A senator wanted to leave the undergraduate Student Association Senate’s advocacy committee — a decision that his fellow senators did not like.
Thirteen members voted to deny SA Senator Grant Peterson’s resignation request during a Senate meeting Wednesday evening, forcibly keeping Peterson on the committee. Four senators voted in favor of Peterson’s request.
Peterson was not present during the discussion and vote on his resignation request, arriving minutes after the majority of the Senate shot it down.
Peterson told The Spectrum that he wanted to leave because of scheduling conflicts and that he didn’t see progress in the advocacy committee.
“I could do better just in general Senate meetings,” Peterson said. “A lot of these meetings end up being the same points.”
Peterson has “no idea” why fellow senators denied the request, but he’ll continue showing up to advocacy committee meetings.
“I question the Senate’s wisdom on a lot of things,” Peterson said. “I think they just vote willy-nilly.”
The denial was an effort to not normalize a culture of “not taking what you sign up for seriously,” according to SA President Aisha Adam.
“I don’t like the idea that certain people join committees just to be able to say they served on them, and then when it’s not convenient anymore to just leave,” Adam told The Spectrum.
Adam said that multiple senators shared the sentiment to have Peterson stay.
“We’re trying to get real things done,” Adam said. “It would have been more respectful to the committee, to myself, to the people who take it very seriously to have better reasons for leaving beyond, ‘I have better things to do.’’’
Peterson’s resignation request from the advocacy committee was the second one made for the 2025-26 academic year. SA Senator Piyush Ohri sought to resign during the Nov. 12 Senate meeting, which was granted by a vote of 17 senators and Peterson was the only one to abstain from the vote at the time.
Mylien Lai is the senior news editor and can be reached at mylien.lai@ubspectrum.com.
Mylien Lai is the senior news editor at The Spectrum. Outside of getting lost in Buffalo, she enjoys practicing the piano and being a bean plant mom. She can be found at @my_my_my_myliennnn on Instagram.
Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
