Chatham Hall House Committee held its first meeting of the year Jan. 31, with a mostly-new council, including new president Simon Greenough. For the first time in a while, there was no elephant in the room.
It was well-known the house committee was struggling. Seven positions needed to be filled after the impeachment of previous house president Mitchell Peardon and a number of other representatives dropped out of their positions. Then-acting house president Greenough was to hold elections for the vacant positions.
Peardon still thinks the impeachment was unnecessary. To him, all he needed was a mediation with his fellow house committee members. He argues he could not fix things he was doing wrong unless he was told.
“I was genuinely stunned, I thought it was a joke for a second,” Peardon said after he was told he was being impeached.
Greenough claims members spoke with Peardon about his attitude. He remembers calling Peardon to his room to talk to him about the meeting they had that day. Apparently, someone had smashed pumpkins that were carved a few days earlier. Peardon talked about “punishing” whoever smashed the pumpkins. According to Greenough, house committee has no power to deal out punishment.
Greenough argues that the threats of punishment was “conduct unbecoming of a house committee member.”
Peardon also spent $300 of the house committee money on new things for the kitchen. He claims that he did it only with a good intent, saying that he thought it would be nice to have new things in the new kitchen and didn’t buy anything just to spite anyone. But the decision was made by him without taking votes.
On Jan. 26, a desk was set up in front of the main entrance to Chatham Hall and ballots were cast. The focus was on the new house president, for which two candidates emerged: Greenough and Devan Barrieau ( the former president of Rigby Hall who resigned from the position and moved to Chatham). Greenough won.
Peardon has decided to move on with his life and let bygones be bygones. Not only is he applying to be an RA next year, but he thinks he probably won’t live in Chatham Hall.
Greenough is happy with his new position.
“At the end of the day I don’t know what inspired me to run for president,” he said. “I just want to have fun. I want everyone around me to have fun. I want to do everything I can to facilitate that.”
