NEWS ANALYSIS: UA seeks to avoid past mistakes

As the newly installed Undergraduate Assembly begins its term, members are focusing closely on avoiding the mistakes of last year's body. One of the most frequently repeated lines at the UA transition meeting on April 6 -- when the body elected its officers for the year -- was the claim that this UA will degenerate into the political infighting and personal quarrels that plagued the Assembly last year. From the beginning of last year's term, problems between members of the UA presented stumbling blocks to the body. At last year's transition meeting -- at which Wharton junior Dan Debicella ran against College senior Dan Schorr and Engineering sophomore Manny Calero for UA chairperson -- supporters of Debicella and Schorr hurled insults at each other before Debicella eventually prevailed. The aftermath of the bitter election put a personal slant on many of the issues the UA tackled. In October of last year, several UA members -- including Schorr and newly elected UA Chairperson Lance Rogers, a College junior -- attempted to bring articles of impeachment against Debicella. The members involved in the impeachment attempt said Debicella had lied to the body on several occasions. The impeachment did not come to a vote, because not enough members of the Assembly were willing to support the action. At the time, several UA members said the issue of impeachment did not die with the end of the meeting. "[Impeaching Debicella] is always an option but at this point it's not being pushed forward," Schorr said last October. And Rogers said at the time that he did not trust Debicella. "It was definitely more than one time [that Debicella lied to the body]," he said. "I don't trust him now. I hope one day I can." With the movement to reform the UA constitution early this semester, student government leaders raised more personal issues. Schorr, along with College junior Mike Nadel, a Daily Pennsylvanian columnist and former member of the Student Activities Council's Finance Committee, wrote a proposal for constitutional reform in direct competition with a draft by Debicella. And, as each proposal became more refined, Debicella, Schorr and Nadel began to snipe at each other. When quorum broke down at the UA meeting on February 12 because former UA member and Engineering junior Sundeep Goel left the meeting early, Debicella blamed Goel's roommate -- Nadel. "It's obvious that Mike Nadel is trying to reform student government to his own advantage," Debicella said then. He added that a "conspiracy" of UA members was devoted to bringing down the Assembly. Debicella then campaigned heavily for students not to vote on constitutional reform in last month's elections, in an effort to prevent the Schorr/Nadel plan from being adopted. And when Rogers was elected chairperson at this year's transition meeting, Debicella refused to participate in a traditional ceremony in which the outgoing chairperson tosses his gavel to his successor -- whom he referred to as "Forrest Gump" that night. This year's UA members have said the key to their success is to avoid such personal fights. "A lot of the infighting last year was a function of personal rivalries and hostilities that existed in and outside of the UA," Wharton junior Gil Beverly, the new UA vice-chairperson, said last night. "Last year was ridiculous. I'll be personally embarrassed if the UA self-destructs like last year."