The campus community is left with unclear answers regarding the status of the vice president of Student Senate.
Senators voted at their Feb. 26 meeting for Austin Gipson-Black, vice president of Student Senate to resign from his position.
Sen. Brian Bressler, secretary of policies and initiatives and Sen. Alison Sloan, secretary of public relations, expressed their concerns at the meeting.
“If I am giving this report tonight, it means that Austin Gipson-Black has not agreed to resign from his position as Vice President of OCU’s Student Government Association at the request of Exec.,” Sloan said.
Anonymous sources have contacted Sloan and her advisors with claims of misconduct by Gipson-Black, Sloan said. One anonymous source said that they witnessed Gipson-Black engaging in sexual acts with another student in the Student Government Association offices, Sloan said.
All of these are allegations, proven neither true nor false, she said.
Sloan also said she and other executive cabinet members were told that Gipson-Black has verbally assaulted members of the executive cabinet.
“While no formal complaint was filed, the uneasy feeling of being unsafe is still present,” Sloan said. “One particular member of the Student Government Association has informed me that he/she cannot sleep out of fear of anonymous texts that we feel are circumstantially connected to Austin-Gipson Black.”
Bressler said at the meeting that he wants to resign from his position because being part of SGA has not been what he hoped for, and Gipson-Black has made him feel disrespected and belittled.
“The working conditions have become a war zone,” he said.
Secretary Sloan also said she wants to resign from her position if Gipson-Black does not resign from his position.
“Due to these allegations, plus circumstantial evidence and blatant personal fear, I am formally requesting that Austin Gipson-Black’s resignation is submitted by tomorrow at the latest, or I am resigning as Secretary of Public Relations for OCU’s Student Government Association, and I might just do that anyway,” she said.
A five minute recess was taken after Sloan’s address. After that, another 15-minute recess was taken. Senators had a private meeting in a separate room during both recesses. Members of the campus community present at the meeting were not allowed to attend.
“Regular meetings shall be open to members of the university community. Portions of a meeting may exclude members of the university upon the adoption of a motion to enter into ‘Executive Session,’” according to SGA’s constitution.
Neither of the recess meetings were approved as executive sessions.
Gipson-Black said he is not guilty of the allegations that brought up during the meeting.
“That’s all they are is allegations,” he said. “There were investigations by the board of conduct and I was found not responsible for any of the allegations.”
Gipson-Black said while he can’t talk about everything, the person who accused him had no evidence.
After both recesses, senators passed a resolution requesting Gipson-Black’s resignation. Gipson-Black called for an executive session immediately afterward and all non-SGA members were asked to leave the room.
Gipson-Black ended the executive session before an official decision was made on his future with Student Senate.
“We went into executive session simply so I could explain this is not a Senate matter, this is a complaint,” he said. “Constitutionally, it’s a court matter and this wasn’t the place for the discussions that we were having. It was inappropriate.”
MediaOCU will update this post with more information soon.
Contributing: Associate Editor Emily Wollenberg.
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