CORRECTION APPENDED

Several members of the Undergraduate Council (UC) took to their feet in protest last night after an incident of illegitimate voting, which led to a motion for censure, the likes of which UC President Ryan A. Petersen ’08 said he had “never seen.”

The lone item on last night’s docket was the final student groups grants package of the year. It sparked objections due to its failure to allot funding to club sports and to its Eleganza fashion show appropriations, which some representatives believed were excessive.

Discontent over these items resulted in the entire grants package being voted down more than an hour into the meeting. The package was not passed until it was agreed that the Eleganza grants would be considered independent of the other grants next week.

Concerns over voter impropriety arose when, prior to the initial vote against the grants package, representative Vivien G.H. Wu ’08 left the meeting early and handed her electronic vote-clicker to fellow representative Nworah B. Ayogu ’10.

When representative Sammad Khurram ’09 discovered that Wu’s name had appeared on the projector screen that displays the votes despite the fact she was no longer present at the meeting, Ayogu admitted that he registered votes on both his own clicker and Wu’s. [SEE CORRECTION BELOW]

In an interview after the meeting, Ayogu said that Wu had told him to vote in her stead. Wu maintained that she intended him to simply return the clicker for her at the end of the meeting.

“Tonight’s meeting brought the UC into disrepute again,” UC representative Thomas D. Hadfield ’08 said in the wake of the incident.

The discovery prompted a motion to censure those involved and led Hadfield to read aloud Section 23.3 of the UC by-laws, which states that 10 members of the UC must agree on a resolution for the censure of fellow representatives.

Ten signatures were later obtained and given to Petersen, who nevertheless said that the petition could not be counted as official.

“Right now I just have 10 signatures on a piece of paper, so I don’t think that’s valid, so they’re going to need to figure it out,” said Petersen.

He added that although “casting a ballot on behalf of somebody else is unconscionable on the Undergraduate Council,” even an official resolution to censure qualified as little more than an admonishment.

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION: A sub-headline in the original online version of the April 23 story “UC Meeting Unravels After Vote on Grant Package” misspelled the last name of Undergraduate Council President Ryan A. Petersen '08. The article also misspelled the name of Samad Khurram '09.