On April 18, the Student Assembly (SA) met from 4:45 to 9:05 p.m. to debate the results of the Office of Ethics Report regarding alleged misconduct by its key officers. During the meeting, Rocco DeLorenzo ‘24 resigned and Clyde Lederman ‘26 retained his office.
In March, the SA Office of Ethics was asked to investigate SA President Patrick Kuehl ‘24, Executive Vice President Claire Ting ‘25, VP of Finance Rocco DeLorenzo ‘24, and VP of Internal Operations, Clyde Lederrman ‘26. Both Kuehl and Lettermen also serve as voting members of the City of Ithaca Common Council. Ting gained national attention for her resolution requiring faculty to give trigger warnings when classes discuss provocative material. DeLorenzo led the biannual allocation of student activity funds to specific organizations.
After weeks of investigation, the Office of Ethics released its report on Sunday, April 14, making recommendations on Kuehl, Lederman and DeLorenzo. However, the Office of Ethics referred the conduct of Claire Ting to the Office of Elections because Ting was one of the current candidates for SA President.
On April 14, the Student Assembly debated from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. without reaching any decision. A two-thirds vote of all sitting members is required to remove someone from the SA or from one of its officer positions. At the start of the debate, Ting got all of the members named in the report to promise to abstain in any votes. Although members of the SA asked extensive questions of the Office of Ethics about its recommendations, no final vote could be taken because there were not sufficient voting members present given the abstentions.
On Tuesday, April 16, the Office of Elections voted 10-0 to disqualify Ting for running for SA President.
At the April 18 meeting, some of Ting’s supporters tried to get this disqualification reversed, but Kuehl ruled that Ting’s only remedy was to appeal the Office of Election’s determination under the Election Rules. The SA cannot vote to overturn any eligibility determination. The charges against Ting centered upon her leaking materials to the cu-dispatch website in an apparent effort to discourage Lederman from running against her in the 2024 SA Presidential election.
Although Lederman decided not to run after he and his girlfriend received death threats, and both Keuhl and DeLorzenso were graduating, the Ting faction pressed ahead seeking the removal of both Lederman and DeLorenzo from their offices and from the SA memberships.
The April 18 meeting was contentious in part because some SA members attended briefly and gave their proxies to other members to vote. At one point, the meeting was recessed so that Kuehl could phone those members to verify who should hold their proxies. At another point, there were not enough voting members, including those proxies, to constitute the two thirds needed to remove anyone.
Finally, at around 6:30 p.m the SA went into Executive Session to discuss confidential information. Based on prior reports, this could have involved Title IX charges that had been pending against another SA President Candidate in the 2023 election. Both DeLorenzo and Lederman were accused of not being transparent with that Title IX information until May 9, 2023, the day that the SA voted to vacate the President’s seat which allowed Kuehl to become President. DeLonrenzo claimed that the Title IX rules under Policy 6.4 limited the extent that public discussion of pending cases is allowed.
Other reports of the Executive Session indicate that some female members of the SA Appropriations Committee were concerned that DeLorenzo had made demeaning comments about the funding of feminist advocacy groups. However, the Office of Ethics found that DeLorenzo had treated all groups fairly.
Ultimately, DeLorenzo resigned during the meeting, and the SA elected Zora deRahm as the new VP of Finance. deRahm is also a current candidate for SA President.
Next, without going into Executive Session, the SA voted 11-6-10 on the question of removing Ledereman as VP for Internal Operations. Because less than two-thirds of the membership voted in favor, Lederman retains both his office and his voting seat on the SA.
The next meeting of the SA will include Provost Michael Kotlikoff to discuss the Interim Expressive Activities Policy. The meeting after that will be the transition to those seated after the ongoing 2024 election.
