Adam Shpeen '07 began working during Fall term on an effort to "reform" Student Assembly, an effort that involved recruiting new Assembly members, was organized stealthily through face-to-face conversations and, some argue, has its roots in a personal vendetta.
"We wanted to stay away from Blitz[Mail]," explained Michael Herman '07, who is also involved in the move to reform the Assembly. "We didn't want things to be forwarded out."
Herman pointed to the use of BlitzMail as the reason why Andrew Seal '07 was able to gain information about the group's plans before the group was ready to make the information public. Seal later posted about the group on his blog in an entry titled "Personal Vendetta Puts Ridiculous SA Coup in the Works."
Word-of-mouth organizing was key to the initial formation of the group.
"I spoke to seven individuals face-to-face," Shpeen said. "I told them about the plan; they were supportive. It spread through networks of friends who had the same ideas about [Student Body President Tim Andreadis '07]."
Shpeen's plan was to encourage students to begin attending Assembly meetings in an effort to gain voting rights, which they could then use to pass legislation to reform the body and censure Andreadis. (Under the Assembly's constitution, a student gains voting rights at their third meeting.) Each of the General Assembly meetings this term have seen high attendance levels as a result of an influx of new members.
Shpeen said that though he originally supported Andreadis, he quickly became dissatisfied with Andreadis's leadership in the fall.
"I had originally thought in the fall that [Andreadis] would bring about the reform that I'm advocating now, that he would transform Student Assembly into a body that would achieve real goals on campus that would affect students' lives, like sexual assault," Shpeen said. "But instead, I think he became a visionless leader to work within [the Assembly] -- as Noah [Riner '06] had, as Julia [Hildreth '05] had, just doing business as usual."
Shpeen has characterized the movement as an effort to centralize many aspects of student government under one large umbrella organization, a change which he claims would give students more power.
"Most students don't care about [the Assembly] and there's a reason for that -- [Student Assembly] is toothless, and I wanted to give it more power so students could have a say in the College and student life," Shpeen said.
Shpeen said that he initially became worried about the state of the Assembly under Andreadis's leadership after hearing of Andreadis's choice of committee chairs. Several of the Assembly's senior members chose not to work under Andreadis this year, leading to what Shpeen called a lack of "continuity" within the organization.
Shpeen's qualms about Andreadis' leadership became particularly pronounced after Andreadis sent an inaccurate campus-wide blitz in early October, which reported that a woman had been raped and murdered in a nearby area. The Assembly later issued a correction.
"I'd always been talking all term about reforming [Student Assembly] with my friends," Shpeen said. "But the conversation didn't get serious until the sexual assault blitz and the rally against hate."
The Nov. 29 Solidarity Against Hatred rally was organized after the publishing of a controversial issue of The Dartmouth Review. Shpeen said he felt that during the controversy over the Review's publication, Andreadis personally targeted and threatened certain students.
Shpeen's dissatisfaction with Andreadis was also fueled by Andreadis' handling of the recommendations from the Committee on Standards Task Force. Shpeen chaired the Task Force, whose report saw strong support from Assembly members but was tabled by Acting Dean Dan Nelson late this fall. Shpeen alleges that Andreadis did not do enough to support the report because of his personal objections with some of its recommendations.
While Shpeen had previously said in interviews last week that the reform effort could include an attempt to impeach Andreadis, several members of the group distanced themselves from a move for impeachment, and expressed disappointment that they were unable to present reform legislation at the Jan. 23 meeting.
That legislation would call for a suspension of the Assembly's function and the creation of a reform task force whose membership would be drawn from the entire student body.
Because of time constraints, this proposal was not presented at last week's meeting. Instead, only an amendment expressing no confidence in Andreadis, which failed to pass, was discussed.
Reform movement member Jack Groetzinger '07 said that he wished the no-confidence amendment had not been brought up at Tuesday's meeting at all, noting that the movement's other pieces of legislation are "a little more substantive."
Though the no-confidence legislation must be discussed again by the Assembly under the rules of the Assembly's constitution, Herman declined to comment on what the group's next move will be.
"We're not going to disclose exactly what we are going to do because things have gotten very personal recently," he said.
Indeed, some have argued that the movement to overhaul the Assembly has its roots in a personal conflict between Shpeen and Andreadis.
Critics of the movement, including Andreadis, have argued that Shpeen was motivated to work against Andreadis after Andreadis reported Shpeen to Undergraduate Judicial Affairs for serving alcohol to minors in the Assembly's offices in the Collis Center Fall term.
Shpeen again denied any correlation between the two events.
"The biggest disappointment I see in all of this is that the personal conflict was seen as the motivation," Shpeen said. "It was a way for people to discredit me and what we were doing, and it served as a distraction from what we really wanted to accomplish."
Herman also claimed that personal conflict is not the root cause of the movement, though he said it may have played a role.
"I don't think me or anyone is saying that the incident had nothing to do with this reform movement," Herman said. "But it's certainly not the impetus."
Shpeen's detractors also claim that the reform group is largely composed of Shpeen's friends, many of whom are members of Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity. Shpeen has repeatedly denied any connection between the two groups.
"This wasn't a Chi Gam conspiracy by any means," Shpeen said. "Certainly because I happen to be friends with Chi Gams because I am a Chi Gam it might appear that way, but these were just individuals I spoke to who had the same positions I did."
Staff writer Katy O'Donnell contributed to this article.
