A move to impeach the vice president of the University of Massachusetts Republican Club by President Brad DeFlumeri failed last night during an emergency meeting of the organization. The vote split down the middle of members eligible to cast a ballot, with seven in favor of the motion and another seven against the impeachment. To remove vice president Derek Khanna from office, DeFlumeri would have needed a two-thirds majority vote. “I obviously disagree with the way [the club] voted, but per our constitution we need a two-thirds majority to impeach a standing officer. The membership elected not to do that,” said Brad DeFlumeri, president of the Republican Club.
“We’ll continue on with the business of the republican club with me as the president and Derek Khanna as the vice president and all that matters now is what’s in the best interest of the Republican Club.” DeFlumeri called for the motion to impeach Khanna after asking the vice president to step down in an e-mail following last week’s move to secede from the Massachusetts Alliance of College Republicans. “In light of recent events which reveal you to be operating on your own agenda and following assertions by members that your actions are ‘borderline treasonous,’ I strongly urge you to immediately resign your position as vice president of the Republican Club,” DeFlumeri wrote. “Furthermore, given your backhanded efforts to undermine my leadership while covertly working with other organizations, I do not feel as though your assisting me as [vice president] is tenable any longer. You need to resign.” DeFlumeri called last night’s special meeting in a second e-mail after Khanna refused to step down from his position. According to DeFlumeri, Khanna had misused, neglected and abused his position as vice president of the organization, all impeachable offenses under the constitution of the Republican Club.
“It is my opinion, in light of substantial evidence, that Vice President Khanna has conspired with MACR to remove me as president without even consulting or notifying the membership of this club,” DeFlumeri said, reading off of a prepared statement during the emergency session.
“Over the course of the past week it has become abundantly clear that vice president Khanna has abused his position and his title in this club to surreptitiously seek my ouster.”
The club president accused Khanna of making “overtly false” and “misleading” statements to the Massachusetts Daily Collegian concerning the reaction of leaders of the Massachusetts GOP to the secession of the club from MACR and lying about the allegations of sexual harassment surrounding DeFlumeri.
Khanna called the impeachment effort a “ridiculous waste of the club’s time as a whole.” “I think that my position of impeaching Brad rather than secession was a personal opinion and it was an opinion that I expressed as vice president to the press, because I believed it furthered the interests of the club, but I hardly felt that that was grounds for impeachment,” he said. According to DeFlumeri, the members of the Republican Club had expressed their will and would not move to impeach Khanna again unless further evidence of neglect or abuse of position came to light.
Khanna “highly doubted” the issue of his impeachment would come up again within the club and stressed that the motion would not affect his working relationship with DeFlumeri. “Me and him have had some intense discussions before and we separate that and we work on a professional level to accomplish the goals of this club,” he said. “We still have areas of mutual interest.”
Derrick Perkins can be reached at [email protected].
