Impeachment articles against Safdari fail; trial will not be held
Updated 1:00 a.m.
Muhammad Safdari will not face an impeachment trial after all.
The Associated Student Government Rules Committee decided Tuesday that the case against the newly-elected academic director did not warrant a trial, according to ASG Parliamentarian Grace Adamson. Adamson declined to comment further, but said the committee would release a full report on Wednesday.
The articles of impeachment charged Safdari with “unduly and unfairly influencing the outcome” of the run-off election between Mike McGee and Bill Pulte. The morning before polls opened on April 17, Safdari sent out a widely-forwarded e-mail accusing Pulte of using “extralegal” tactics to win votes.
After the decision was announced, Safdari said he wanted to “close the chapter” on this incident. He said he regretted sending the e-mail but that the action did not merit impeachment.
“I understand the spirit of why [the impeachment] was being pushed, but there were no merits for the case,” Safdari said. “Once they looked at the information, they realized there was just a lot of confusion and misunderstandings.”
Former ASG Parliamentarian Will Upton, who co-authored the articles for Safdari’s impeachment, expressed “deep disappointment” with the decision.
“Not moving on impeachment sets the precedent that people can use tactics like the e-mail and get away with it,” he said.
Upton also said the decision called into question the effectiveness of the Rules Committee. “Political biases left over from the campaign influenced the decision of the committee,” he said.
McGee said he is glad that the issue has been resolved and is ready to move on to productive work, with the help of Safdari.
“It’s naïve to say everything will be 100 percent great” from here on out, considering the tension Safdari’s e-mail and the impeachment process have stirred, McGee said. He said Safdari should continue to focus on “show[ing] the students why they elected him” in the first place.
McGee said he is confident in the integrity and effectiveness of the Rules Committee and that he was glad to see the “facts win out. We didn’t want any personal decisions to get in the way.”
Although part of the case for Safdari’s impeachment was the claim that his e-mail skewed the results of the election in favor of McGee, the ASG president said that the committee’s decision doesn’t give his election victory any extra validity or legitimacy.
“Elections are interesting because there’s no exact way to know why everyone voted the way they did,” he said. “There are always outside factors, I can’t control that.”
McGee won the run-off with 60 percent of the vote. In the general election April 15, Pulte garnered 48.6 percent of the vote, compared to McGee’s 47.9 percent — a difference of 33 votes.
McGee said he still believes he won because “I met thousands of students” and clearly communicated his plans for the future of ASG.
Pulte declined to comment for this story.
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If upton is saying that political biases were the bases of the decision would’t Grace Adamason (formally an asset and huge supporter of the PulteDawson team) who is the head of rules had presented her bias and it would have gone the other way? I’m guessing uptons just pissed he lost again.
Unbiased
April 28, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Safdari is, in my opinion, a piggish joke of an ASG representative who needs to resign.
Me
April 28, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Actually, Grace does not get to vote. But the five other committee members can and that is why the vote turned out that way. All were McGee supporters.
RE: Unbiased
April 28, 2009 at 11:33 pm
You are stupid. Two were on the election commission aka not supporters of any campaign. MORE IMPORTANTLY this was not a trial against Mike McGee, it was a trial against Safdari. it’s not like they put duct tape over Adamson’s mouth. idiot
re: re: unbiased
April 28, 2009 at 11:54 pm
This is absolutely incredible. ASG is even more of a joke than I thought. Safdari outright lies in an email which clearly influenced the election results, and he doesn’t even get impeached? How are other student leaders supposed to work with him? How can anyone trust him after what he’s done?
Safdari might not have been impeached thanks to ASG corruption, but he is still a lame duck who has the respect of absolutely no one on campus. For the sake of us all, he needs to resign.
LOL
April 29, 2009 at 12:17 am
Safdari…RESIGN for the sake of ASG and for the sake of Northwestern.
Anonymous
April 29, 2009 at 12:58 am
it’s strange, before the run off results were released, all i heard was that McGee would lose the election because of Safdari’s e-mail. but once McGee won, it was because Safdari sent the e-mail. . .
make up your mind folks
René Jovel aka SupaKat
April 29, 2009 at 2:50 am
ASG is just like that kid that threw itself down the stairs to get attention. Over and over again.
The general feeling is that while many people thought it was a little bit fishy that an email was sent out, no one outside of ASG actually cared. The perpetuation of this “trial” rumor has instead served to push this student “institution” further from the actual student body’s collective mind and possibly further discredited an already discredited institution through the revelation of what actually goes on in ASG, a lot of yelling and hand waving, and then nothing. But wow, it looks great on a resume…
Patrick
April 29, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Safdari Blows.
Nick
April 29, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Mo- you have a solid platform–now let’s see what you got.
More open courseware! MIT’s kickin our ass!
Vikram Karandikar
April 29, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I have to laugh at McGee’s quote:
He said Safdari should continue to focus on “show[ing] the students why they elected him” in the first place
Because we had no other choice?
LOL
May 2, 2009 at 12:16 am