Last night, College Council (CC) voted 12-7 to retain Treasurer Spencer Carrillo ’20 and mandated he attend educational sanctions to improve his performance. CC also voted 11-7 to censure CC Presidents Lizzy Hibbard ’19 and Moisés Roman Mendoza ’19 for raising the charges against Carrillo without placing it on the agenda or notifying CC before the Nov. 13 meeting.
The vote followed a report by the Student Government Conduct Committee (SGCC), chaired by CC’s Vice President for Student Organizations Maria Heredia ’20 and Vice President for Community and Diversity Shane Beard ’20, which found Carrillo failed to meet some of his duties but recommended against removal. CC did not livestream or record the meeting – in contravention of its own bylaws – and made all votes taken during the meeting anonymous, asking CC members to close their eyes.
Hibbard and Roman Mendoza presented the case against Carrillo. They reported that he failed to close out CC’s accounts on time over the summer and delayed the College’s audit, failed to file vouchers – as noted by administrators in the Controller’s Office and the Office of Student Life – and communicated unprofessionally and unreliably with CC subgroup treasurers, the CC presidents and the Minority Coalition chairs.
During the summer and fall, Carrillo responded simply “No” or “No thank you” to numerous requests from Hibbard and Roman Mendoza to discuss his performance. “Moises and I tried reaching out to Spencer privately many times, spoke with multiple administrators, and brought this issue up at the CC executive meeting prior to discussing it in general Council,” Hibbard said. “We regret it had to rise to this level. As per the CC Constitution the presidents have the sole responsibility to ‘set the agenda for the College Council.’”
Carrillo defended his performance. Regarding the summer transfers, he wrote, “That error was not a result of my malpractice…it was clearly confirmed to me by a previous Treasurer that when I completed the transfers didn’t matter.” He also alleged that the submission of many vouchers was not his job, but the assistant treasurer’s, and defended his communication style: “If I am emailing someone who I know well or am friends with, I am not going to go through the tedium of drafting a formal letter to them.”
Other representatives called for consideration of the method by which Hibbard and Roman Mendoza brought the matter up on Nov. 13, which they percieved as inappropriate. “Any president bringing complaints forward in such a way, effectively lambasting a council member in public for what came off as personal reasons, is acting in a way that is distasteful, unwarranted, and unprecedented. It is something that cannot be tolerated by this or any Council moving forward,” said Representative Lance Ledet ’21.
Ultimately, CC felt that Carrillo’s performance fell short of what his duties required, but agreed that it implicated broader concerns with CC’s bylaws and operations and did not merit removal. “If in any way Spencer were being a structural impediment to making our system better, I’d understand that. But he’s not. He’s willing to work on these things and he wants to,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Abel Romero ’19.
“We appreciate the hard work put in by Maria and Shane,” Hibbard and Roman Mendoza said. “Their report found Spencer in violation of three of our bylaws and we agree that their proposed suggestions of structural reforms are a good way to move forward after the vote tonight.”
The full investigative SGCC report can be found below.
