The Harvard Undergraduate Council has called an emergency meeting for Friday, December 3rd, at 3:00 PM to lower the voting threshold in Act 40F-78, according to internal messages and an email obtained by the Independent. President Noah Harris ‘22 called for the meeting at 12:23 PM on Thursday, December 2nd in the internal Slack of the UC.
The meeting was officially confirmed later that day by Secretary Nicholas Brennan ‘23 in an email sent to the Undergraduate Council at 3:32 PM, stating that the meeting was “for the purpose of considering a bill regarding constitutional provisions on UC Referenda.”
Act 40F-78 was an internal constitutional amendment proposed at the UC’s November 21st meeting. The act requires referenda on constitutional changes to pass with a simple majority of all Harvard students rather than a simple majority of those voting. Passing 40F-78 requires two-thirds of the UC to vote and three-fourths of those voting to affirm it before 4:00 PM on Sunday, December 5th, which is also the presidential inauguration.
The proposal’s sponsors justified it as a measure to prevent frivolous or sabotaging amendments from unrepresentative groups of students. President-elect Michael Cheng criticized the move as a last-minute attempt to block his plans to restructure elements of the UC, as he hoped to submit any constitutional changes as referenda if he could not resolve them through negotiations.
At the time of publication, several members of the council have switched their votes since December 1st. The vote total is now 24-17, with four abstentions. The act has not passed the three-fourths of voting members threshold required for passage.
Sheila De La Cruz (Kirkland) changed from “Not Voting” to “No.”
Baptiste Gibrat (Dudley) changed from “Yes” to “Abstain.”
Dina Kobeissi (Quincy) changed from “Yes” to “Abstain.”
Arjun Purohit (Oak Yard) changed from “Yes” to “No.”
David Zhang (Lowell) changed from “Yes” to “Abstain.”
Kimani Panthier (Winthrop) changed from “Yes” to “No.”
Giulia Mazzarelli (Eliot) changed from “Yes” to “No.”
Additionally, the Independent has obtained a copy of the minutes from the November 21st meeting, where multiple amendments on act 40F-78 were debated. Damien Chang (Cabot), whose name was misspelled as “Cheng” in the minutes, proposed an amendment raising the threshold to three-fourths of the whole student body, which was defeated by a vote of 10-19-3. Chang also proposed another amendment to lower the threshold to three-eighths of the student body, which was defeated by a vote of 13-16-1. Shreya Nair (Pforzheimer) proposed an amendment to retain the original threshold requiring only a simple majority of voting students, which was defeated by a vote of 9-20-0.
The minutes and agenda of the November 21st meeting were not available on the UC’s website at the time of publication.
Ryan Golemme ’23 (ryangolemme@college.harvard.edu), who didn’t expect even more information, writes for the Independent.