Education

Wichita State University Student Gov’t Senator Threatened For Highlighting Female Conservative Activist In Women’s History Month Twitter Post

Wichita State University campus

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Elizabeth Weibel Contributor
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A freshman student from Wichita State University (WSU) in Kansas is facing threats and demands that she resign from the student government association for her role in posting a tweet that highlighted a female conservative activist for Women’s History Month.

Olivia Gallegos, a student senator from WSU, is facing backlash over a tweeted posted to the WSU Student Government Association account stating, “in honor of Women’s History Month, the Diversity, Empowerment, and Inclusion Committee wants to recognize important women that we admire and celebrate for their achievements and impact to our lives.”

Included in the post were musician Janet Jackson, Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff, and Morgan Zegers, the founder and CEO of Young Americans Against Socialism, which aims to teach young Americans “the truth about socialism.”

In response to the tweet, several student senators gave Gallegos an ultimatum: resign from her role by 5 p.m. on Friday, Mar. 26 for posting what they characterized as “white supremacy content,” or be charged with a code of conduct violation, Zegers claimed in a Twitter video. (RELATED: ‘Trained Marxists’: Morgan Zegers Talks About What She Thinks The Black Lives Matter Movement Really Stands For)

Zegers went on to say that “they can’t technically through the bylaws force her to resign, they can’t actually kick her out. But, what they can do is threaten her with a charge of white supremacy and violating the code of conduct.”

The WSU student government issued a statement on Twitter Thursday saying, “SGA encourages and supports the right of all students to share their opinions” and that they “represent over 16,00 individual students and strive to ensure every student feels the Association is a platform to express their beliefs.”

“SGA made a social media post on March 17, highlighting women who are role models to each individual member of the Diversity, Empowerment and Inclusion Committee. The intent was to engage directly with individual Senator’s opinions,” the statement continued. “We understand and recognize the potential controversy this post has caused and apologize to any students who may have been personally affected by this post.”

“I’m an out-of state senator. My constituency is out-of-state students at WSU,” Gallegos explained in an interview with the Daily Caller. “As a senator, when voting and discussing things you discuss things based off of your constituency and you vote based off of how your constituency feels about a certain topic.”

Gallegos explained that she also serves “on the Diversity Empowerment and Inclusion Committee,” which had members pick a notable woman to highlight for Women’s History Month, and several other senators “discussed the idea of highlighting a conservative woman.”

She explained that “they felt like having a conservative woman highlighted would be a good idea,” because it showed “diversity,” and inclusiveness to “all ideologies.”

Gallegos picked Morgan Zegers after she noticed that nobody had chosen a conservative woman yet. She explained that she felt that picking Zegers was a “straight forward choice,” because she wasn’t as “controversial as someone like Ivanka Trump or Candace Owens.”

“I submitted it, nobody reached out to me about wanting me to change who I had selected, nobody reached out bout the biography I had written on her. Nothing. It got approved and went through public relations. It got posted a week ago on March 17 and nobody said a word.”

“I got an email from somebody claiming to be a constituent of mine,” she explained about how the situation got heated. “I later found out that they are an in-state student, so not a constituent. Telling me how selecting Morgan was such a bad idea, and how it’s bigoted, fascist, and racist. At the end of the email, I was asked to resign from the committee as well as being a senator.”

She continued to explain that she had someone “who is not only in SGA as a senator,” but in the same “committee and knew about her post,” and tweeted out that “people should call out the senator who chose Morgan.”

Gallegos explained that she has “no intention,” to resign from her position with SGA. “I have done nothing wrong. I literally did the instructions set forth to do so from the committee. They wanted a conservative voice to be highlighted and honestly, it feels like the entire SGA is throwing me to the wolves, and then the committee kind of has as well.”

“I’ve had one person from my committee reach out and be like, ‘This is ridiculous what’s happening,'” she explained. “Everyone else has either been silent or vocal on social media or in meetings about how I should be condemned for my actions.”

According to the Rules and Regulations Manual on the WSU website, senators may be recalled on grounds that they fail “to maintain a 2.50 cumulative grade point average,” “fail to fulfill prescribed duties,” or “others as specified in the Code of Conduct and outlined in the Bylaws.”

“If a Senator is charged with one (1) or more of the grounds for removal, the Senate shall review said Senator’s case, and may expel the Senator by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the entire Senate, excluding vacant seats,” the student government association rules and regulations manual reads.

Lainie Mazzullo, a spokesperson for the strategic communications department at Wichita State University told the Daily Caller that the university “welcomes and embraces diversity of all kinds, including political thought and viewpoints.”

“We celebrate students’ initiative and leadership, and we support free expression from all of those who make up our campus community,” Mazzullo added. “The university does not restrict students from free speech.”