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The Institute of Politics’ Student Advisory Committee voted overwhelmingly to reject a co-presidency model on Monday night, shooting down a reform proposed by incoming president Lorenzo Z. Ruiz ’27 and vice president William M. Smialek ’27 weeks before the two assume their roles.
Monday’s vote temporarily keeps in place the president and vice president structure, but leaves the door open for Ruiz and Smialek to raise the issue next year. In the short term, their plan collapsed: only two of the 27 SAC members who voted on Monday favored adopting a co-presidency.
The two “yes” votes came from Ruiz and Smialek themselves, according to three IOP members with knowledge of the vote.
But debate prior to the vote appeared to reflect confusion about the timing of the amendment rather than outright opposition to its contents, according to several attendees.
SAC member Jordan Schwartz ’27, who leads the Harvard Public Opinion Project, said the co-presidency amendment seemed “really abrupt” and called it an effort to “air out some internal affairs problems” rather than make a substantive change.
“I think I was in a pretty similar position to a lot of people in terms of just thinking that at least at this point in time, the vote was not really needed,” Schwartz said.
The dispute has its origins in the November uncontested election of Smialek and Ruiz. The two campaigned on their co-presidency plan — but IOP members did not have the opportunity to reject it on the ballot, and some were unaware of the candidates’ platform. As the start of Ruiz and Smialek’s term drew closer, the plan became controversial, stirring discontent among SAC members worried it would destabilize the organization.
Current IOP treasurer Kevin A. Bokoum ’26 spearheaded the opposition. Last Tuesday, he organized an impromptu meeting to pass a technical amendment necessary to keep the IOP in good standing with the Dean of Students Office. But the debate at Tuesday’s meeting turned into a heated two-hour marathon when SAC members realized Bokoum’s amendment included additional stipulations intended to block the co-presidency change.
The SAC accepted the DSO’s approved language, but they voted down the second half of Bokoum’s amendment, punting further debate over the co-presidency to Monday. Bokoum sponsored a new amendment that would establish a co-presidency in the IOP’s constitution to allow the SAC, which has 42 members in total, to vote outright on the proposal.
In a strange about-face, Smialek and Ruiz found themselves encouraging SAC members to vote against the co-presidency amendment at Monday’s meeting. Though the two stood by their proposal, they said they would rather postpone the vote until next year’s SAC convened after winter break.
“Please vote against this,” Smialek wrote at one point in the public Zoom chat.
Bokoum shot back quickly, accusing Ruiz and Smialek of strategically deferring the vote to hide the lack of support for their proposal: “They would try to shoot this down bc they can’t defend on the merits,” he replied to the group.
But in a statement after the vote, Ruiz and Smialek framed the meeting as “brief” and “cordial” and said the final vote — 25-2 in opposition to the co-presidency amendment — was “a clear reflection of this SAC’s preference to table until next semester.”
“The votes made clear — save for the sponsor of this amendment — there was never energy to review this change under the current SAC,” they wrote “We were not going to debate language that we did not write, nor support an amendment we were given no opportunity to collaborate on.”
But Bokoum doubled down on his narrative in an interview after the meeting. Despite Ruiz and Smialek’s pressure campaign, he said, the vote expressed popular opposition to a “deeply questionable” co-presidency plan.
“Lorenzo and Will know where SAC stands here — and it’s against the co-presidency,” Bokoum said. “They know this is a deeply unpopular issue.”
“If this is brought up again, as it will be, I hope this sets a record that SAC of 2025 was unequivocally against the co-presidency,” he added.
In the waning days of his tenure, Bokoum has done his best to block a future co-presidency. At both meetings — last Tuesday’s marathon call and today’s — Bokoum also proposed to raise the voting threshold for future preamble amendments from two-thirds to three-fourths. Both times, however, the proposal failed to generate a necessary supermajority.
“This preamble is the foundation of our IOP,” Bokoum said. “To reshape the IOP — and also to go against what may suit the DSO — there should be time, and also there should be popular support beyond a two-thirds majority.”
Schwartz and other SAC members, though, expressed concern about creating inconsistencies in the Constitution — the three-fourths threshold, if approved, would have applied only to the preamble; other changes would have still required two-thirds support.
“There’s always some friction to amending,” Schwartz said. “And at least in my case, I don’t see exactly why we need three-fourths for some and two-thirds for others.”
For his part, Schwartz said he was eager to put the issues to bed — a view he made clear in a comment early in the debate.
“I didn’t want to be held up for two and a half hours like last week, and basically said, ‘Look, we all know that just about everyone here is going to vote no on this. Can we just do it?’” Schwartz recalled. “‘Because I don’t really care why people are voting no. Let’s not spend several hours here on a random Monday.’”
“Two years on SAC makes you a pragmatist,” he added.
—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.
