Internal Development Chair Dray Krishnan’s motion to censure Student Life Chair Justin Laskowski will most likely be revoked at Wednesday night’s UPUA meeting.
A censure is the University Park Undergraduate Association’s highest form of non-removal sanction and, if passed, would imply that the assembly is angry with Laskowski and that the action shouldn't be repeated again.
Krishnan said it was decided at Sunday’s steering meeting to discontinue moving forward with it and instead use the incident as a learning experience.
“At the next meeting, I think we are going to have a quick discussion, and I or someone else on Internal Development will kill the motion,” Krishnan said.
Laskowski was censured after attempting to pass a piece of legislation through the Student Life committee that was similar to one that the Internal Development committee previously failed to pass.
Laskowski said he is not concerned with the censure and is hoping for an apology from Krishnan.
“I am not worried at all,” Laskowski said. “In the grand scheme of things, it was a rushed motion by my colleague. I followed the right procedures and precautions and everything was taken the right way.”
Although he is foreseeing the killing of the motion, Krishnan said he still doesn’t feel what Laskowski did was right.
“I still think that the process was abused, but we decided not to go forward with the legislation,” Krishnan said. “I hope that it does serve as a lesson to the assembly and in the future, I hope this doesn’t happen again.”
The last time a censure was passed was within the 5th assembly in 2010. Former UPUA President Christian Ragland was censured for appointing a chief of staff through a loophole.
“I was at a conference in Seattle when the assembly censured me, but I wasn’t upset,” Ragland said. “I was on a mission, and I wasn’t letting anyone get in my way. I got censured because the assembly went without choosing a chief of staff for six months, so I found a loophole and appointed one.”
With regard to the censure motioned by Krishnan, Ragland said he believes the assembly should avoid censuring in order to maintain a good reputation with the student body and veer away from possibly conveying the impression that all they do is police.
“If I was the assembly, I would do everything to avoid the censure because it could make UPUA take a step backward in their reputation with the students,” Ragland said. “They need to ask themselves, ‘Is the censure really going to help the students?’ I hope the person who did it wrong learns from it and moves on.”
