SGA Vice President arrested for DUI

SGA Vice President Ross Sheppard was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol after an arrest on Aug. 20, according to the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office incident report. Sheppard was involved in a traffic stop in Putnam County initiated by Officer Jonathan Saunders for failure to maintain lane. 

Courtesy: Putnam County Sheriff

SGA Vice President Ross Sheppard was arrested on Aug. 20 for a DUI in Putnam County.

Saunders placed Sheppard under arrest for DUI (alcohol) and read him the Georgia Implied Consent Notice and requested breath samples. Sheppard agreed to provide the samples, according to the report.

Sheppard provided samples of 0.171 and 0.175 on the Intoxilyzer 5000.

A blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 or higher is considered a DUI, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sheppard was issued citations for DUI (alcohol) and failure to maintain lane.

“I never saw this coming, and I think a lot of us didn’t even know,” SGA President Evan Karanovich said.

Karanovich, Director of Campus Life Tom Miles and Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Bruce Harshbarger had a private meeting with Sheppard to discuss the issue.

“We at least let him know the procedural way about going about doing this. At that time Ross claimed that he would not resign,” Karanovich said.

SGA is currently exploring their constitution and bylaws to assist in handling the situation.

“We are still trying to determine what the best course of action and protocol is to follow,” Karanovich said.

According to SGA Attorney General Andrew Whittaker, if a student is stopped and arrested for a DUI he or she will be charged by the Office of Student Affairs for violation of student Code of Conduct number two.

The Code of Conduct, found on Georgia College’s website, says that students are subject to disciplinary action for violating the code of conduct. Code number two states:

“Conduct that constitutes a danger to the personal safety of other members of the university community. This may include assault, attempted assault or the threat of assault,” according to the document.

Harshbarger states that code of conduct number two includes a DUI charge.

Whittaker commented the location of the incident is a factor in the disciplinary process.

“Georgia College Public Safety collects police reports from Baldwin County Sheriff, Milledgeville Police Department and, of course, their own records,” Whittaker said. “And those arrest records are referred to the Office of Student Affairs and from them we determine which students are actually enrolled and who got in trouble from that.”

Due to the fact Sheppard’s arrest took place in Putnam County his records were not delivered to Public Safety as they would have been if the incident had occurred in Baldwin County.

Harshbarger states the rule applies to events that affect campus directly in Baldwin County. The events have to present a clear danger to campus; events that occur in other counties do not apply to the rule.

“We would be doing a huge injustice to file charges against Vice President Sheppard in particular instance and not everyone else, because we really shouldn’t have known about this one,” Whittaker said.

If Sheppard does not resign, he could possibly be removed from office by impeachment proceedings, if impeachment articles are filed.

Any member of SGA can file the impeachment articles. However as Senate elections have not occurred, no impeachment proceedings can begin until after their conclusion.

Whittaker will act as prosecution and present the case to Senate if articles were to be filed.

To be impeached there must be a two-thirds majority vote in approval, seventeen members or more, in this case. After this step, the case is seen by the student judicial board, which requires a simple majority to approve removal.

If he were to be removed Sheppard would be precluded from running for a Student Government Association office for a full calendar year and would be replaced by the president pro tempore, when one is named after the Senate election.

“I am the president of SGA first and everything else second,” Karanovich said. “This situation is a priority to me. I want to make sure that we are doing it the best way, like I said the most fair and balanced way. Ross has his rights and so do the students.”

Sheppard declined to comment at this time.

By Bobbi Otis and Aubrie Sofala

Below are the SGA Bylaws and Constitution.

Posted by Bobbi Otis on Sep 8 2011. Filed under Lead stories, News, Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.