Denise Maybank, senior associate vice president for Student Affairs and Services, said because the merger’s constitutional change was approved during a special election in early March — not during regularly scheduled spring elections, which take place in early April — ASMSU violated its constitution. Maybank met with ASMSU officials Monday afternoon to discuss the issue.

“I have sent a memo to the leadership of ASMSU, particularly to the chairs, indicating that by doing so they basically violated their own document,” she said.

A section of ASMSU’s constitution reads: “Proposed amendments shall be brought to referendum of the membership of ASMSU at the regularly scheduled Spring Semester elections.”

Maybank said she previously mentioned to ASMSU that, if it moved forward with a constitutional change outside of the regular spring elections, it would be out of compliance.

ASMSU officials, however, say they have the right to interpret their constitution as they see fit, and interpreted the phrase “Spring Semester elections” to mean multiple elections during the semester are allowed.

“I’d like to express the fact that there is an ‘s’ at the end of that statement,” Student Assembly Chairman Chris Schotten said. “The reason why we separated out our election was the fact that, given the nature of the reorganization of ASMSU, we needed to make sure that we had allotted for an appropriate amount of time for the organization to adjust.”

Schotten said prior meetings with Maybank had not made the accountability measure stipulations clear.

“ASMSU had not ever interpreted (the constitution) that way, as far as the repercussions of the accountability measures, that was not a discussion,” he said.

Maybank said by failing to operate within the constitutional guidelines, ASMSU now is in jeopardy of violating the university’s accountability measures. Those measures require all university groups that collect taxes to operate in a manner consistent with their own documents.

“The measures have a statement that says if the vice president for Student Affairs and Services determines that a student group has willfully failed to abide by those measures, the group agency account will be frozen,” she said.

Maybank also said ASMSU’s ability to collect student tax dollars could be revoked.

ASMSU Association Director Kara Spencer said ASMSU alumni had been consulted about whether ASMSU previously has held multiple spring elections.

“Our position is that our own constitution allows us to have multiple elections,” she said.

“This is one of the years that we need to hold more than one election.”