KU Student Executive Committee demands top student body officers resign; officers pledge support for minority issues

The Kansas University Student Executive Committee voted Friday night to demand the resignations of three of the Student Senate’s top officers.

On a 6-3 vote, with one committee member abstaining, the committee adopted “a motion of no confidence in the leadership of Student Body President Jessie Pringle, Student Body Vice President Zach George and Chief of Staff Adam Moon,” according to a tweeted document from the committee’s meeting.

The committee also pledged its support for 15 diversity-related demands issued earlier this week by a student-led group calling itself Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk.

As part of its motion against the Senate’s top officers, the committee demanded their resignations by 5 p.m. Wednesday, asking the full Senate to take up impeachment measures if Pringle, George and Moon refuse to step down.

On Saturday morning, the Student Senate released a statement signed by Pringle, George and Moon saying they plan to continue serving despite the call for their resignations.

According to committee members, at a KU forum on race earlier this week, Pringle and George did not “stand in solidarity with their black peers and proclaim that Black Lives Matter.”

“Black students do not feel that the Student Senate provides adequate representation, funding and support for their needs,” the committee wrote.

In their joint statement Saturday, Pringle, George and Moon professed support for minority student groups.

“Black lives matter. Black lives matter at the University of Kansas,” they wrote.

According to the Senate rules and regulations to which the committee referred in its written statement, a bill of impeachment must be signed by one-fourth of the voting members of the Senate. It then proceeds through a potentially lengthy committee process that leads to an official hearing with majority support. A two-thirds majority vote, on roll call, is required to formally discipline the impeached party.

Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little said in a message to campus earlier Friday that her administration will begin sharing information “early next week” about how KU will move forward on the issue of racism.