To delve into the inner workings of the Student Association is to step into the rabbit hole. Our student government is a convoluted labyrinth where Representatives don’t know what they’re voting on, where an independent judiciary consists of four people and where helpless student groups suffer the consequences of a failed system.

The group in question is Binghamton University’s chapter of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG). NYPIRG is all but dead, and whether it will be resurrected remains to be seen. But a deeper look into the SA bureaucracy — a system that to the average student is an impenetrable monolith — points to a pattern of abuse in which the very body that is charged with upholding students’ rights is the primary culprit in their desecration.

The story begins on Feb. 1. Adam Shamah, SA vice president for finance, requested a hearing on whether NYPIRG deserved to keep its current office on the third floor of the New University Union. The hearing would take place in the Rules Committee of the Assembly, the SA’s legislative body. This is the committee that oversees student group charters and, as of last year, is in charge of office space allocation.

NYPIRG has had an office on this campus for 37 years — they lost it in three days. On Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Randal Meyer notified NYPIRG that it had to appear before the Rules Committee. On Thursday, the Rules Committee voted to evict NYPIRG. Thus began the month-long procedural battle that has left NYPIRG crippled and the SA with blood on its hands.

VPF Shamah has long fought against what he sees as NYPIRG’s excesses and fecklessness. He has been a leader in reining in NYPIRG’s budget and has written widely about how he feels that the advocacy group is a left-leaning parasite that leeches money from more deserving student groups.

Shamah made his case to the committee. NYPIRG made its case. Speaker Meyer, who is a close ally of Shamah’s, was present during the deliberation. The result of that meeting was a 7-2 vote that put the eviction notice up for approval in the Assembly. Once it got there, the Assembly held it up. But to complicate matters, even if it had been shot down, the issue would have just been sent back to the Rules Committee — who would have no reason to change their minds. This lead to a no-man’s-land, a cyclical world where a bad idea can perpetuate itself and where bills don’t have a place to die. But this is more than just a legislative wormhole — it is a downright disregard for checks on the power of individual branches of government.

Ready to go deeper into the rabbit hole?

As the procedural battle continued, the evidence that this was a targeted attack on NYPIRG piled up. Not a single other group has been audited for office space this year, and there is no formalized process for doing so. According to Jenna Goldin, SA executive vice president, not a single SA group has officially requested office space this year. And though there is talk of giving the NYPIRG treatment to all groups who have office space, we know — and so does the SA — that such a process would be unworkable. (Imagine this process multiplied over the dozens of groups that have offices.)

That there was no systematic process for evaluating groups and their use of office space is one thing, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK to single out any one group, and in the middle of the semester too. Aaron Cohn, SA vice president for programming, shares that sentiment. He told Pipe Dream, “From an outsider’s perspective, I can see why this looks bad on the SA’s part, how it’s one group and the timing of it.” It looks even worse when you mix in the fact that this is between Shamah and NYPIRG — who certainly have a history.

But whatever Shamah’s motives might have been, it’s true that NYPIRG was singled out. And with contested evidence notwithstanding, Shamah successfully convinced the Rules Committee to evict NYPIRG.

With us so far? The following Monday, the blunder of the Rules Committee was upheld in the SA’s legislature. The Assembly voted 16-14 to confirm the Rules Committee’s report after a heated floor debate.

Some, like Daniel Rabinowitz, SA vice president for academic affairs and another close ally of Shamah’s, supported the eviction. Rabinowitz, from the meeting’s minutes: “Why do they have an office if they have $0 budget … I think it is biased that a group with no budget is allowed to have an office.”

Others, including Assembly Representative Rob Baldwin, sought to vote down the Committee’s report. Again, from the minutes, Baldwin: “I think that they were able to accomplish all they have already this year on a $0 budget is a testament to them having an office.”

SA President Kirschenbaum was notably silent during the debate, which effectively decided the future of an ancient student group on this campus.

NYPIRG had an “Order to Vacate” letter posted on its door the next day, signed by Speaker Meyer. NYPIRG was given less than a week to vacate its office. It did not. And on Monday, Feb. 14, Meyer announced to the Assembly that NYPIRG was de-chartered. This is the most peculiar, if not damning, aspect of the entire NYPIRG saga.

Though the eviction ultimatum was certainly a part of the Rules Committee’s report, it was not even discussed during the Assembly debate. Assembly Vice Speaker George Hadjiconstantinou told Pipe Dream, “That they’d be de-chartered was mentioned in the report, but personally I don’t think that a lot of people were aware. It kind of got glossed over.”

But Meyer wrote up an eviction notice with an extremely severe deadline that was seemingly drawn from nowhere. SA EVP Goldin has made it clear that there is no pre-established line of SA groups officially clamoring for NYPIRG’s office. Although there are certainly groups that would vie for the office, any fair process determining a deserving group would take weeks, if not months. Giving NYPIRG less than a week to vacate was an unnecessary and cruel move, as well as a disturbing extension of Meyer’s power.

And now, the icing on the cake.

NYPIRG has vowed not to leave its offices until it has had its day in front of the Judicial Board. The University, which is the only entity with real power to evict NYPIRG, said it would wait on a ruling of the J-Board before it would take action. But Meyer said, citing SA bylaws, that the J-Board could not overturn NYPIRG’s case until after NYPIRG had vacated — arguing that there would be nothing to overturn until they had. How’s that for a Catch 22?

NYPIRG challenges that and says that it should go straight to J-Board and that it all should be ruled null and void. Meanwhile, J-Board has four members (there’s no one to break a tie), and only two of them have ever heard a case.

Given the layers of confusion we have observed — where a member of the executive branch of the SA can push his personal projects through a committee, where Assembly representatives may not be aware of the clear implications of their votes and where the judicial branch lacks any experience or a clear mandate — we think the system is broken.

Let’s be clear. To speculate on Shamah’s motives is to tread in murky waters. The more important lesson is not any definitive claim of bias but rather the flaws in the system this situation exposes. We now know that there are weaknesses in our student government that an engaged actor could successfully exploit. Whether Shamah is that person remains an open question.