ASUN VP’s Resignation sparks concerns over why so many people leave student body
Report by Olivia Sullivan, Alyssa Doyle and Hana Altenburg
ASUN, or The Associated Students of the University of Nevada, which began its long and storied history in 1898, is vaguely understood by most students at UNR to be our student government. Beyond that, ASUN appears to be a mystifying beast that is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.
Now a rash of high profile resignations are becoming the norm every semester. In October, Clayton Greb, the Senator for the College of Business resigned abruptly at the beginning of a meeting. On November 14th, the ASUN vice president herself, Bayla Fitzpatrick, wrote a letter saying she was leaving her elected post due to family circumstances.
The secretive Coffin and Keys society piled on the criticism in its latest newsletter saying “the Men of Coffin and Keys are aware of the stipulations and rumors following the resignation of former Vice President FitzpatriCK — we have decided to remain unbiased and we wish her subsequent success in her future endeavors.”
This begs the question of what exactly goes on at ASUN, despite the association handling so much money with a current $3,021,196.00 yearly budget and determining so much of campus life.
In an article posted by the Reynolds Sandbox in March of 2022, Madison Castagnola writes about the lack of “solid knowledge” on campus concerning what ASUN does.
Castagnola quotes 2021 UNR graduate, Blake Lamb, saying, “once people are voted in you don’t hear much more from ASUN on what they vote on or even talk about.” When the ASUN preliminary elections occur in March each spring semester, there is a large number of unanswered voters in the results. There are several students who either are not informed about the elections or simply do not have the interest to participate.
It comes as no surprise then that Fitzpatrick’s resignation is relatively unknown around campus.
Fitzpatrick campaigned with Dionne Stanfill, the current President of ASUN. Their campaign, “Stronger with Nevada” was the campaign platform that Stanfill and Fitzpatrick advocated to students. Stanfill won with 1,301 votes and Fitzpatrick with 1,331 votes against Leslie Ramirez and Autumn Kidd.
When asked to comment on her recent resignation, Fitzpatrick was able to share that just like any school affiliated organization, there were good and bad times.
“I think that there were times in any organization where things can get cliquey and I just wanted to make changes on campus,” she said during an interview with the Reynolds Sandbox. “My experience had a lot of ups and downs. The downs would be internal turbulence and everyone in everyone else’s business. The ups were the changes you were able to make on your campus and community. If you do your job you can achieve your goals. You figure out that often the answer isn’t no you just have to ask”
Fitzpatrick found that for herself and others resignations are usually due to the amount of work and time management.
“It’s often the amount of work expected to put into ASUN is just not equivalent to the pay and the expectations in that role. They often don’t have the time commitment that’s expected, it becomes overwhelming and frustrating.”
As Fitzpatrick leaves ASUN in its 90th session she hopes the organization will continue to create better engagement with its students and administration and really listen to the voices and deliver to the needs of their campus community.
“I hope ASUN continues to have a strong connection with the upper admin. I also hope they can continue to make sure they are actually listening to student voices and making real change. As student leaders you will hear a complaint and instead of working with students you will solve it on your own and end up giving them something they didn’t even want instead of listening to them in the first place”.
Fitzpatrick described her time in ASUN as a learning experience, simple as that.
Following Fitzpatrick’s resignation, Jada Magliano, who served as the Chief of Internal Affairs, will now take up the vice president position. She was nominated by Stanfill on Nov. 17 to the senate board. After a unanimous vote, Magliano was appointed to the position.
The members of ASUN all have different experiences. Austin Brown served as the President of ASUN for the 89th session and also served three other years as Vice President, Chief of Staff, and an intern.
“I loved it. It was a very good learning opportunity. I feel very privileged for the roles that I took on and that I was able to serve the students,” Brown said. “I look fondly back at my time in ASUN.”
Brown had a positive experience in ASUN and benefited from his involvement. Brown feels that ASUN helped him learn interpersonal skills. He describes ASUN as a dynamic organization that has positions for everyone.
Brown’s time in ASUN ended organically after his term as president ended. However, he feels that people resign from ASUN for many positive reasons whether it be to study abroad, focus on a new career path, etc.
“Just like any school, students are going to leave,” Brown said. “There are a lot of positive reasons for why people leave ASUN.”
Dominique Hall, who served as ASUN President for the 2021 academic school year, was part of the organization for two years before she was elected. Hall had similar experiences as Brown in the sense that she was able to accomplish a lot in her three years within the organization.
“I was able to accomplish a lot of good things during my presidency such as advocating for financial and academic benefits for students during the pandemic, creating policies to benefit Black and marginalized students, and passing multiple pieces of legislation as a Senator,” Hall said.
Despite her many accomplishments in her time with ASUN, Hall also stands by the fact that it was a stressful period of her life, to say the least.
“During my presidency specifically I was subject to loads of harassment that I believe stemmed from racism,” Hall said. “Everything I did was scrutinized, people would go on social media and say negative things about me; pick apart almost every action I did, and threaten to have me impeached and recalled. They’d scrutinize me for my identity as a Black woman; scrutinize me for my opinions on certain campus organizations; and scrutinize me for doing what every college student in Reno did, go out to bars for a night of fun. As a 20 year old student, it was a lot for me mentally as no other ASUN president [during my time in school] was subject to so much hostility as I was.”
Hall went on to say, “It’s not implausible to see how this was racism. There are only three percent of Black students at UNR, two percent of Black people in Reno; and many students in ASUN came from rural areas with a minimal/nonexistent Black population. Additionally, ASUN was majority white. There are only 5 Black ASUN presidents in history. Everything was fine in my life until I became student body president. Time and time again we see that when Black people are in power, others feel as though they have a superiority complex and try to take that away from Black leaders. This was the first time I dealt with racism and it was devastating.”
Hall described the adverse effects the organization had on her mental health quite candidly.
“During my presidency specifically, I was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety,” she remembers. “I was having panic attacks at night, and was constantly paranoid. Paranoid I’d wake up and see myself being slandered on social media. Paranoid about being impeached and recalled. Just paranoid.”
It is because of its less than appealing mental side effects that Hall understands quite well why some may decide to leave the organization.
“Based on my experience, I think so many ASUN members resign because members are young and things don’t always go their way in ASUN. When I was president, members resigned because they didn’t like ‘the direction ASUN was going in.’ I perceived that to mean they did not like that ASUN was changing to allow marginalized students to have the opportunity to have power. Additionally, ASUN is just a lot,” she said. “A lot happens in the organization, and — again — students are young and it’s a lot to deal with external drama on top of being a full time college student.”
Despite the pressure to resign, the paranoia that she might eventually be impeached, and the fellow members that jumped ship, Hall stuck out her full term as ASUN President. To this day she still believes she made the right choice sticking with ASUN, as it ultimately brought her to where she is today.
“I believe that ASUN prepared me for law school and being in professional environments. ASUN is politics. Most environments we are in are political environments. ASUN taught me how to deal with diverse groups of people who believed in different things. Additionally, ASUN gave me a direct “line” into attending law school right after undergrad,” she said.
Looking back on her time, Hall believes that the best piece of advice she could have given herself at the time is to “Ignore the negativity.” Similarly, she believes that any student that is serious about joining ASUN should “make the most of it,” but also recommends that students “go to therapy as well, if they’d like to join ASUN.”
ASUN consists of several different branches, executive, senate, and judicial. There are also different directors for certain issues. Each session, there are numerous resignations in each branch.
The brother of one of our reporters, Conner Doyle, who was a senator for the college of liberal arts, resigned from his position in the 88th session.
“Initially ASUN provided me with some great professional insight and helped me grow as a leader,” Doyle said. “That being said, ultimately, my morals and values differed from ASUN, resulting in me leaving the organization.”
Many members choose to resign from ASUN due to mental health circumstances and their overall well being.
“ASUN affected my well being since it went against my morals, which was why I stepped down,” Doyle said. “I know longer saw myself fitting into the mold of an officer so I thought it was best to leave it for someone who actually wanted to be in the position.”
Those in a position for ASUN receive a paycheck for the work that they contribute to the organization.
“I personally did not work for ASUN for the money but I stepped down since I felt guilty using the students fees when I didn’t feel like I was doing anything important,” Doyle said. “I think a lot of students end up parting ways with ASUN because the amount of work required combined with a toxic culture makes the meager paycheck not worth it. That being said, I have not been in the organization for three years so I’m not sure what the dynamic is like now.”
According to Fitzpatrick and others, the situation is much the same coming out of the pandemic as it was during, and more pay and fewer meetings could help stem the tide of resignations.
