In the wake of alleged election irregularities at last week's general body meeting, senior Undergraduate Council of Students officers played damage control over the weekend as council members privately expressed concerns about how the internal council elections were handled by President Michael Glassman '09 and Vice President Lauren Kolodny '08.
At last Wednesday's general body meeting - the first of the academic year - UCS held internal elections to fill several vacant executive board positions and name the council's representative to the Undergraduate Finance Board.
Some council members questioned the legitimacy of the race for appointments chair. The position had traditionally been voted on internally by the council, but last year UCS passed a "code change" to allow the appointments chair to be voted by the student body in the regular spring UCS elections, said Drew Madden '10, who sponsored the code change last spring as appointments chair.
In April, Tan Van Nguyen '10 ran unopposed and was elected appointments chair by the student body. After that election, council members discovered that the UCS constitution stipulates that the appointments chair must be voted internally, rendering Nguyen's election illegitimate. A code change is not sufficient to amend the constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote of the student body.
"At the time, we didn't realize that the positions to be openly elected were delineated very specifically in the UCS constitution," Madden, now the UCS student activities chair, said last night. "We didn't have time to put a referendum (to amend the constitution) on the ballot."
Last Wednesday, Nguyen ran internally for this position against Erik Duhaime '10 and Ellen DaSilva '10. He lost to Duhaime in what was announced as a close race.
A council member who requested anonymity said some UCS members thought they saw Glassman and Kolodny add two votes to the final tally in the appointments chair race.
UCS members voted using secret ballots, which were counted by the vice president.
Glassman told The Herald last night that some members of the executive board and other council members discussed their grievances with him and Kolodny at a meeting Sunday. Kolodny and Glassman showed the ballots from the appointments chair race to the people at the meeting to confirm that the election was not rigged, Glassman said.
Another controversy stemming from last week's meeting involved the election for the council's UFB representative. Initially, only two freshmen - who had just been elected the night before as class of 2011 representatives - expressed interest in running for the position.
After the two first-years left the room to wait to be called in individually to make a pitch for the position, Martin Bell '10, who was voted to the council as an at-large representative and then was elected as Corporation liaison earlier in the meeting, implored that an upperclassman with experience on the council run for the UFB representative position. Bell told the council that a freshman - lacking any "institutional memory" - could not provide adequate representation for UCS on UFB.
Amid the increasing confusion at last week's meeting, UCS Treasurer Jose Vasconez '10 - who was UCS's representative to UFB last year as a freshman - was interrupted by another council member as he attempted to refute Bell's claim. Stefan Smith '09 agreed to run and subsequently won the election.
At the time, UCS members expressed concerns about Bell's remarks and questioned whether Smith actually wanted the position, but the executive board ultimately determined that Smith was legitimately voted UCS representative to UFB.
Glassman told The Herald that there is precedent for a council member to encourage upperclassmen to run for a position.
The concerns about the internal elections prompted some UCS members to circulate a proposal for a vote to remove Glassman and Kolodny from their positions. The anonymous council member told The Herald that the proposal had garnered strong support by the time Glassman and Kolodny found out about it Friday night.
The president and vice president spent the weekend on damage control, contacting various members of the council in an attempt to ameliorate the situation.
Glassman and Kolodny's "political lives were at stake as they worked their way through the UCS executive board," the anonymous council member said.
Glassman told The Herald that Kolodny and he had a lot of "personal interactions" with UCS members when they heard of the concerns. He specifically cited the meeting Sunday night.
The Sunday night meeting resulted in two major proposals to change council elections. At last night's meeting, Glassman proposed the creation of an ad hoc committee to review how elections are run. The other major proposal was to reform the council's election code.
Madden wrote a proposal for special elections protocol that aims to avoid future controversy and confusion over internal elections. This proposal is slated to be voted on at next Wednesday's general body meeting.
As part of the fallout from the election irregularities, two council members who had been elected last week - Smith and Gabriel Kussin '09, who was elected communications chair - resigned from those positions before last night's meeting, saying that they would be more comfortable running again using the new special elections code. Both were voted to those positions in unopposed races last night.
"There was a lot of confusion and a little bit of disappointment about how the elections were run in general," Kussin told The Herald. "I had no problem with specific elections, but problems with the way it was run."
Kussin said resigning and re-running was his way of expressing concern over last week's elections. "Some people thought it was overkill, but it was essential to not only gain the trust of everyone in the group but for everyone to gain trust in the elected officials of the UCS," he said.
The new code was also used last night in an internal election for parliamentarian pro tempore. Madden beat At-Large Member Clay Wertheimer '10 by a vote of 10-to-9 with two abstentions.
Underscoring the unusual nature of the weekend's events, Christina Kim '07, a former council member who served as UCS elections chair in the spring, came to the general body meeting last night to tell UCS members that she was "disappointed" in their actions and behavior over the weekend.
She urged them to stop wasting time with "petty procedural bullshit" and instead focus on acting as role models for the student body.
Many council members told The Herald last night that they are satisfied with the resolution of the weekend's concerns.
Academic and Administrative Affairs Chair Rakim Brooks '09 said at the meeting last night, "In short, many council members were uncomfortable with how things were run. It has been explained since then that that's the way things have always been done."
