Derek Nix, campaign manager for the Oregon Action Team slate and candidate for a PFC Senate seat, has resigned from his position as Student Senate Administrative Assistant. In his resignation letter, sent out Monday morning and acquired via a public record’s request, Nix said verbal conduct in the workplace that may be interpreted “to cause professional harm to my position in the ASUO and worse, to my personal safety,” led to his resignation effective immediately.

Over the last two weeks, I have been subject to repeated workplace harassment that threatened me with my job, the details of which have been reported to the Personnel Committee, but it culminated Thursday when Senator Gulley threatened me with physical injury. Senator Gulley had and has no evidence to support his slanderous accusations at Wednesday night’s Senate meeting.

The controversy started when some numskull decided to allow students to be in charge of millions of dollars. The current controversy, however, began last week when an anonymous e-mail was sent to all senators asking them to “trim the fat from the pfc budget” and blamed the racism card for a high PFC budget. The email was some kind of gag or political stunt. Gulley accused Nix for creating the e-mail (ODE story on last week’s tribulations here.) Senator Diego Hernandez responded, saying he’s tired of dealing with ignorant people everyday:

Race isn’t about skin color, it is about history, relations of power, structures and cultural norms. The comments of the email assume that racism is the mere notice of race, racism is about hierarchy, inequality, and power, which comes from both individual (personal) and structural or institutional (group). So before you start talking about race, make sure you know what the fuck you’re talking about.

The Senate passed the PFC budget in Wednesday’s meeting with little controversy, but postponed the ADFC budget. Unfortunately, I left halfway through and missed the shouting matches. In Nix’s resignation letter, he thanked Senator Zavrel and the rest of the Personal Committee for investigating his safety concerns. He said Rock the Yellow, a programs based slate, is to blame for the slander.

The baseless and false accusations that were waged against my character have one thing in common: they all come from people who work for Kari and Jesse, and thus are due solely to the fact that I am a candidate in the upcoming ASUO Elections. It’s unfortunate that these students have resorted yet again to going after a position instead of focusing on the issues at hand and are incapable of separating my professional job with my political aspirations, as I have successfully learned to do.

Sen. Gulley sent out a brief response, saying he felt silly for taking “this ridiculous resignation letter seriously enough to respond,” at no time did he physically threaten Nix, and said that Nix is a liar. Sen. Gulley also hopes that everyone enjoyed the sun on Sunday.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 09:09 by Ossie and is filed under '08 Election, ASUO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.