SGA senate speaker David Paul Hilton’s resignation during Wednesday night’s meeting will be effective Nov. 3. | Courtesy of UH
The Speaker of the Senate, David Paul Hilton, has resigned from his position in the Student Government Association as of Nov. 3, he announced at the biweekly SGA meeting on Wednesday.
Hilton shared his resignation during the closing remarks at the meeting, citing the manner the special election is being conducted and how, as well as treatment of his senators by the justice department for his departure.
“The Senate, as adults, is fully capable of making its own decisions as it did when presented with the testimonies of multiple cabinet members and their experiences,” Hilton said. “My senators are not children who are being manipulated or conducting dirty work, but are doing the job that they were put here to do.”
Also in his resignation speech, Hilton added how an entire website was created against him and a few other senators, saying the website called him “corrupt and evil.”
Comments were made by the justice department during the meeting, specifically by Nadiia Hutcherson, the attorney general.
“I think it goes without saying what the definition of impartiality is,” Hutcherson said. “But I think we can hopefully all agree that impartiality does not mean that you have to be on the other side of attacks on someone’s character, and things like that silently.”
In the last two weeks, senators issued grievances towards the justice department’s recall special election code.
During the meeting, the Senate passed a resolution to amend the election code to allow students to either advocate for or against recalling Arsalan Darbin in the special election, overturning a clause in the election code that previously disallowed this.
While the amendment passed, the SGA Supreme Court issued an opinion statement saying that this was unconstitutional since this election a special election, and not a regular election.
In response, other cabinet members, like director of external affairs David Ngyuen, said the SGA is going through a tough era with the handling of the special election and the attacks members are making on one another.
“It has been very, very disappointing and disheartening just to see how broken SGA has become,” Ngyuen said. “Although this was inevitable, these are definitely indeed dark times that we are experiencing. It just feels like corruption has plagued this organization, you know, attacks on each other on the mishandling of our democratic processes and is very concerning.”
The Senate will now nominate the next Speaker of the Senate, and a vote will take place on Hilton’s successor at the next SGA meeting on Nov. 4.
Voting for the election will take place on GetInvolved from Oct. 26 through 27.
