A motion to allow amendments to a motion that suspended student-at-large Victoria Romero from UMSU meetings was ruled out of order.

Motion 0598, brought forward by the judicial board at the Feb. 29 board of directors (BoD) meeting, requested that the board hear amendments to motion 0594, which suspended Romero from meetings following a vote by the BoD on Jan. 25.

After a ten minute recess, the UMSU chair of the board Elbethel Masresha announced that she was ruling the motion out of order. During the challenge to the ruling that followed, Masresha called the motion “redundant.”

The “judicial [board] is […] giving themselves more power than they are permitted,” she said.

As of now, UMSU’s governance and operations manual describes the judicial board’s mandate as receiving and evaluating complaints and appeals of elected and appointed UMSU members and committees. It is also responsible for hearing appeals of motions from UMSU members.

Rohan Sethi, judicial board chairperson, said the board presented the motion “so that the board of directors does not feel that we are superseding or stepping out of our jurisdiction” regarding the appeal process for UMSU’s safe environment policy.

Sethi said motion 0594 was brought forward on Jan. 25 by executive committee because “the governance and operations manual did not describe procedure on how to adequately address the situation we all recognize as quite unprecedented.”

Masresha said the motion “undermines the current rules in UMSU’s governing documents.”

“What [the judicial board] are trying to do is contradicting the procedure already laid out for them to make decisions,” she said.

The BoD voted to sustain the chair’s ruling in a nine to five majority, meaning that amendments to Romero’s appeal will not be heard or voted on by the board.

07/03/2024: The article previously read that the UMSU judicial board put forward motion 0594. The article was corrected to reflect that the executive committee put forward the motion.