Correction appended.
Speaker of the Undergraduate Senate Lars Emerson resigned from his position in a letter sent to members of Student Government on Jan. 27.
“I have loved serving the Senate, as a member and as its Speaker, so I tender my resignation with a heavy heart,” Emerson said in his letter.
Emerson, the former Senator for the Class of 2017, said there were many reasons for his resignation.
“It became increasingly more difficult to deal with an organization where these good, well-intentioned people were cast aside or ignored and completely mistreated,” he said.
A lack of communication between the president, comptroller, chief of staff and Emerson was another reason he felt he had to step down, Emerson said. The Senate has also received scrutiny from members and outside observers due to internal hostilities between members of SG.
“The incredible lack of respect that Senate has received from outsiders and insiders is the number one reason why I resigned,” Emerson said.
In the Jan. 25 meeting of the Senate, Emerson received criticism for the culture of the body. During the public comment section of the meeting, Naomi Zeigler, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, described the “boys’ club” mentality in MGC 262 and 270, two SG office rooms, according to the meeting's minutes. She said that some individuals in those rooms used racial slurs and that others resisted Safe Space training.
Ziegler had interviewed with Emerson on Jan. 14 for a position in the Senate but was eventually rejected. After inquiring further, she discovered that three members of the group reviewing applicants were never informed of her application, according to the minutes.
Ziegler ultimately called for structural changes in the Senate and said any changes had to start with Emerson, according to the minutes.
SG President Sophia Wirth was somewhat surprised by Emerson’s decision to step down, she said.
“I think that there have been a lot of ups and downs with Senate this year, but by and large, they’ve really been on a good track,” Wirth said. “I think for Lars, he felt that it was time to move on from the position.”
Some members of SG have tried to fight the alleged mentality that Emerson has left. This past fall, Comptroller Abby Dunn restructured SG’s in-office conduct policy in an effort to stop inflammatory language from being used in the office, according to Wirth.
“As college students, we’re firing words around and we don’t think about how much that affects other people’s comfort and safety,” Wirth said. “Abby wanted to make sure that there were never any circumstances where people felt they couldn’t come into the office or that they weren’t welcomed here.”
For some members, self-censoring their language proved to be too difficult, Wirth said.
“It went beyond just off-the-cuff [statements]” she added. “They started getting into things that were offensive to women, people of color or were homophobic comments.”
Wirth said that she does not think these comments were said maliciously, only carelessly.
“And as with all situations, it reached a boiling point, where that language was still being thrown around, and it wasn’t sustainable anymore,” Wirth said.
It is this “toxic” environment that Emerson resigned from, he said.
Going forward, Wirth said she hopes to help create a safe space within SG in order to focus on its most important priority: advocacy.
“This [use of offensive language] is not a blanket Senate problem,” Wirth said. “Language and the words we use matter. It’s about recognizing when something crosses over the expression of opinion to creating a hostile environment for the people around you.”
Wirth is unsure how the Senate will control the problems some allege are occurring, but she said she hopes that it will not come down to expelling people from the organization.
“It shouldn’t be that it gets to the point where individuals need to be kicked out, it should be a self-awareness thing,” Wirth said. “If people can’t abide by these reasonable expectations, then maybe they should reevaluate whether or not this is the right place for them.”
Emerson was elected as Speaker in November 2014, after the Senate took a vote of no confidence against former Speaker Mike Wang, The Eagle previously reported. He said he would be interested in continuing to work within SG in the future.
“Yes, if some of the problems go away and some of the toxic people go away [I would return]” Emerson said in a later interview. “I loved it, it was one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
Eagle staff writer Aly Seidel contributed to this report.
A previous version of the article misspelled Naomi Zeigler's name and had the wrong school. It has been fixed.
