FORT WORTH, Texas – Abilene Christian University’s first black student body president has been impeached six months after he reported finding a noose on his chair, although students and officials say that had no connection to his ousting.
The Students’ Association Congress voted 25-5-2 March 4 to impeach Daniel Paul Watkins, saying he had not fulfilled the 20 hours of required work per week as an executive officer, was frequently late to meetings and called professors derogatory names.
Watkins said he “made a pretty compelling case” then was asked to leave the meeting. He said he was not disrespectful to anyone and was late and had missed some student government work when he broke his leg last fall.
Then members voted after he was out of the room, although the university’s constitution says impeachment requires a three-fourths vote of the entire student government body and not all 43 members were there.
“It feels like the rules were changed in the middle of the process, but I didn’t know what my recourse was,” Watkins, 20, a political science major, told The Associated Press by telephone. “It feels like there’s a concerted effort to get me out of office for whatever reason.”
Watkins, the student body’s vice president last year, said many students congratulated him last spring after he was elected to the one-year term as president. He said he thought things were going smoothly with his fellow student government members. Still, he said he is not sure if race was a factor.
“I don’t look like other Student Association presidents, so it came down to a personal vendetta,” he said.
About 13 percent of the 4,700 students at Abilene Christian University are black. The percentage of black students has doubled over the past decade, said officials with the Church of Christ-affiliated university about 150 miles west of Fort Worth.
In September, Watkins reported finding a noose in his campus office chair, which prompted an immediate investigation and denouncement from school administrators.
Watkins said more than half of the allegations against him were brought up after he was forced to leave the meeting. He said he read about them in Thursday’s Abilene Reporter-News.