Capping a long career of controversy in student government, Judicial Council president Hunter Brooke resigned Tuesday evening. Brooke, a senior, has served as Carroll Hall senator and Student Union parliamentarian. He also ran an unsuccessful campaign for student body vice president in 2023. He resigned to avert an impeachment hearing that would have been held at Wednesday’s senate meeting. A 28-page bill of impeachment circulated to senators compiled evidence and screenshots, alleging misconduct and unethical conduct, from ensuring his election as Judicial Council president by violating a closed vote to weighing in on elections he was administering.
“Throughout my time, I’ve also tried to promote transparency, democracy, accountability and to heed the call of service to the best of my ability, guided by the simple hope that the days of future students be even better than our own,” Brooke wrote in a resignation letter acquired by The Observer. Brooke did not respond to a request for comment.
“I am profoundly thankful to have served,” he added. “So, too, am I deeply saddened to leave at this time, and in this way.”
This would have been Brooke’s second impeachment hearing before the student senate. Two years ago, the then-Carroll Hall senator’s impeachment trial was over his emails to first undergraduate experience in leadership (FUEL) students, freshmen who take on a role learning the ropes of student government. Brooke advertised an invented “senatorial aide” position and promised to prospective aides that the position would include learning to write legal documents and how to win election campaigns, and that Brooke could renew his aides across positions in student government.
Brooke’s nomination to lead Judicial Council was highly contentious last year. Many senators voiced concerns about Brooke’s previous actions in student government. The bill of impeachment alleges that Brooke had interfered with that vote, accessing the results of a closed ballot in which he did not receive a majority.
Brooke texted Madison Denchfield, Judicial Council’s vice president of elections, “And do you think you have a feel for who voted no.” After Denchfield said she did, Brooke asked “Alrighty who are we up against.” Denchfield provided him with screenshots of the vote count and names of senators who had voted ‘no’ and ‘abstain’ on the motion.
Denchfield told The Observer that she did not know that was wrong and was under the impression that Brooke was supposed to have access.
In the texts that followed, Denchfield texted Brooke after a phone call, “Do you think [then-Judicial Council president] Koryn [Isa] is going to fire me?”
Brooke responded, “No no no no. Don’t worry at all. I was just saying. Ya know,” and followed the messages with a GIF of “The Office” character Dwight Schrute doing a shush motion.
Having accessed the vote count and names of voters who had voted no and abstained, Brooke won in the following week’s vote when he was renominated.
“We don’t even know if he should have been rightfully elected. We don’t even know about that because [he] looked at the votes, [he] looked at who voted yes and no, and then who abstained,” Alumni Hall senator James Baird said.
Brooke’s impeachment bill was sent to senators Monday morning by Baumer Hall senator Matthew Dunn, after the Student Union Ethics Commission (SUEC) refused to refer Brooke for impeachment Sunday evening, and issued the sanctions of an apology and censure. Dunn refused to comment.
Notably, the SUEC did refer Knott Hall senator John Knott for impeachment just months ago for an email to Knott residents that referred to “Dawson Kiser and his gimps” and protested a proposed hike in the student activity fee. In his role as Judicial Council president, Brooke had brought the case against Knott to the student senate.
Brooke had little choice but to resign, as an impeachment in the senate appeared inevitable.
“They would have, like, f***ing eviscerated him over the closed ballot thing,” Baird said.
Denchfield concurred.
“I had over half of the voting population in the Senate confirm either that they were going to co-sign or vote yes,” she said.
The bill of impeachment circulated on Monday contained 13 alphabetized articles, corresponding with screenshots of evidence. Several articles alleged that Brooke was not impartial during the 2024 student body election because of his disparaging remarks about candidates running that year. The bill argues that Brooke violated the standards he was held to as a Judicial Council officer.
At the Knights of Columbus debate in February, he texted, “They’re all lyin. Also. Annah marie saying MLK day? Big mistake. Wrong audience honey.” The text referred to candidate AnnahMarie Behn mentioning student government’s advocacy for a holiday on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, suggesting that the conservative audience at the debate would not be favorable.
In another text referring to Behn’s ticket, he celebrated the campaign’s demise. “In the former* Behn/Bowden campaign. And amen to that,” he wrote.
Another allegation dates to Brooke’s tenure as Judicial Council president, in which he weighed in on a senate vacancy election in Stanford Hall. He called candidate Pablo Oropeza a “sad sap,” writing, “Also LOL Pablo who once ran for student body president doesn’t even have enough clout to carry a Senate election … Couldn’t be me.”
Other allegations refer to Brooke’s active role in pushing legislation when he was parliamentarian, an activity expressly forbidden in that role.
Brooke was taken down by allegations from former allies who had worked closely with him, including Denchfield and former Dillon Hall senator Sam Godinez. The pair provided screenshots of messages and emails to SUEC, and then to Dunn for his bill of impeachment. They also shared the evidence with The Observer prior to the SUEC’s consideration.
Editor’s Note: Godinez is a former news writer for The Observer. However, his campus political coverage was taken down from our website following evidence of his campaigning for Brooke’s ticket in the 2023 student body election while reporting, and later citing stories to defend Brooke in senate debates without disclosing that he had written them.
In discussing Brooke’s nomination to the post last year, Godinez was a vociferous advocate in the senate debate. He pushed back against the motion for a closed vote and defended Brooke against allegations.
“He is very … He follows the rules all the time. He’s never told me anything in private. I’m being very honest. You like, take my word for it. Hopefully, you do,” Godinez said last year during that debate.
Godinez is no longer in the student senate or student government.
“I no longer want the position. I believe that student government is a waste of my time, if we have to be very honest,” he said.
WhatsApp messages contained in the bill of impeachment show that Godinez and Brooke worked closely on student government matters, including when Godinez was the subject of an ethics complaint. Brooke summoned Godinez to Carroll Hall and told him details of the complaint filed by Sorin College senator Andrew Ryan, violating the anonymity of the process.
“Very secret - do not share this info with anyone or I’ll def be in trouble,” Brooke wrote when sharing information of the ethics complaint with Godinez, and told Godinez that the complaint was “killed” before making it onto the senate agenda.
The bill of impeachment alleges that “these events clearly demonstrate Hunter Brooke’s repeated failure to maintain his duty of impartiality and his willful disregard of the ethical standards expected of a member of the Student Union.”
Baird said he was surprised to see that Godinez had been involved in bringing the accusations to the ethics committee.
“It struck me as very, very strange because him and ‘Sammy G’ were, like, homies, you know, they’re always talking together. ‘Sammy G’ started to wear suits, you know, after Hunter,” Baird said.
Godinez affirmed that he had been close with Brooke.
“I considered him a friend and a mentor, but I later learned that the parliamentarian cannot engage in substantive advice on legislation, nor can he break confidentiality. I was not particularly aware that he could not give substantive advice, and looking back at it, I’m not proud of engaging in these conversations, but I viewed it [as] kind of my obligation to still advance my issues, because it’s what the students wanted,” Godinez said in an interview.
Godinez says he stepped in to help prepare an ethics complaint after Denchfield reached out to him asking for evidence following an alleged request from Brooke for Denchfield to resign in October. Godinez said he and Denchfield became acquainted when he was a senator and she was parliamentarian and became friends over the past year.
Godinez said he was willing to publicly release his messages with Brooke for Denchfield’s “wellbeing.”
“I wanted to avoid the possibility of someone else suffering in the same way she suffered by all of Hunter’s comments. I don’t have any vendetta against the man. I personally don’t even recall the last time I talked to him, but I honestly could not sit idly by while he continued to verbally abuse one of my friends,” he said.
Denchfield had received a Google Doc in October entitled “Conversation Regarding Respect.” In the letter, Brooke said his concerns were “threefold” before listing four points including: “You are not demonstrating adequate respect for me, which I hope you’d agree I am owed.”
In a text to The Observer, Denchfield said she had a meeting with Brooke the Tuesday after receiving the letter, in which Brooke said he was not sorry for the content of the letter and asked her to consider resigning.
Brooke wrote in an email to Denchfield that his “prior note was overly firm, aggressive, unneeded in severity and over-escalatory.”
Denchfield said she and Brooke met two weeks after the first meeting and Brooke asked her to resign again, which she refused to do. She claimed she was subsequently denied access to the Judicial Council email account and was forbidden from attending events that she was not constitutionally obligated to attend.
Denchfield wrote Brooke’s request for her to resign “certainly did not impact my decision to report Hunter to ethics.”
The ethics complaint and potential impeachment came in shock to some senators.
“I had no idea. I was flabbergasted,” Baird said in reaction to the impeachment resolution. “I was blown away because when I look at the document, right, and I’m like, ‘Hey, all this stuff was really old, like the stuff has been there for ages.’”
In his resignation letter, Brooke said he was grateful for his time in student government.
“I have never known this University without the Student Union. It seems that time has finally come again. I have considered this reality at length over the past several days, and that realization has left me simultaneously saddened, frightened, unsure and, yet, excited about the future — what else I might do, and what a non-Student Union collegiate experience might look like,” he wrote.
The full bill of impeachment can be read below.
