Bid to Oust College Student Over Casino Slaying Is Vetoed

The student government president vetoed a resolution asking David Cash to leave UC Berkeley because he failed to prevent or report a Nevada casino slaying.

Cash, a sophomore nuclear engineering major, admitted seeing his friend grab the girl in a bathroom stall, but kept silent about the murder for several days--even after Jeremy Strohmeyer told him that he killed her.

Strohmeyer pleaded guilty to the slaying Tuesday and faces a sentence of life in prison. Cash, 19, of La Palma, had prepared to testify against him but was not charged with any crime.

In a contentious late night session Wednesday, voting members of the Associated Students at the University of California deadlocked 9 to 9 on whether to ask Cash to leave the university. Committee Chairman Preston Taylor broke the tie and decided that the resolution should pass.

But without achieving a two-thirds vote for either position, the matter fell into the hands of group President Irami Osei-Frimpong, who vetoed the bill, thus ending the student body effort to coerce Cash to leave.

The vote was largely symbolic because the student government lacks the authority to expel Cash.

“All it can do is it can ask him to leave. He can say yes or no. We can’t make him leave,” said sophomore Arian C. White, a student government member, before the vote. “It would let him know the student government doesn’t appreciate his presence.”

In a demonstration at the university last month, hundreds of people called for Cash’s expulsion. But Berkeley administrators have said that since Cash has not been charged with any violation of criminal law or campus policy, there is no basis to consider an expulsion.