When the Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council (GSC) voted last week to overturn Elections Commissioner Bernard Fraga’s call for a runoff between ASSU executive-elect Avula/Jones and the runner-up slate, Brett and Lakshmi, it appeared that the last chapter of this year’s ASSU elections was finally closed.

Some senators who voted against the runoff are reconsidering their decisions, however, and are planning to discuss concerns about last week’s 12-1 vote at the Senate meeting tonight.

Three senators told The Daily that they felt pressured by Hershey Avula ‘08 and Mondaire Jones ‘09 to vote against the runoff, while Avula and two other senators categorically denied the accusations.

In addition, outgoing ASSU President Elizabeth Heng ‘07 and Vice President Lauren Graham ‘07 said they were told by several senators that some of their colleagues did not feel comfortable voting on short notice, and that senators were contacted by Avula or Jones and encouraged to vote against the runoff prior to the meeting.

“We feel that Avula and Jones exercised inappropriate control over the meeting environment by creating artificial time pressure and incentives to suppress debate,” they wrote in a joint statement prepared for The Daily last night. “We agree with the senators that it was unethical of Avula and Jones to push the issue of voting on a runoff in the way they did.”

“It could have been beneficial for Avula and Jones to rush the issue and contextualize the discussion in a very charged setting which might hamper open dialogue and debate among the senators,” they continued in their statement, available in full on The Daily’s Web site. “Avula and Jones’ resignation prior to the discussion created a misleading impression of impartiality, and does not mitigate an inappropriate ethical conflict of interest.”

Contradicting accusations

Senator Nabill Idrisi ‘09 said that then-ASSU Senate Chair Avula contacted him prior to the Apr. 17 meeting and told him to vote against the runoff — a statement that was echoed by some senators, but vigorously denied by others.

“He portrayed it as a very small technicality and he encouraged me to vote to overturn it,” Idrisi said. “In spite of me saying that I would probably abstain he still encouraged me to overturn the motion to have a runoff, and I felt uncomfortable.”

Idrisi said he was the second senator Avula contacted upon discovering the possibility of a runoff, and Idrisi said he talked to several other senators who were also contacted. Idrisi said that he planned to abstain from voting, but again felt pressured to vote against the runoff after a talk with Jones just before last week’s meeting.

“I was going to abstain, but right before the meeting started, Mondaire called me up to talk to him and he basically pointed out the clause in the bylaws about the Undergraduate Senate [being able] to overturn the runoff,” he said. “They made me feel guilty in my wanting to abstain.”

Two other senators offered stories strikingly similar to those of Idrisi, Heng and Graham, but they declined to comment on the record regarding the pre-vote discussions, citing what one described as a fear of personal and social consequences in the tight-knit student government community.

“There’s a fine line,” said one of the senators. “[Avula and Jones] are both my friends but we’re also senators together. It does create a bit of moral ambiguity. It would have been fine if they had just told me ‘this is an issue, what do you think about that?’ That wasn’t the case. There’s a difference between asking someone’s opinion and using your friendship to expect their support.”

Avula firmly denied that he attempted to sway senators to vote against a runoff. He said that he simply called senators to let them know he would be stepping down as Senate Chair, because the bylaws do not permit an executive to hold a Senate position. In the same conversations, he told the senators that Fraga would propose a runoff.

“I didn’t put any pressure on any of the senators,” he said. “It was kind of my job [to call them] since I was transitioning out. After calling them and telling them that [Jones and I] would be transitioning out, I told them this issue [of a runoff] would be coming up. I didn’t lead them one way or another.”

“In no way was I intending to sway their vote,” he added. “I was just doing my duty.”

Several senators came to Avula’s defense. Priyanka Goel ‘07 said that Avula in no way pressured her to vote in a particular manner.

“He did not urge me either way,” she said. “I never felt pressured by him. He just let me know that this was going on. I think it’s great that he let me know so [that] prior to the decision I was able to do my research. I just wanted to make an informed decision.”

After learning from The Daily that several ASSU senators were saying that he and Jones exerted undue pressure, Avula contacted senator Valerie Villarreal ‘07, who called The Daily in the pair’s defense.

“Mondaire called me about an hour before the Senate meeting and said, ‘Just so you know, this vote is going to be going up,’” she said. “In no way did he say ‘You have to vote xyz.’ It was not at all coercive in nature. Knowing the integrity of Hershey and Mondaire, I couldn’t imagine them compromising that.”

The GSC

Before the GSC voted unanimously to overturn Fraga’s call for a runoff last Wednesday night, the graduate legislative body also heard impassioned arguments from some of its members.

Prior to the vote, GSC member Adam Beberg sent a strongly-worded email to other members of the council.

“I can give you a dozen reasons why we don’t want a runoff, no one really does, not even the slate that lost who said as much,” he wrote in the email, later obtained by The Daily. “Founder’s intent — we can bring him to the meeting if we want — is clearly to let it stand. Bottom line, though, is we all missed this line, and should have fixed it in Amendment A.”

“So, heads up, we’ll have to certify, and then move — by 2/3 — to block a new election being called,” he added. “All is right with the universe once again.”

In an email to the Daily yesterday, he wrote, “We know the constitution and bylaws and talk to the people that wrote them all the time. There was never any controversy at all except the one created by The Daily. The vast amount of misinformation was not at all appreciated either. Let it go.”

GSC member George Bloom, who forwarded Beberg’s email to the GSC list, said that he felt the GSC’s discussion of the runoff was objective and thorough.

“It was handled fairly and openly,” he said. “The email from Adam was the only email that went out. There was no secret information. There was no amount of orchestration.”

Another runoff discussion

Idrisi also said he was displeased by what he viewed as a lack of discussion during last week’s ASSU meeting regarding the larger implications of voting against the runoff — a feeling shared by other senators who said they will likely discuss their concerns at tonight’s meeting.

“The discussion seemed very orchestrated in some sense and very hastily carried out in that people very quickly expressed their opinions successively and then it was pretty soon thereafter put to a vote,” he said.

Melissa Morales ‘09 said she felt the discussion was too rushed by what she saw as senators’ desire to discuss a vote on Israel divestment.

“The process was very rushed and there was definitely not enough discussion and dialogue about both the actual constitutional rules of the runoff and the consequences of the precedent we’re setting by not choosing to do the runoff,” she said. “The runoff vote seemed like more of an afterthought when it really shouldn’t have been. It was an important decision.”

Idrisi also said he believed that abstentions are usually a very important part of a vote, and that the initial decision against a runoff was misguided.

“The GSC concluding that abstentions aren’t important enough to include in the majority vote — it contradicts how we vote on bills week to week,” he said. “Abstained votes are very much part of the total vote count when we have to pass a bill by 2/3 majority. By implicitly accepting one interpretation, we contradict ourselves almost.”

Avula told The Daily that he had no qualms about the Senate discussing the runoff a second time, but he said he thought the first discussion was thorough and non-controversial.

“We’re fine with the [new] discussion,” he said. “We think it’s important [for] the Senate and the legislative bodies to discuss issues as they see fit. It’s not in our description to formally agree or disagree with the Senate. We believe that the discussion did occur fairly and that a lot of voices were heard.”

“There seemed to be a really thorough discussion, five to 10 minutes at least, and different voices and opinions were heard,” he added. “Ultimately, the Senate appeared to come to a relatively non-controversial decision, 12-1.”