Harvard Undergraduate Association Co-President Shikoh Hirabayashi Is Also Facing Recall Effort

The Harvard Undergraduate Association’s Election Committee announced Sunday evening that a petition was successfully filed for a vote to recall Co-President Shikoh M. Hirabayashi ’24 from office.

The effort to recall Hirabayashi comes just hours after a petition to remove John S. Cooke ’25, Hirabayashi’s co-president, received enough signatures to trigger a general vote among the student body on the motion to recall.

Hirabayashi did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night.

While Behruz Mahmudov ’26, chair of the HUA Election Commission, confirmed Sunday night that a petition for a vote to recall Hirabayashi was approved, questions remain about whether the HUA will be able to hold recall elections for both Cooke and Hirabayashi.

The HUA’s constitution includes a specific clause pertaining to the number of recall elections that can be held for an HUA position each semester, stating that “only one recall election can be held for each particular position each semester.”

Mahmudov said because the petition to remove Cooke from office had not received 391 signatures by the time the request for a petition concerning Hirabayashi was received by the HUA Election Commission, it had authority to approve the petition against Hirabayashi.

But even Mahmudov acknowledged that he was not certain on how the HUA constitution and bylaw’s stipulation might impact a scenario in which enough signatures have been garnered to warrant two separate recall elections for both Cooke and Hirabayashi.

“There is no clear answer,” Mahmudov said.

“I can’t give you a concrete answer on a hypothetical,” he added. “And second, if that were the case, we would have to meet with the DSO to go about that process.”

—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.

—Staff writer William Y. Tan can be reached at william.tan@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @william_y_tan.