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<p class="p1">A police vehicle sits outside the Santa Fe Police Station on Monday, Nov. 18, 2014.&nbsp;</p>

A police vehicle sits outside the Santa Fe Police Station on Monday, Nov. 18, 2014. 

A confidential complaint about Santa Fe College’s Student Senate president spiraled into a series of threats and verbal altercations this month -- all of which came to a head last Wednesday when the college’s Senate made impeaching its president, Jeremy Pierce, possible.

The senate passed a no-confidence vote against Pierce last week — a move that suggests the governing body does not believe 26-year-old Pierce is fit to hold his position.

But the 24-22 vote — with eight individuals abstaining — did not come without conflict.

Senator Kimberly Nance, a 19-year-old Santa Fe English sophomore, said one woman announced she accidentally voted in favor of the vote in error. After the woman spoke up, “one or two” others also said they voted incorrectly, but the Senate did not agree to a re-tally votes.

Despite the possibility, Pierce said he isn’t worried about impeachment.

“In order for me to be impeached,” he said, “there has to be a violation of the constitution and its support statues,” which he said he hasn’t breached.

Senator Zari Hagos agreed. The 20-year-old Santa Fe business marketing sophomore said Pierce answers questions, keeps Senate organized and takes care of business.

“Jeremy’s never made me uncomfortable,” she said. “He always has an open-door policy.”

***

The no-confidence vote came nearly a month after a complaint against Pierce led to a confrontation between him and Student Body President Michael Chartier -- both of whom have criminal backgrounds.

Pierce was charged with domestic violence earlier this year before the case was dropped. And nearly eleven years ago, Chartier, 34, faced felony charges of petit theft, disorderly conduct, battery and assault on a law enforcement officer.

The confrontation between the two at the beginning of the month ended in Chartier threatening Pierce with Santa Fe police stepping in, according to the incident report.

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On Nov. 4, a student senator confided in the college’s 19-year-old Student Body internal affairs director, Benjamin Myers.

The senator told Myers that Pierce had threatened to remove the individual from office — a complaint Myers said was similar to complaints other student officials had repeatedly made against Pierce in the past.

Myers agreed to address the senator’s concerns that day. According to a police report, the Santa Fe criminal justice sophomore contacted Pierce and arranged to meet with him in Pierce’s office, located within the school’s Student Government building.

In Pierce’s office, Myers and the Senate president began discussing the complaint, but the conversation quickly crescendoed. As the pair’s volume increased, associate director for Santa Fe student life Douglas Bagby reportedly invited both Myers and Pierce to instead discuss the situation in his office.

The men agreed, but Myers requested to include Chartier, his supervisor.

As Myers and Pierce addressed the senator’s complaint over arguments, a Santa Fe Police report suggests Chartier joined in, at which point Pierce called Chartier “a f***ing douche bag.”

Police said Chartier replied to Pierce and said, ‘If you tell me to shut up again, I will kick your f***ing face in.”

Bagby intervened and asked Chartier to leave the room, at which point police said he did. Still, Pierce reported the incident.

Santa Fe Police chief Ed Book sent a record of the case to the State Attorney’s Office, which said the case did not meet the criteria of assault, so no charges were pressed.

Book said that while he viewed Pierce and Chartier’s actions as “unprofessional,” the incident “did not rise to the level of a crime.”

But before the state attorney dropped the case, Pierce and Bagby exchanged a series of emails. The Senate president told Bagby he would drop his charges on the condition that Chartier never return to Student Government and that “the college takes into consideration this (sic) his actions have clouded my judgement and prevented me from being able to focus on my academic studies.”

***

Though Pierce shook off the possibility of impeachment, senators have the remainder of the semester to draft and decide on the motion.

And though Hagos praised Pierce, Senator Bailey Erickson disagreed, citing an Oct. 22 meeting at which Pierce kept senators in their chambers until a decision on campus smoking policies was reached.

“Here we go again,” Pierce said, according to a video recording of the meeting. “Another attempt to impede on our ability to advocate for our constituent.”

Pierce threatened to avoid adjourning the meeting until the legislation was voted down, keeping campus smoking policies the same.

“Who cares if we’re here till midnight?” Pierce said in the meeting. “This is an issue important to my constituents, and I will be here till midnight until I can drill through the heads of my colleagues that this resolution should absolutely be voted down.”

Erickson said aside from Pierce keeping Santa Fe senators into the night, the senate president has an obligation to be unbiased.

“As a senator, I understand lobbying and being passionate and so on,” Erickson said in her complaint, “however, if this is truly what happened than it is simply inappropriate coming from our President. [sic]”

Pierce said in an emailed statement that he hoped the issue would be resolved “quickly and outside of court.”

“This is a very small price for the hell I feel like I face daily when I come to work,” he said.

[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 11/18/2014]

A police vehicle sits outside the Santa Fe Police Station on Monday, Nov. 18, 2014. 

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