The Student Fee Review Board postponed all fee deliberations following a disagreement between board members over whether to allow video recording at Saturday’s hearings.
ASUNM President and SFRB Chair Laz Cardenas asked a GPSA employee, Radi Abouelhassan, to remove a video camera, which wasn’t recording at the time, from the meeting room about an hour after deliberations began.
GPSA President Lissa Knudsen, the SFRB vice-chair, instructed Abouelhassan not to remove the camera, and Cardenas asked the board to vote on whether to allow the camera.
The board voted 4-3* not to allow the camera, but the employee, following Knudsen’s directions, still refused to leave.
Cardenas then issued an ultimatum.
“If you’re (to the cameraman) not cleared out in five minutes, Lissa, we’ll have to call security,” he said.
UNMPD arrived at the SUB Cherry/Silver room and told Abouelhassan that officers were going to have to remove him from the room. Knudsen told the officers that board members had to allow the hearings to be recorded per the NM Open Meetings Act.
The officers left the room and returned after about five minutes to announce they did not have the authority to forcibly remove the equipment.
“We spoke with our bosses, and the decision we feel comfortable doing is we’re not going to remove anybody,” Officer C.M. Carabajal told the board and half a dozen others at the public meeting.
The SFRB, about an hour behind schedule, proceeded with the hearings with the camera rolling. At about 3:30 p.m. Cardenas motioned to suspend all SFRB activities pending further legal review. The motion passed in another 4-3* vote.
Knudsen said she was disappointed in Cardenas’ handling of the situation, but was grateful the officers did not remove the camera.
“I had hoped we could handle this in a less-public way, but I’m glad for the way it turned out,” she said.
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The Student Fee Review Board is a student governing body composed of undergraduates and graduate students. The board is tasked with the distribution of student fees.
Cardenas declined to comment, but released a statement at 5 p.m. explaining the board’s decision to postpone the hearings.
“Due to the board’s concern of potentially violating privacy rights of individuals and organizations, all hearings of the Student Fee Review Board have been postponed until further notice,” Cardenas’ statement reads. “The Student Fee Review Board is requesting an opinion from University Counsel on the applicability of the Open Meetings Act to the SFRB process”
Pick up the Daily Lobo on Monday for more coverage.
*An earlier version of this story misreported the vote tally as 5-4. Four undergraduates and three graduates sit on the board as voting members.
