I have been the secretary for my department sponsored social club since August. I love this club and have invested a lot into it. I really do not want to quit, and would love to stick around to watch it grow. However, there are major problems with the current leadership. The only officers are now the president and myself. The president is an undergraduate like me, but she is essentially a very stubborn, hard-headed, and condescending person. She undermines me at any opportunity, and blames me for things that are far out of my control, while expecting me to pull about 90% of the work with planning and promoting events. The worst part is that she is constantly threatening to ruin my reputation within the department by telling the professors that I am doing a bad job. Her rudeness towards me is all despite the fact that I am single-handedly responsible for most membership involvement due to my friends within the department coming to events at my request. She refuses to see this, and actually acts intolerable and bossy towards these members as well!
An officer before me resigned under her watch, and she got another officer removed and banned from the club while ruining his reputation and basically painting him as some kind of dangerous threat. Ever since then I have been worried that she would do the same to me.
I have decided that putting up with her is no longer worth the investment. I am in my senior year at university, and would like to enjoy my last semester as an undergraduate doing things that I enjoy.
I am meeting with the faculty adviser sometime before the end of the winter break to discuss my resignation. The thing is, though, that I would really like to be completely honest about why I am quitting, and not make it seem as though it is because I am lazy or unable to follow through on things. The only hangup is that the president is a student who does research directly under him, and so they are quite close professionally (although I am sure he has probably caught on a bit to her overbearing and abrasive personality). I am scared, however, that if I bring up the issues to his attention that he will simply think that i am being dramatic, trying to deflect, or will think that I am the problem. How do I tactfully mention that the leadership is the reason I am quitting without making a big scene?
I should probably also mention that she has had problems with graduate students in the program, and that none of our upperclassmen seem to like her. I have a pretty solid reputation within the department due to helping out at conferences, volunteering time in labs, attending field schools, etc. So I am not just some random no-name chump who lacks credibility. The only hangup is that she also has the same sort of credibility, and has been here longer than myself to know a few more professors. I do not want it to be my word against hers in a way that could ruin my reputation that I have worked so hard to build up.
Of course you can quit and tell the faculty advisor that the president is hard to work with and that others have had problems with her, too. True that you don’t need to go on and on about it, but it is not like you are complaining about the advisor’s wife. She is just a student. The end of the semester is a nice time to quit. BTW you and the president are the leadership.
So I should just say “I am not resigning due to any lack of interest within the club, but rather because _____ is very difficult to work with and I do not think that our work styles mesh in a positive way.”?? Should I also bring up that another officer had resigned under her for the same reasoning?
The thing is, though, that this girl is a master of manipulation and framing things to make it look as though the other party is always guilty. She accused one of the graduate students of coming on to her because he refused to have dinner with her, and it was a very huge ordeal. This is also on top of her removal of another officer and making everyone in the department think that he was a bad guy. I am scared that she will use absolutely any mistake I have made and frame it to make me look terrible, and ruin my reputation. However, I think that after she’s complained about so many people maybe the professors will stop taking her seriously? Especially since I am known as a person of good moral standing, too.
In my opinion, no good can come from throwing her under the bus.
Say as little as possible, if that (my favorite quote from the movie Get Shorty).
Something along the lines of “Due to unforeseen circumstances beyond my control, I must tender my resignation immediately.”
You don’t have to mention that the unforeseen circumstances were that she turned out to be a crackpot. People know how to read between the lines, and they’ll see a pattern with her sooner or later. Best that you get out asap and as unscathed as possible, and don’t say anything that will feed the drama.
But the thing is that if I don’t make it clear that I am quitting due to her bad leadership abilities, she will immediately jump in to paint it as if I am leaving because I am lazy or ill-equipped for the job. I would rather put my side of things out there first before she gets a chance to put hers out there, because she will.
Just because she says to people “oh, jakkrabbitt is lazy or ill-equipped for the job” doesn’t mean that this is the truth or that people will believe her. They’ll just see somebody badmouthing someone else. In the adult working world, people like her get a reputation, and eventually they have trouble finding and keeping jobs.
My advice to you is not to argue with her, not to engage with her, and not to feed into her drama (because she’s obviously good at twisting it). IF your adviser asks you specifically why you are quitting, you can say something along the lines of “the president and I differ on our philosophy”.
If your reputation speaks for itself, then you should not have to say a word.
MotherOfDragons, thank you for putting that into perspective for me. I guess a lot of the time I just have a hard time remembering that professors do not necessarily believe every bit of gossip they hear about their students, and that this one undergraduate student does not have the complete power to ruin my reputation. I also think that she has badmouthed so many other students before, that professors are starting to catch on a bit. I believe that if she came forward with one more bad complaint about a fellow team member, they may start to see that she is the problem. That being said, once I quit I fully believe that the club will fail completely. The only people who still came were coming because of me and the treasurer. Once she does not have me holding things together for her, I think it will be obvious that her way of doing things is not adequate.
So I am going to meet with the faculty adviser, state my resignation, and bring a list of things that I have been working on to pass onto the next secretary to complete. I think that this will make me look professional, and will show that I genuinely do care about the club’s future.
That being said, I am still going to attend meetings for the club and help out whenever I can. If anything, that will piss the president off even more once she realizes that I still have a right to be there even though she doesn’t like me 