A revamped academic calendar in which fall term finals would come before the December break was endorsed by 84 percent of voting undergraduates in a referendum in which just over half of the College’s student body participated, Undergraduate Council President Ryan A. Petersen ‘08 announced on Friday.

Of the 3,467 students who voted in last week’s referendum, 2,914 cast a ballot in favor of the UC proposal that would also extend winter break to four weeks and have the spring final exam period end more than a week earlier.

According to Petersen, 549 students voted against the proposal. The UC president, whose campaign centered on calendar reform, called the referendum “an extraordinary success” at yesterday’s meeting of the UC.

In a letter released last Friday to interim University President Derek C. Bok, Petersen called for the new calendar to take effect in the 2008-2009 academic year. The calendar change would need the approval of the University’s top governing board, the seven-member Harvard Corporation, which includes the president Corporation, which includes the president and six Fellows, who were sent a letter concerning the referendum yesterday, Petersen said.

Bok, President-elect Faust, and members of the Corporation could not be reached for comment this weekend.

“I think the undergraduate community has spoken—that they want the calendar to change,” Petersen said. “I hope this discussion can be broadened to include members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the President and Fellows of Harvard College.”

Petersen’s letter to Bok said there was a “near-record turnout” for the calendar referendum. The total of 3,467 students voting this week is just shy of the 3,519 who participated in last semester’s UC presidential election, and 518 fewer than the record turnout in the December 2004 presidential vote.

Despite the high turnout, UC representative James W. Anderson ’09 said that he was concerned that the number of students who endorsed the proposed academic calendar in the referendum was not a majority, amounting to only 43.4 percent of the entire undergraduate student body.

Before the referendum began, Anderson and representative Matthew R. Greenfield ’08 pushed Petersen to establish a threshold at which the majority obtained in the referendum would justify concerted UC advocacy efforts. At that time, Petersen told Greenfield that a simple majority of “50% plus one” would qualify as sufficient student support.

Anderson said yesterday that he believed then that Petersen hoped was referring to a percentage of the entire student body as a whole—not simply of those voting.

“I know that [Petersen] would’ve said at that time that he would’ve wanted 50% of the campus,” Anderson said.

Petersen reiterated at yesterday’s meeting that the voting totals constituted a “pretty strong mandate” as they stood.

Aside from the results, Anderson also expressed concern at the manner in which the referendum was conducted.

“The deck was stacked from the beginning,” he said, referring to Petersen’s considerable publicity efforts aimed at inducing people to vote on the referendum. “In my view I thought...that if you campaign too hard for something you really lose the measure of genuine student support behind it.” Anderson added that, the referendum notwithstanding, he believed no amount of UC advocacy would lead to calendar change.

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