Bye-Bye Kenyan

Today's Student Center Governing Board meeting could be the end of two legacies.

Members of the board plan to push for a change in often-convoluted and cumbersome bylaws that lent themselves to what some consider misuse.

And the reign of Kenyan McCarthy Carter, the longest standing SCGB chair and the member who's actions provoked the call for bylaw changes, ends today.

McCarthy Carter, 24, last semester's Associated Students president, did not violate the SCGB bylaws to retain his chairmanship of the board.

Like any clever politician, he used its rules for his favor.

But at today's meeting, the Rules Committee of the SCGB will question his use and plead to the board that the rules be changed so a chair cannot appoint himself to a vacant position, like McCarthy Carter did this summer.

"From what people tell me, he has been the most skilled manipulator ever," said Sheldon Norberg, 34, the SCGB Rules Committee chair.

The SCGB runs all operations in the Cesar Chavez Student Union. Its policy involves everything from the price of a chicken burrito to the color of meeting room furniture and even a $9 million renovation and expansion project. It also controls more than $2.5 million from student fees annually.

The chair of the 15-officer board must be a student chosen through an in-house election. Seven officers are administrative representatives. Five student officers hold two-year "at-large" positions, meaning they are voted in by the student body. Three student officers hold year-long positions appointed by AS, two appointed from the AS Legislature and one appointed from the AS Board of Directors. Any of the eight students can be chair.

Last spring McCarthy Carter was his own appointed officer from the AS Board of Directors and he was elected as chair of the SCGB.

When the new AS administration took control last spring, McCarthy Carter, as the previous administration's board of directors' representative, was supposed to be replaced by a new representative during the May governing board meeting, meaning that McCarthy Carter would have to leave office and also his chairmanship before the summer began. But the administration's appointment to the governing board was delayed until July due to internal conflicts over whom to appoint, and McCarthy Carter held his position for a crucial additional month.

Within that month, two vacancies on the governing board opened when two officers failed to meet academic requirements after spring grades were released.

McCarthy Carter saw his opportunity and took it.

At the decisive July 18 governing board meeting McCarthy Carter made the unorthodox move of appointing himself as a temporary replacement to one of the two vacancies on the board. The bylaws did not say he could not.

For about one hour, according to the minutes of the meeting, he held two positions -- his self-appointment and his original position as a representative of the AS board. A new board of directors' representative, Cynthia Artiga, officially replaced him toward the end of the meeting.

The move allowed McCarthy Carter to stay as chair because he was still a member of the governing board only now in a different position as a representative-at-large.

Today, the Rules Committee will present policy where an amendment would be written in the bylaws disallowing future self-appointments, Norberg said.

They also want a more clearly defined process for the temporary replacement of an officer. It is not clear in the current bylaws which one of two steps apply to find a replacement.

In McCarthy Carter's case, he followed a section in the bylaws that says a vacant position can be filled by an appointment of the chair. A second section of the bylaws -- not applied by McCarthy Carter -- says there must be a public notice, an application and an in-house approval.

"Either the rules are silent, or the rules allowed Kenyan (McCarthy Carter) to do what he did," said Joseph Julian, the dean of human resources and an administrative representative to the SCGB. Julian said he was reluctant to get involved but that he would not have advised anyone to appoint himself to a position.

He also had concerns that McCarthy Carter's moves over the summer, while within bylaws, might be perceived by the outside observer as unethical.

"I would say it was not unethical. Those were the bylaws we had in place. And that's how the chair of the board chose to use it," McCarthy Carter said.

For his part, he said he welcomes any changes to the bylaws that would make them tighter, but he believes using the rules to their fullest extent is the role of a good leader.

"I knew I could be effective in my job, my record as chair shows that," he said. "If people say I did it just because I could, I say look at the bylaws and make changes.

"Through my leadership I have challenged a number of people. And through those challenges, I've made them good leaders. You're teaching them the art of leadership."

McCarthy Carter, a political science senior, said he will be leaving office when the seat he appointed himself to is replaced, ending a long career in student politics. He has been elected to five offices in student government, most recently as SCGB chair and AS president last fall.

McCarthy Carter believes the action by the Rules Committee is not a personal vendetta against him or what he did, and shouldn't be, he said.

"They should be changing the bylaws because it best serves the student center. If they're doing it to spite me, that's a Band-Aid stitch, because I'll be long gone."

[ Golden Gater Online October 3, 1996 ]

[ Top]