Two sources, that wish to remain anonymous, have spoken to The Spectrum about what they see as constitutional infractions pertaining to the North Dakota Federation of College Republicans executive board and committee. One of these sources is a former executive board member.

The concern of these two sources mainly revolves around four resignations from members of the executive board. Two of the positions, Treasurer and National Committee Woman, were allegedly forced to resign. According to our sources, the members were forced to resign because they allegedly didn’t fulfill the duties of their respective positions.

According to the former executive board member, three bylaws of the constitution of the North Dakota Federation of College Republicans were violated. The first being that state committee members are supposed to appoint someone to vote for them, but they voted as themselves. The new positions added, including the National Committee Woman and National Committee Man, also violated the constitution because they were never stated to be voting members. Furthermore, the duties of these positions were never outlined in the constitution. According to the former executive board member, another bylaw was broken due to the fact that the official roster of the North Dakota Federation of College Republicans only contains members of the executive board when it should contain all members from all institutions.

According to a source from inside the North Dakota Federation of College Republicans, this constitutional crisis can be traced to committee chairperson Sierra Heitkamp, who, according to this anonymous source, refuses to hold an election. After the committee members were allegedly forced to resign, the source said Heitkamp “then asked for the campus chairs to send in a list of names of recommendations for people to be appointed.” The source said they are fine with this action, but they also said this could be unfair to people who don’t have the ability to participate heavily in campus politics.

Because of the lack of an actual roster for the North Dakota Federation of College Republicans, the elections have taken place via a messaging app called GroupMe used by the executive board, according to the anonymous source.

Both sources cited personal strife among the executive board members, committee members and the chairperson as reasons for the organization’s larger constitutional crises.

We reached out to the Cale Dunwoody, the president of the North Dakota State College Republicans, for a comment and he refused to comment because, according to him, the NDSU College Republicans are not affected by these actions. Heitkamp also declined to comment on these allegations, although we would welcome her or any other’s clarification.