A meeting was held Feb. 3 in the Sam Rayburn Memorial Student Center to discuss changes made to Breakout Entertainment’s current program board the day before.
The meeting was held by Connie Kercher and Amber Ramos, both advisers to Breakout Entertainment. Ramos said the current members of the controlling board would keep their positions, but would be working in a group separate from Breakout.
“There will be funds allocated to both groups,” she said.
The current program board will continue to plan events for the rest of the semester according to Ramos.
As of now, the advisers will be taking applications for the recently vacated positions in Breakout.
“Previous members are welcome to apply,” she said.
The advisers will select the president based on the applications and the three of them will select the rest of the programming board Ramos said.
Once the outline of the application process was complete the advisers opened up the floor for questions.
“We will not entertain any questions about why this happened but we will talk about the application process,” Ramos said.
Questions were raised as to whether the application process was harder, but Ramos said that it was not necessarily any more difficult then before.
Dean of Students Brian Nichols said all the former officers from Breakout would be allowed to continue programming throughout the semester.
“Those who want to continue programming under me can do so through spring,” he said.
After a small amount of questions were answered the advisers exited the room while those present at the meeting shouted, wanting answers to why the change in leadership was occurring. As soon as the two left, former President of Breakout Entertainment Daniel Trevett took the floor to answer some of the questions.
He started out by complimenting the members of Breakout.
“You are my board and I will stay here until Midnight to answer your questions if I need to,” he said.
According to Trevett, he and the other members of the programming board did not find out about their removal until 6 a.m. Feb. 2.
He said he was told this decision was made because the advisers were looking for more diversity in the group. He continued, saying the definition of what diversity means was not clarified.
Trevett said he spent the Winter break looking over the constitution, unaware the constitution on file was from 2003.
Under the currently filed constitution, elections for the board were to be held in December. Trevett said the constitution he thought was filed stated elections were to be held in May. Since Breakout was not operating under their filed constitution, Trevett said all members of his board were dismissed.
Student Government Association President Byron Johnson also spoke at the meeting.
He said every group on campus is responsible for updating their constitution every year.
“I’m not blaming Breakout, but as president he should of looked at his constitution,” Johnson said referring to Trevett.
He said if the constitution is not legitimate people can always find loopholes to hurt a group.
Personally Johnson said he thinks what happened to the members of Breakout was wrong.
“Something could have been done,” he said. “These are leaders of our university, what does it say about us?”
Trevett said he did not know why the updated version of the constitution did not end up in the school files.
“The advisers knew we were not operating correctly, but they did not tell us,” he said.
Former Vice President of Breakout Entertainment Avis Hicks said no one has approached her about reapplying for her position.
“It leads me to believe they didn’t want me back,” she said.
She said the way Ramos and Kercher acted was clearly unprofessional.
“They should feel ashamed,” she said.
Hicks said Ramos has made comments in the past about the events Breakout puts on. She said Ramos said Breakout’s events were too black.
“We only make up 13 percent of the university and 95 percent of us live on campus,” she said referring to the amount of blacks on campus. “This if going to be handled.”
Ramos was called for a comment after this information was received, but as of press time had not returned the calls.
Trevett closed the meeting by telling the attendees to conduct any future inquiries with tact.
“Breakout Entertainment is a group of professionals, conduct yourself appropriately,” he said.
Trevett said when he walked in tonight he expected to have his board back. He said as far as the future goes his assumption is the former officers of Breakout will be given a new name while they continue to program and help build an amazing campus.