A poet unafraid of power

Kenton Stalder is a poet first, politician second.

Although he's spearheading a controversial effort to impeach former Student Government Association President Jonathan Sachs from his position as city council liaison for shirking required meetings, it's when Stalder talks about being in TerPoets that his face lights up — he even once took a first date to a poetry reading.

"She didn't like it at all; in fact, she left halfway through. But I loved it so much that I stayed," he said. "And I was like, ‘Well, if you don't like this, then it's not going to work out anyway.'"

At first, Stalder, a 27-year-old senior English major, didn't think the relationship between him and politics would work out either. Stalder, now the SGA Arts and Humanities legislator, said he was content last year when he was the president of the English Undergraduate Association and serving on TerPoets executive board.

"Those things were more important to me than running for student government," Stalder said.

It was only after months of nagging from student activist and Diamondback columnist Malcolm Harris, who ran for student body president on the Student Power Party ticket last year, that Stalder was convinced to run for the legislative seat. Stalder finally agreed — two days before the deadline.

As one of the few Student Power Party members who is still in the organization, Stalder has taken it upon himself to advance the party's radical reputation.

"He's definitely outspoken in the sense that he says what's on his mind," said North Hill legislator Natalia Cuadra-Saez, who also ran on the Student Power Party ticket. "He also is outspoken in the sense that he speaks up and does what he thinks is right."

While Sachs and others have called Stalder's move to impeach him a personal attack, Cuadra-Saez  said Stalder's decision falls in line with the legislator's principled track record, which includes speaking out last year after a state senator threatened to cut the university budget over the showing of a pornographic movie, posting the university's  budget online and arguing against a tuition increase.

"Kenton made this move to impeach based on the bylaws and based on the rules. ... it's as simple as that," she said. "He doesn't do things to play politics."

But Sachs has a harsher take on the situation and said Stalder — who he has had little interaction with — has been determined to attack him.

"I know he's been whispering to a lot of people that he didn't particularly care for me, which is his right," he said. "Numerous legislators have come up to me saying, ‘Kenton really has it out for you,' and this was months ago— we're talking even the summer."

"It's not shocking," he added. "I just can't really understand how he's pursuing it without ever talking to me."

Stalder was born and raised in South Dakota, about an hour outside the Native American reservation his Lakota-Sioux grandmother grew up on. With a GPA skirting a C average and a family of miners and roofers, Stalder said he "wasn't the college profile."

So, he enlisted in the military two days after graduating high school. Stalder's nearly nine-year stint in the U.S. Air Force  brought him to Afghanistan twice for a total of 11 months and to the Maryland National Guard in Baltimore for the past three years. He's due to be discharged in two months.

"I am 27 but I act like I'm 12, so people put me in the middle," he said.

But Harris, a senior English major, gives Stalder a little more credit for being the one to make the motion to impeach Sachs, which Harris said has been coming for "months."

"Everyone's acting like this is a, like, Kenton Stalder rogue action. But this is like 80 percent of the SGA — they just don't have the guts to say it in public," Harris said. "The guy's done multiple tours in Afghanistan; he's not scared of Jonathan Sachs."

Although Leonardtown legislator Andre Beasley said Sachs knows more about College Park than anyone in the SGA, Stalder said he stands by his motion.

"People talk about all the knowledge he has with the [College Park] City Council and the politics, and I don't doubt any of that. But what good is that to an SGA that doesn't get access to any of that knowledge?" he said. "The way in which he wasn't fulfilling his responsibilities was incredibly disrespectful and it was bringing down morale, and I felt like something needed to be said."

Stalder said he gets his love of the law and the concept of citizenship from his grandfather, who hauled water in a pickup truck for 12 years, rather than pay plumbers to examine work he'd done himself, in order to legally use city water.

"I have that kind of stubbornness in me," he said.

Stalder said he has become more and more vocal because being in the SGA helps legitimize what he has to say to students.

"What I feel best about in terms of what I've accomplished in the SGA is being that voice and being in the debates, and talking to people, and changing minds and raising consciousness," he said.

Still, Stalder said he's far from anxious about the outcome of tomorrow night's vote.

"The point of the motion was to point out to other people ... what the other cabinet members have been doing is so fantastic, and to allow [Sachs] to tail onto that — I just felt was a disservice," he said.

In fact, he doesn't have high hopes.

"I feel like it's going to be a hard motion to pass because we are a pretty friendly environment, and for a lot of people it just doesn't sit with them to do something so caustic," he said. "And that's admirable, and I'm fine with that."

aisaacs@umdbk.com