Should I take over as club president
I’m on the board for a club on my grad school campus. I am the vice president. Last term our acting president texted the group saying she’d be taking a brief leave of absence at the beginning of this term.
Because I am the VP I took over the president role at the beginning of this term, organized a board meeting, emailed the professors, coordinated a guest speaker for the first meeting etc. None of the board members or I thought it was important to keep her in the loop because we didn’t think she was a currently enrolled student.
Yesterday I sent out an announcement about our first meeting.
The ‘president’ saw it and sent me 4 separate texts back to back and then tried to call me. Once I responded to her text the highlights of our convo were as follows
From President: I’m still the president, I won’t be at the meeting but make sure everyone knows that I’m the president and not you, you should’ve communicated better, I had a small medical procedure I’m recovering from, I’ll be back at the end of the month.
All communicated through passive aggressive texts.
I was confused, I talked to the other board members and they also thought she couldn’t be the acting president during her leave of absence so I emailed one of our faculty advisors asking how the board should be organized with her being on a leave of absence. He said she is not on a leave of absence and that her class schedule is just organized differently than the others in her cohort (might be mostly online now?). Basically he just said to meet all together and figure it out which is fair. But I’m confused as to why she called it a leave if she’s still taking classes.
She sent me this text last and I haven’t responded yet because I’m trying to piece together if she’s just trying to get out of doing her duties as president while still keeping the title or not. “Could you also forward me the communication with (faculty advisor for club) so I can catch up on what’s been happening I am meeting with him later this week so I don’t wanna be clueless 😅”
Also she hasn’t reached out to anyone on the club board before seeing the meeting announcement since last term and we are already a month into this new term.
I need advice because the other board members want me to stay president even after she returns.
What do I do to resolve this quickly and easily and without making it seem like I’m just gossiping about her? She’s started stalking all the boards instagrams (accidentally liked an old photo) and her cohort members have had a hard time with her in the past. How do we go about talking to her without her flipping out on us?
Any advice is helpful!
Posted Jun 3, 2026, 11:46 PM UTC