City College’s student senators debated Friday whether it should donate or raise money to contribute to Dr. Raeanne Napoleon’s legal fund.

Napoleon, who is the chair of the chemistry department at City College, was threatened with a lawsuit by colloquium speaker Michael Shermer after she shared published harassment allegations about him to college members using the all-campus email system the day of the event.

The discussion was prompted in part by Melissa Cook, a member of the Feminist Club, who spoke to the senate during its last meeting on Friday, April 13th. During that meeting, she read an official statement from the club, requesting the senate to “take action in regards to the treatment of Rae Napoleon on behalf of the administration, as well as to request the development of fundraising.”

Student Trustee David Panbehchi suggested sending a message to the administration, telling them to “. . . actually start to pay attention to what students want and what students actually care about.”

“The administration should have told the students, but they didn’t,” Panbehchi said. “Students care about sexual harassment and if you don’t tell the students about that of course they’re gonna be pissed off. They’re pissed off right now.

“The fact that they didn’t and tried to push this under the rug is not going to work and they can’t keep doing this, so we need to raise our voices on this issue.”

Because the senate has no precedent on how to handle this kind of issue, Matthew Esguerra, vice president of external affairs, said he felt uncomfortable about going forward with the student’s request for the senate to take action. He suggested that the senate talk to the administration or the Board of Trustees to hear what they have to say about it.

“We need to figure out what jurisdiction we have if we want to go towards supporting her,” Esguerra said. “I don’t think we should be making a decision right now to just start supporting her because although I personally feel like we should be supporting her, it just—there is no precedent.”

Commissioner of Marketing Kenyon Newhouse was asked by the senate to draft a statement with the senate’s response to the issue. He said he has one drafted but has been “reluctant to send it out.”

Panbehchi made two suggestions for how the senate could support Napoleon: one was to donate money from the general fund directly to her legal fund. The other was to host an event, potentially with the Feminist Club, to raise money for the legal fund.

Although no action was taken, Esguerra suggested that a member of the senate speak to “parliamentarian/attorney” Lorenzo R. Cuesta, while Amy Collins, student senate faculty advisor, suggested that a member of the senate speak to the campus’ free attorney this upcoming week before regrouping on the issue next meeting.