The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s student government was recently thrown into turmoil when its vice president was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student officer and was subsequently pressured to resign.

According to a timeline documenting the case compiled by UW-M student newspaper The UWM Post, former Student Association Vice President Brent Johnson allegedly assaulted a victim, another member of the student government, in her apartment early in the morning of Sept. 25.

The harassment allegedly continued when representatives traveled to Washington, D.C. for a conference in October, according to the timeline.

Johnson allegedly made “unwelcome sexual advances” toward the victim while the two were at a nightclub on the trip.

The victim resigned from office a month after the second incident, the timeline said. Twelve days later, Johnson was taken into police custody and was subsequently suspended from UW-M.

In a letter dated Dec. 6, Johnson formally resigned from office while declining to officially accept responsibility for the allegations made against him.

“Rather than to watch as this Association combats controversies, distraction and groundless innuendo, I choose to tender my resignation, effective immediately,” he said in the letter.
SA officers released a statement Dec. 11 that said they would have impeached Johnson had he chosen to not resign.

“If he were still in office, we would motion … [for] the impeachment and removal of former Vice President Brent Johnson for conduct unbecoming of an SA official and abuse of powers,” the statement said.

The SA also came under fire recently when reports broke that members had been involved in the theft of approximately 800 copies of the UWM Post on Oct. 31 and may now face civil suit charges.

According to a statement from the UWM Post, the accused are former SA President Alex Kostal and former Senate Oversight and Rules Committee Vice Chairman David Sidhu.

The theft occurred in response to an editorial in the paper, which criticized Johnson’s “Brighten the Night” event, a night walk around campus neighborhoods to help eliminate students’ fear of crime, the statement said.

The statement said because both of the accused are acting representatives of the state under Wisconsin State Statute, they can be held accountable under civil rights law.

Zach Erdmann, the UWM Post’s Editor in Chief, said the missing papers were discovered when his distribution manager called him and expressed concern over a lack of papers at the student union.

“We weren’t expecting it to be a particularly hot issue,” Erdmann said.

He said it had been a slow week for news, but when an estimated 800 papers was reported missing, it was enough to be curious.

Erdmann said he filed a police report Nov. 2, but did not hear anything back for a couple of weeks.

“We didn’t suspect foul play,” Erdmann said.
In mid-November, an employee at the UWM Post and the student union was able to get a hold of security camera footage and saw two people taking the papers, Erdmann said.

Erdmann said they started an investigation and eventually found people to go on the record saying the president told SA office manager Andrew Hapka to steal the papers.

According to the statement, Hapka, who is also a roommate of Kostal and Sidhu, said he and the president committed the theft and that Sidhu helped dispose of the papers after the UWM Post made inquiries.

– City Editor Ally Boutelle contributed to this story.