Banana Republicans
At the Columbia University College Republicans, the votes are made up and the rules don’t matter.
On March 27, Barnard junior Ariana Deen walked into her first executive board meeting as the newly elected president of the Columbia University College Republicans (CUCR). Before spring break on March 5, Deen had won the general body election by a landslide and was eager to get started on her plans to drive up membership and hold more events. However, as soon as she entered the room, Deen was told that the board was holding a presidential impeachment vote. The board then unanimously voted in favor of impeaching her. Immediately after, they got up and left the room without saying a word.
For most of this semester, one of Columbia’s largest conservative student groups has been rife with turmoil. Multiple members of CUCR’s board have made allegations of election tampering and voter fraud against each other. In a single semester, one president resigned and another was impeached. All is not well with Columbia’s Republicans.
It Began With a Resignation
To understand why CUCR’s board was unanimously opposed to Deen’s presidency, we must go back to the club’s February 14 board meeting. At the time, Columbia College junior Finnegan McNinch was president, and Deen was vice president. At the start of the meeting, and to the rest of the board’s surprise, McNinch resigned. Under the CUCR constitution, Deen became acting president, subject to a confirmation vote of the board at their following meeting.
Deen had been involved with CUCR since she was a freshman, and she counted most of the board members as good friends. At the February 21 board meeting, however, every one of them voted against her confirmation.
In the week between those two fateful meetings, other board members had been working to keep her from securing the presidency. After McNinch’s resignation, Columbia College sophomore David Pomerantz, the club’s executive director, spoke to Deen about his concerns with CUCR’s operations. The conversation purportedly turned heated.
In our interview, Deen emphasized that she was not pleased with many of the other board members’ performance, including Pomerantz. “Nobody really did their job satisfactorily throughout the year…I would always be texting in the board group chats, asking in the board meetings for feedback…and I would never get that energy back,” Deen told Sundial.
Pomerantz declined to speak with Sundial on the record.
At some point after his conversation with Deen, Pomerantz decided to run for the presidency as well. He quickly enlisted the support of the other board members: Treasurer Caroline Higgins, Director of Communications Toval Segal, Secretary Jason Ortiz, and Director of Operations Alex Wildfang.
Since Deen was not confirmed by the board, the general body would elect the president, according to the club constitution. Deen said she was confident she would win the election because she felt she was popular among the general body.
“I practically built the general body,” she said. “Everybody that showed up to [the general body] meetings was basically through me.”
CUCR’s constitution stipulates that to be an eligible voter, a general body member must have attended at least five general body meetings (GBMs) within the current academic year or four in one semester of the academic year. At the February 28 board meeting, Ortiz and Deen, the only ones present, decided to lower the threshold of attendance to three meetings and to also count non-GBM events (debates, talks, social events, etc.) toward that total, because CUCR had not hosted enough GBMs for anyone to qualify. They decided the election would occur in-person at 7 PM on March 5, and informed the absent board members. Initially, there was no objection to these terms.
On the night of the election, the room was packed. But before the election got underway, Higgins, who presided as master of ceremonies, insisted that the eligibility threshold should be the criteria outlined in the constitution because the February 28 board meeting did not have a quorum. Deen pushed back, but after some debate, everyone agreed to the standard outlined in the constitution.
From that point on, things got messy.
Stop the Steal
Votes were to be cast using secret paper ballots in a Lerner Hall room. The board asked voters to write five events they attended, or four if they occurred in the same semester, on their ballots. The board also wrote on a whiteboard at the front of the room a list of all CUCR events that took place this academic year. However, attendance had not been taken at any of their meetings and events, meaning there was no way of verifying whether voters were truly eligible. What’s worse, the board had effectively provided a word bank for any would-be fraudulent voters.
Regardless, the election proceeded. Pomerantz and Deen each made their case to the attendees, and voters cast their ballots. The candidates then left the room while Higgins counted the votes.
Multiple voters witnessed the vote count. Witnesses who supported Deen claimed Higgins made at least three separate attempts to rig the election in favor of Pomerantz. In the first attempt, Higgins allegedly sorted some ballots for Deen into a pile of ballots for Pomerantz. When witnesses confronted her, she reportedly claimed it was a mistake made out of nervousness.
In the second attempt, Higgins reportedly wrote in three ballots for Pomerantz while counting the votes. Sundial obtained the paper ballots from a CUCR general body member, who had been instructed to keep the ballots for safekeeping following the election. Among the ballots for Pomerantz, there are three that match the witnesses’ description, one of which has the name “Caroline” written on it.
Finally, Higgins allegedly decided to isolate all ballots that would have been ineligible if the CU Democrats vs. CU Republicans debate was removed as one of the qualifying events, even though the debate was listed on the whiteboard as eligible. When confronted, Higgins purportedly stated that because anyone could have attended the debate, the validity of those ballots would have to be reconsidered. Higgins did not respond to a request for comment.
Regardless of the extent of any vote tampering, Deen won the general body vote, which Higgins announced to voters and candidates. According to Sundial’s analysis of the ballots, Deen won by an even wider margin, winning about three-fourths of the vote when including the ballots Higgins allegedly isolated.
Then, the executive board impeached Deen on March 27.
Non-Members Only
On April 1, Higgins released a statement on the CUCR WhatsApp on behalf of the executive board:
The CUCR executive board has voted unanimously to impeach and remove Ariana Deen as president of CUCR. We found that the former President intentionally solicited multiple non-members, who had never attended a CUCR event to attend the special election held on March 5th, lie about their involvement in the club, and vote for her. Our determination was made on the basis of multiple first-hand and consistent reports from solicited individuals…this was unprecedented and intolerable.
Unfortunately for Deen, this was no April Fools joke.
When I asked her if she packed the room with non-members, Deen’s response was brief: “What I will say, is that to the best of my knowledge, I acted in good faith for the election,” Deen wrote in a statement.
Pomerantz, the other board members, and others close to Pomerantz either declined to speak with Sundial on the record or did not respond to a request for comment.
An Uncertain Future
On April 9, Ariana met with the Student Governing Board (SGB), which oversees CUCR, hoping to enlist their help in resolving the conflict. A member of the SGB executive board confirmed to Sundial that SGB also asked to meet with the other board members, but none of them replied.
“Their constitution’s a mess, their club’s a mess, everything’s a mess. My take on this is that we should just tell them to have elections,” SGB Secretary Daniel Garren, who also served as CUCR’s SGB representative this academic year, said to the rest of the governing board before Deen arrived.
“Our mandate is that we can discipline a group if we find that their board violated their own bylaws or constitution, or our bylaws and constitution,” newly elected SGB Chair Mohammad Hemeida said.
After Deen spoke, outgoing chair Yanni Kent said, “I will say it does sound concerning, and we will be meeting with the current board—the remaining board, I guess—to figure out their side of the story just to be fair.”
To me, the truth remains opaque: Perhaps the CUCR board really did try to steal an otherwise fair election. Or maybe Deen was the real trickster, who was savvy enough to know how to cheat effectively. There’s also the distinct possibility that everyone involved was dishonest to one degree or another. Only one thing is certain: CUCR needs to start taking attendance at their meetings.
Mr. Smith is a staff writer. He is a senior at the School of General Studies majoring in political science.