“We’ve finally had enough,” Veri Upsette posted in the “Presidents for Change” forum March 24.
As the third president in the past year for the student organization Un-Adulting, Upsette said she “can’t even with this school anymore.”
“It’s like we shout and they don’t listen, you know?” Upsette said.
Upsette said organizations have been “shouting from the rooftops” about change, but their cries have gone unheard by administration.
Upsette said once she realized the administration wasn’t listening to their metaphorical cries, she decided to create the “Presidents for Change” forum, a website dedicated to posting ideas for change and complaints about the school, in the fall 2018 semester.
“I hadn’t heard about the Presidents for Change until last week, when they tried to organize a riot,” Hahn Deman, a junior in construction management, said. “Campus security was freaking out about it and sent out emails with screenshots.”
Deman said the only reason he saw the email was because he had accidentally sent his Domino’s verification email to his school gmail account.
Deman said that while he “believes the intentions were good,” somebody should have pointed out that “riot” was not the proper word to use.
“It was supposed to be ‘protest’,” Bill Fates, president of Future Business Billionaires, said. “Veri likes to make a hype around things and I guess her exec board said riot would get more attention.”
Fates joined “Presidents for Change” in February, despite knowing about the forum since the beginning of last semester.
“Veri is the longest president Un-Adulting has had, so I wanted to make sure that she was legit before joining,” Fates said.
The first president of Un-Adulting didn’t show up for the first two meetings; the second president said it was “too much for comfort” on Facebook and tagged Upsette as the new president.
Kale Ships, president of Food Fighters, said this isn’t the first problem Un-Adulting has caused for the presidents.
“They make a lot of noise online and tag other presidents so administration will think it’s a group effort,” Ships said. “I never said I wanted a live panther for the mascot. That was a lot to unpack when it came out.”
Ships and Fates said the riot scheduling has caused grief for their organizations and they won’t be signing up for any other Un-Adulting initiatives.
The post they had signed up for said “in order to help raise awareness of issues our organizations have on campus, sign up to volunteer.”
“It was short and simple so all of us thought it would be like a meeting or something with the administration,” Fates said. “Even SGA signed it. We were all put on the posters that Veri sent out saying “Presidents for Change is organizing a riot for April 1st.” Yeah, we thought it was a joke too.”
SGA declined to comment on their participation in the event but an emailed statement on their latest Panther Release addressed the issue.
“SGA stands behind organizations and their issues. However, we do not condone organization. We will not be attending the riot Presidents for Change is scheduling.”
Security also released an email stating “Organized riots will not be tolerated on campus,” along with the guidelines of unorganized chaos on campus and the procedures for these events.
If any student or organization has future plans for protests, riots or organization, they can refer to the guidelines on handybook.fit.edu.
