HESA Elections to Return This Fall With Greater Oversight After Abrupt Spring Postponement

The Harvard Extension School Association’s elections will be held this fall after allegations of candidate misconduct and cyberbullying prompted Extension School administrators to postpone the elections last spring, the Division of Continuing Education announced in a Friday email to HESA candidates.

Accompanying the elections, the DCE Office of Student Affairs announced, would be a dramatic increase in administrative oversight over HESA, including the hiring of outside facilitators to interview HESA board candidates and conduct a survey of HES students about the student organization.

The email suggested that administrators at the DCE, which operates the Extension School, had experienced a stunning loss of confidence in HESA’s ability to fulfill its mission as a representative student organization.

“After reviewing student input, including surveys and other sources of feedback about HESA, we are concerned that HESA, an organization established to represent the student voice at the Extension School, is not fulfilling its potential to serve the diverse needs of our geographically dispersed adult learners,” the DCE wrote.

They added that they would work with the new HESA board to ensure the group is able to hold a series of HES events, including a commencement ceremony in the spring.

The announcement comes after a spring election season where several HESA candidates accused members of the group’s executive board of making endorsements in violation of HESA election rules, prompting the postponement.

“Although we determined that the evidence did not warrant disqualifying any particular candidate, the findings reflect a broader pattern of conduct at and around HESA that is inconsistent with HES’s core values of integrity, honesty, and respect,” the DCE wrote.

“We remain concerned that restarting the process in the fall may result in similar misconduct and rule violations,” they added.

Cole Tibbs, a candidate for HESA president, expressed his appreciation for the new initiatives, saying they could help HESA “develop into a legitimate organization.”

“Historically, this has been a small group of students making unilateral decisions on behalf of the student body, under the guise of being the official student government,” he said in an emailed statement.

“Moving forward, with the help of this third-party support, I hope that we are able to form a cohesive leadership organization which can have adequate structure and communication with university officers that we are able to enact real positive impact on the lives of our students,” he added.

But Alexander Ponce, another candidate for HESA president who said he was cyberbullied as a candidate last spring, expressed doubts that the new election cycle would be able to keep student conduct in check.

“There’s going to be continued fraud and cyberbullying and all that, because it’s too accessible,” Ponce said.

“It’s just the worst aspects of humanity, and sadly, this is the primary venue they use,” Ponce said.

Still, he agreed that hiring facilitators was a necessary decision to protect the integrity of HESA elections.

“Having outside people almost feels as embarrassing, but necessary, as when the United Nations sends a group of supervisors to monitor elections in a third world country,” Ponce said. “It’s embarrassing to the country that it’s even needed, but at the same time, you get why they’re there.”

Candidate campaigning will begin in late September, and elections will take place during the first week of October.

—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.

—Staff writer Lenny R. Pische can be reached at lenny.pische@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @lenny_787 or on Threads @lenny.787.