Andreadis’ resignation is, remains to loom large. One can be certain, however, that the verbal sparring seen at Tuesday night’s meeting won’t be the last.

The Tim and Adam Show: Low Stakes Poker

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