The Undergraduate Student Government senate approved two bills to outline the process to remove the speaker of the senate Tuesday.

SB 144-18 — which the senate approved unanimously — states that to remove the speaker of the senate, three senators or the entire executive cabinet outside of the speaker must email the judicial council to call for a vote on the speaker’s removal. No reasoning is required in the letter.

A two-thirds majority of senators — not including the speaker of the senate — must vote to remove the speaker. The vote will take place over secret ballot to align with the private nature of the onboarding process, said chief justice Susanna Andryan.

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If the vote to remove the speaker fails, a new vote can’t be called for the next two weeks. If the vote to remove the speaker succeeds, a six-week “cool-down” period will follow, during which senators and cabinet members will be barred from calling a new removal vote to allow a new speaker to be onboarded. 

SB 144-16 amended USG’s bylaws to say that the speaker of the senate will keep their position as a senator if removed from their position as speaker.

Andryan said the bills — both written by judicial council members — were made to fulfill the judicial council’s responsibility to review the governing documents of USG and address any “discrepancies or gaps in the text.” In this case, the council discovered a lack of a formal removal process for the speaker of the senate.

In response to a question about the timing of the bills, speaker of the senate Diana Carpio said she was made aware of people who’ve had a desire to implement a removal process.

“The removal process of the speaker [of the senate] is something that doesn’t really intimidate me,” Carpio said.

Andryan said the judicial branch independently wrote the bill without any contact from senators.

The senate also approved SB 144-15 to allow committees to create temporary commissions to work on specific issues or projects. A committee is allowed to have two commissions running simultaneously, and each commission can have two students at large concurrently.

“We envision this as a project … to increase engagement and involvement of students at large with USG projects and USG as a whole on a sort of lower commitment basis,” said senator Dane Sprague, a co-author of SB 144-15.

SB 144-17, a bill suspending all USG operations during the week of Thanksgiving, also passed unanimously.

The judicial council reversed the removal of affordability and basic needs committee chair Klarissa Palacios in part in an opinion released Tuesday with Andryan recusing herself from hearing the case. 

The judicial council found Palacios guilty on six of 22 charges brought by president Bryan Fernández and vice president Brianna Sánchez for attendance violations and indecent speech. The judicial council imposed sanctions on Palacios, including removing $1,800 from her stipend and requiring her to meet with USG professional staff every two weeks until Feb. 1, 2025.