On the heels of election controversies regarding the status of abstentions for the BDS-aligned Referendum No. 3, Princeton University Student Government (USG) considered an official appeal brought forth by USG treasurer Adam Hoffman ’23 and co-signed by four other senate members. On the evening of Monday, April 18, the USG senate called a meeting to hear the appeal.
“I am appealing that the CEM is now committing to a representation of the ‘abstain’ option that is inconsistent with his representations communicated before and during the election period,” Hoffman said in the April 18 meeting, explaining that Chief Elections Manager (CEM) Brian Li ‘24 originally told Jared Stone ‘24, president of Tigers for Israel (TFI), that abstentions count toward the total votes cast, only to change his mind later. According to Hoffman, opposition campaigners formed their strategy around this understanding, possibly changing the results of the voting. He said that upholding the appeal would “affirm that our referendum voting process was unfair and that passing the referendum would be incorrect.”
On Wednesday, April 20, USG released an official statement to the student body revealing that in closed-door deliberations on April 18, the Senate upheld the appeal in a vote of 15 in favor, 4 against, and 4 abstaining. After the appeal passed, USG decided on a remedy: rather than communicating a pass or fail, USG will provide a reconciliation paper to the administration, which lays out the circumstances of the appeal process and provides the numerical results of the vote, as well as some other provisions to protect against voting confusion in the future. The official statement clarified that USG only “seeks to provide context as to how the student body engaged with Referendum No. 3,” and “will not make a statement on behalf of the student body in favor of or against the referendum.”
Tigers United, a self-defined “diverse group of Princeton students, faculty and alumni who oppose the…BDS referendum” put out a statement supporting USG’s finding that “the counting of votes in the Caterpillar referendum was not conducted fairly and effectively nullified the results” and “thank[ed] the Princeton community for making their voices heard in rejecting BDS.” The official Tigers For Israel (TFI) statement echoed these sentiments, adding: “we are thrilled that a strong majority (56%) of the undergraduate student body chose not to sanction the Caterpillar referendum and the broader BDS movement by not voting in favor of the referendum.”
Read USG’s entire statement here.
Read TFI’s statement on the USG decision.
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