In the wake of an investigation that exposed a Binghamton resident as an alleged student impostor, the Binghamton University Student Association and the student groups he was a part of are doing damage control.
Phillip Calderon, who was escorted off campus by Binghamton’s New York State University Police last week and charged with a Class A misdemeanor for falsifying his age on business documents, held executive board positions for Off Campus College Council, Off Campus College Transport and Rainbow Pride Union, a group that advocates for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual/ally (LGBTQIA) community.
In addition to the E-Board positions he held this year, Calderon performed various duties for the SA. Since he joined the SA in fall 2008, Calderon was a student representative on the Student Assembly, a paid office assistant for executive board members and he performed paid work as information technology for the SA.
Through his positions on the SA, Calderon earned stipends allocated from the SA’s budget, which is funded by undergraduate students.
During his three years of involvement with the SA, Calderon earned a total of $3,941, according to Adam Shamah, SA vice president for finance.
According to the SA Constitution, membership is only available to registered undergraduate students at the University, so only those considered members of the SA can hold leadership positions.
Since the investigation began, Calderon has been terminated from his positions and no longer has access to the offices and e-mail accounts of his former organizations, nor does he have access to any SA-affiliated office, said SA President Jared Kirschenbaum.
After holding an E-Board position with the organization last year, Calderon was elected president of OC3 at the end of the spring 2010 semester. To apply to be on the OC3 election ballot, Calderon submitted a letter of intent and his Binghamton e-mail address to verify that he was a student at BU, Kirschenbaum said.
Sarah Parrish, the current vice president of OC3, will now take over the role of president, whose responsibilities include sitting on the Board of Directors for OCCT.
‘He [Calderon] was an off-campus college representative for OCCT last year, but meetings did not start this year, so he had no impact on Board decisions,’ said Kirschenbaum, who is also CEO of OCCT.
As for RPU, Calderon, who was director last year and director of conferences this year, left the organization’s members seeking administrative help.
RPU is hosting the 2011 Northeast Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Conference from April 8 to April 10, an event that Calderon was largely responsible for bringing to campus.
‘Phil was the one running the conference and he secured the conference [to be at BU],’ said an E-Board member of RPU, whose confidentiality as a member of RPU is protected by the University. ‘He was heavily involved, so when we found this out on Friday we met with administration and the SA E-Board to find an alternative.’
The SA E-Board is working with administration to secure all offices, e-mails and records that Calderon may have had access to.
‘We are unsure of what he had access to, but we are looking into it,’ Shamah said. ‘Security-wise, everything is covered.’
To ensure that Calderon would no longer have access to RPU information, the University Union staff changed the locks on the group’s office door, and the SA locked the group’s e-mail accounts.
‘I spoke to Jared [Kirschenbaum], Jenna [Goldin, executive vice president of the SA] and Adam [Shamah] and they said the group will be fine, but they will keep an eye on us for protective reasons,’ RPU’s E-Board member said.
RPU does not provide stipends for its executive board, so Calderon had no direct monetary benefit from his involvement in the organization.
‘We don’t see what benefit he could have gotten,’ the E-Board member said. ‘We think maybe since college is such a good life, he did not want to leave it.’
‘ Robert Bellon contributed to this report