Updated March 11 Associated Student Government Parliamentarian Will Upton resigned Wednesday night after a heated fight over in-Senate election dates, calling the ASG President “petty and unethical” and admitting that he wrote an anti-ASG blog.
“My time in ASG has been one of the best times of my life,” Upton said in an emotional resignation speech during his executive board report. “Always think through your decisions, but in the end do what in your heart feels right.”
He exited the room immediately afterward.
Upton, a Weinberg senior, also served as College Republicans Senator and on the elections and rules committees during his long career with student government.
At an executive board meeting on Sunday, board members argued with Upton over a proposal to move elections for the ASG Senate’s speaker, parliamentarian and clerk from the first week of Spring Quarter to the third.
The executive board thought Upton had included the date change when he revised the ASG code more than a month ago. Things became heated when board members found out he had not done so.
“Our assumption was that (the change) was made and we were very confused,” said ASG President Neal Sales-Griffin.
Upton said he would oppose any effort to bring the issue to a vote by urging his Rules Committee not to approve it. During the argument, he also admitted to authorship of the blog impeachASG, which had regularly criticized and mocked the behavior of the ASG executive board since its establishment last fall under the name “The Wizard of Wicker Park.”
Sales-Griffin sent an e-mail to Senate Tuesday with details on how senators could suspend the ASG code to introduce the bill if it hadn’t been entered as emergency legislation by Wednesday.
Unusually, the SESP senior specifically said Upton’s behavior necessitated the step and provided details of the parliamentarian’s actions during the meeting as well as informing the body about his blog.
“There were threats made by … William Upton to not let the legislation pass through the Rules Committee for the purpose of not allowing this legislation to pass in time for this year’s elections,” Sales-Griffin wrote.
After the meeting, Upton said he had already decided to resign during the next senate session, but it was only after the e-mail was sent Tuesday that he decided to publicly criticize Sales-Griffin.
“He takes everything personally,” Upton said after his resignation speech. “I decided to call him out on it.”
Sales-Griffin’s message was sent at 11:51 p.m. Less than three hours later, Upton had extended invitations to a private Facebook event called “WILL UPTON RESIGNS FROM ASG IN PROTEST!”
Upton’s resignation speech front-loaded its controversial points. He announced his resignation, then said he had been a victim of “a vitrolic backlash against dissent, a tyranny of the majority.”
Upton said his actions to block the bill from reaching the floor were made to protect the in-senate elections from the politicizing influence of executive election campaigns, which currently follow them. Changing the system was unnecessary and the executive board members who supported the bill “only want change for change’s sake,” he said.
Upton said Sales-Griffin’s lengthy e-mail, which at one point accused the parliamentarian of engaging in “poisonous” manipulation, was a personal attack that included details of a meeting traditionally held in confidence.
“It was deplorable, childish, petty and ultimately unethical,” he said.
Upton’s voice sounded strained throughout the speech, and he became visibly choked up when discussing his time in ASG. He thanked the Senate, the Senate’s faculty advisers, former elections committee colleague Samir Pendse and former Financial Vice President Seva Rodnyansky, one of many who had come to watch the speech.
After Upton left the room to respectful applause, the motion to allow the proposal to move elections was introduced before Senate.
Both sides debated the merits of having only a single session of open, turbulent debate to pass a piece of legislation.
Student Groups Director Vikram Karandikar argued against rushing ahead.
“If we wanted Senate’s input, we should have got it in a timely matter,” the McCormick Junior said. “If I want Senate to make a decision, I don’t want them to rush it.”
In the end, the motion failed to generate the two-thirds majority needed to pass.
For his part, Sales-Griffin said he had no regrets about the “executive decision” to make the Sunday meeting’s events public in order to garner support for the date change and disclose what he saw as a failure of service.
“Stuff gets personal real fast when people are not serving the same way they’re supposed to,” he said. “I told (Upton) how ironic it is that I wanted to impeach impeachASG and he never gave me the chance.”
Meanwhile, as ASG Clerk Paul David Shrader noted to Senate, the session was also to be the last of another veteran, Senate speaker Jack Eichorst.
Eichorst accepted a strong round of applause at the end of the session for his work, and then, citing a lack of time, the Weinberg senior said he would have to put off “a heartfelt speech” until April 1, the end of his official term.
