News Analysis:

There was an elephant in the room at Tuesday night’s Undergraduate Senate meeting — the word partisanship.

Last night’s meeting, the first with Tiq Chapa ‘10 as chair, quickly degenerated into a partisan mudslinging contest, as senators duked it out over appointments to the Appropriations Committee, all while trying their best to avoid saying the “p word.”

Outgoing ASSU Vice President Mondaire Jones ‘09 was the first to broach the subject, alleging that partisanship was the reason for the uproar over Appropriations Committee appointments. Of the eight appointed members, four sport Students of Colored Coalition (SOCC) endorsements, and four do not.

But Senator Luukas Ilves ‘09 — outspoken in his criticism of the Appropriations appointments — was quick to dismiss Jones’ allegation.

“I wasn’t aware of partisanship,” Ilves responded. “I didn’t bring it up in this meeting; you [Jones] did.”

While Chapa was SOCC-endorsed, Ilves was not. Ilves held up the banner for the non-SOCC-endorsed senators at the meeting, though he never explicitly admitted that partisanship was driving his actions.

But the partisan tone of the meeting was set before it even began. An email sent by Ilves to several senators explained a strategy in which he and his allies would use parliamentary measures to “block business in the Senate” as a means of criticizing Chapa’s committee appointments.

The email suggested several ways to bring the meeting to a grinding halt, including repeatedly calling for “motions to waste time,” which require all senators to be silent for one minute, and dividing questions so that numerous roll call votes were required.

But Ilves’ email, which was intended only for a specific group of senators, was printed and distributed to all the senators at the meeting. Although he admitted that the email found its way onto the Senate floor by mistake — the senator mistyped an address while sending it — Ilves insisted that his tactics were not underhanded.

“There was nothing sneaky about the email,” Ilves said. “This is normal in any legislature.”

Despite the unintended circulation of his strategy email, Ilves did not hesitate to use stalling techniques to his advantage.

After his proposal to make Orr Keshet ‘09 the ninth member of the appropriations committee failed 8-6 when deputy chair Shelley Gao ‘11 voted no, Ilves motioned for a roll call vote on each of the 36 committee appointments. Gao, who originally asked secretary Tim Ford ‘10 to come back to her, paused for two minutes when casting her vote.

Partisan fighting came to the forefront of the Senate debate largely because of what some senators perceived as Chapa’s failure to adequately justify his choices for Appropriations Committee membership. Of the 11 senators who applied, Chapa denied membership to himself, along with two non-SOCC-endorsed senators — Prachi Priyam ‘11 and Keshet.

Because of his position as chair, Chapa deferred to the preferences of other senators, as has been done in the past. But Chapa’s failure to provide a reason for excluding Priyam and Keshet heightened tension in the room.

“Tiq promised, right before his election, that he would take factors like senator expertise into account, and that he would run a fair process,” Ilves said. “He did not take these things into account, and he did not run an open process. It is difficult to call this fair.”

Ilves, who butted heads with Chapa throughout the meeting, was openly critical of the new chair’s performance.

“He said explicitly, ‘I am going to look at senators’ expertise, whether they do a good job,’” Ilves said of Chapa. “I don’t know whether he is lying or just reneging on what he promised he’d do.”

But Chapa told The Daily that evaluating senators’ abilities was not necessary.

“There is no precedent for that,” Chapa said. “I believe that all 11 [who applied] were competent.”

Chapa insisted that it was not necessary to contact all 11 applicants and evaluate their abilities, and that his choices were completely random.

“It was tough,” Chapa said. “To be honest, there were 11 [competent applicants] and I did roll the dice.”

For Ilves, however, Chapa’s dice roll was not satisfactory, especially considering that both senators excluded from the committee were not endorsed by SOCC.

“Tiq didn’t provide any convincing explanation that would lead you not to believe that SOCC affiliation was a factor in the decisions he made,” Ilves said. “There was no evidence to the contrary, besides his claim that he rolled on the dice. A roll of the dice is not an acceptable metric.”