Dear editor,

On Wednesday night, in my capacity as co-chair of the Student Association’s Community Engagement Committee, I had the privilege of hosting a campus event to raise money for young female students from the North Side Learning Center. Throughout the night, young girls used the event as a platform to praise the promise and opportunities America provides like seeking educational opportunities without discrimination based on gender, race or religion. While my committee tirelessly worked, other SA members were tirelessly working to use the Judicial Review Board to reinforce their power and privilege.

SA’s Judicial Review Board is the judicial branch of the student government that handles reports of constitutional and student representative violations. The JRB should be a safeguard, but instead the JRB has become little more than a lapdog for some members to harass their opposition and settle scores.

Wednesday, I received notice that I’d been accused of violating constitutional provision 4.2, which prohibits engaging in coercive, underhanded or manipulative acts to gain an advantage within SA. These are very serious acts to be accused of. This accusation sadly, isn’t surprising.

Last week, during an unofficial cabinet meeting, I spoke truth to powerful privileged male cabinet members as they launched baseless and moral-less attacks on a candidate in an effort to force him to drop out of the race. The meeting was emotional and confrontational. And while ultimately, my position prevailed, some cabinet members left the meeting with grudges for being called out on their hypocrisy. And one member took his grudge to the only place willing to be his puppet, the JRB.

This is wrong. The JRB has allowed itself to devolve into a weapon for those who seek revenge and retribution. They serve the petty, not the people or the principles of justice that the JRB was founded on.

I’m not the only victim here. The JRB incentivizes members to make baseless accusations with no recourse or punishment for making claims that are blatantly false. There are more victims of the JRB’s unjust system. Even in the report against me, the same accusation was made against another woman of color at the meeting advocating for herself.

Two women of color being wrongly persecuted by a justice system openly operating as a vehicle for injustice. This is America. This is Syracuse University. This is pathetic. The students of Syracuse deserve better.

Sincerely,

Iris Guzman

Co-chair of SA Community Engagement

Published on April 21, 2019 at 3:42 pm