When 428 students chose Nicole Artzer '94 to be Assembly President last spring, she promised a student government that would serve the students instead of pushing personal political agenda.
Ten months later, the Assembly is locked in the worst political in-fighting in recent memory, and the end result might be an Assembly torn apart by political dissension.
Seven of the 12 members of the Student Assembly Executive Committee have demanded Artzer's resignation for one simple reason: they cannot work with her.
On one side of the battle is a group of irate executive committee members, who claim Artzer continually puts her own interests in front of the Assembly's and is an ineffective leader.
On the other side is Artzer, who said she believes she has done nothing but try her best to serve her constituency: the student body.
There seem to be no right answers, just differences of semantics and opinions.
The seven executive committee members want Artzer removed at any cost - resignation or impeachment included.
"What you will find is that if Nicole Artzer remains in office, nothing will get done," said Mark Waterstraat '94, one of the seven protesting committee members. "The Assembly will be a laughing-stock."
The executive committee, made up of the president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and the chairs of the Assembly's committees, decides what issues the Assembly should address.
Matthew Berry '94, Assembly Secretary Grant Bosse '94, Assembly Vice President Steve Costalas '94, Alex Morgan '95, Assembly Treasurer John Steiner '94, Kenji Sugahara '95 and Waterstraat signed a letter demanding Artzer's resignation by 8:00 p.m. tonight.
Artzer said she will fight the impeachment and said she wants to continue helping the student body.
"I want to emphasize to students if they really mean business about improving student life at the College, then we better get to it," she said.
The issue, at least technically, is a motion passed last week by the Assembly concerning Dartmouth Dining Services. The motion, which Artzer opposed, called for a one-day boycott of DDS.
The supporters of the motion said Artzer worked to undermine the motion after the Assembly passed it. They claimed Artzer went to administrators and told them not to meet with boycott-supporters.
Artzer said she did nothing to try to hurt the boycott -instead she worked only to bring about the changes in DDS that the Assembly wanted.
But what the seven committee members are protesting goes way beyond the simple DDS motion. Simply put, they question Artzer's leadership ability, citing fundamental problems that have existed since the beginning of Fall term.
The call for removal is merely the culmination of a term and a half of bad relations between Artzer and many members of the executive committee.
"I think what the problem is that she never totally got the hang of things," Junior Class President and Assembly member Tim Rodenberger '95 said.
"Things got off to a rough start and I don't think she was ever able to turn it around," he said.
In the very first Assembly meeting of Fall term, Bosse challenged the constitutionality of many of Artzer's executive committee appointments because some of the students Artzer appointed were not elected to the general Assembly in the Spring term elections.
A special committee eventually decided to overturn Artzer's appointments and make them go through normal Assembly nominations procedures. Eventually, the nominations committee, chaired by Waterstraat and Berry, denied membership to Artzer's roommate, Rachel Perri '94.
"I knew within the first two weeks it was going to be a long year," Waterstraat said.
Following this confrontation, Artzer lashed out at the general Assembly, telling them to remember what their purpose as Assembly members was.
"You ran on a campaign to represent the student body - that's where your responsibility is," she said in October. "Keep that in mind ... I really do believe each and every one of you is still committed to the students."
Artzer was speaking specifically to a group of 15 students called Reform SA!, who won Assembly seats on anti-incumbency platforms.
Reform SA! and Artzer squared off several times during Fall term. Reform SA! claimed Artzer was ignoring them, even through they controlled a majority of the Assembly. Artzer replied by calling Reform SA! a divisive group within the Assembly.
Of the seven signatures on the letter, five were members of Reform SA!, and Costalas was endorsed by the group in the Assembly elections.
Finally, there's the question of who wants the power.
If Artzer is removed from office, Costalas would take over the presidency because of an amendment to the Assembly's constitution, passed Fall term.
Costalas has never made a secret of his desire for the presidency.
"I want the presidency," Costalas said in April on the day president-elect Stewart Shirasu '94 resigned after being implicated in several scandals.
And while it remains to be seen if Artzer will be impeached, the damage to the Assembly may be permanent.
"The main reason many students were elected was they were promising a change from business as usual ... and they are doing the same as exact thing as in previous years," Rodenberger said.
But the authors of the letter said they believe the Assembly could go on.
"We're not going to change our focus - the message will be the same," Bosse said. "We're just going to have a more articulate messenger."
Costalas said he thinks the Assembly can overcome the difficulties.
"We need to have a period of healing to put our state of affairs in order," Costalas said. "Then we can move on our major projects and build some momentum going into the April elections."
