Arts and Sciences Council President Mollie Sledd said she plans to resign from office Sept. 17 after she was denied a $2,000 stipend she anticipated receiving from the Council.
"The Arts and Sciences Council has always given a stipend to the president for staying over the summer," Sledd said. "If I had known ahead of time I could have gotten another job."
Sledd said she has to resign in order to work to compensate for the money she did not make over the summer.
"So basically what it comes down to is I have to work," she said. "I do have a job now."
Fourth-year College student Kerry McNabb, the current Council vice president, will succeed Sledd as president, though no Council procedure formally dictates what to do in the case of a president resigning.
"There is no precedent in our constitution for anything like this so we had to go with the flow," Sledd said. "And someone from the normal Council will be appointed to do things the normal vice president would have done."
Sledd blamed the monetary confusion on a computer system the University uses for program finances called Oracle.
"We are supposed to have control of the budget," Sledd said. "And this had been okayed by an administrator."
Sledd added that "When it came up for approval for spring, it was okay."
"It was Oracle that caught it -- Oracle is a horrible, horrible system that does not work for this school -- this inflexibility in my case shows that the system does not work."
College Dean Edward L. Ayers could not be reached for comment as of yesterday evening.
McNabb said Council was not able to control the payment of students, adding that she still does not fully understand how Council funding works.
Sledd explained that she had no choice but to resign.
"I'm still in school and taking classes," Sledd said. "Something had to go in order for me to be able to work -- I certainly would not drop out of my five-year masters program."
McNabb said the issue of a stipend was out of the Council's control.
"It's not something that we as a Council had any control over," she said. "I didn't know anything about how the system worked until this year and I still only know what Mollie has experienced so I don't have full details about it."
Vice President of Student Affairs Pat Lampkin was sympathetic to Sledd's plight.
"When I received the e-mail, my first reaction was that I was sorry to see her go," Lampkin said.
The Faculty Advisory Committee received a resignation e-mail from Sledd, yesterday, Lampkin said.
"I don't really know enough to comment, yet," she said.
McNabb said she and the staff are sorry to lose Sledd, but they still intend to have an eventful year.
"I think she wanted to be a part of Council and I think she'll miss it," McNabb said. "She made the decision that was open to her so I don't think she would change her mind about it."
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