Adam Hughes '11 defeated former Senator-at-Large Andrew Brooks '09 in the Student Union vice presidential election last Wednesday in an election marked by allegations of intimidation, controversial blogging between students and candidates on Innermost Parts, a Brandeis student blog, intense campaigning and technical difficulties with voting.The election was called for after Immediate Past Student Union Vice President Michael Kerns '09 submitted his resignation at the beginning of the semester. He informed Union members that he was taking leave from the University for personal reasons. Kerns was elected last spring after running against current Justice of the Union Judiciary Jordan Rothman '09 and Brooks.

Brooks' and Hughes' campaigns traded arguments on the Web sites Facebook.com and Innermostparts.com. Kerns endorsed Hughes on Facebook and strongly criticized Brooks in a comment posted on Innermost Parts. Kerns wrote that "[Brooks'] ego is unjustifiably selfish and his judgment in interpersonal affairs is nauseatingly poor."

Calling Kerns' comments "very threatening" and "inappropriate," Brooks said that he had never "felt so vulnerable at this school in all my time here than I did after I read that comment." While he stressed that he does not favor censorship, he thought some kind of moderation of the blog's tone was necessary.

Hughes, a regular writer on the blog, said that rhetoric on the blog was a lot "messier" than he would have liked it to have been. Hughes tried to distance himself from some of the opinions expressed on Innermost Parts by saying that "a lot of the opinions" of his supporters "were their own opinions."

On the blog, Kerns and Senator for the Class of 2011 Alex Melman also alleged that Brooks and several other students had gone to a dorm in Massell Quad late on the night of the first election round to intimidate Carrie Mills '12 after she wrote a blog post critical of the Brooks campaign on Innermost Parts. She spoke out against a campaign e-mail sent out by Senator-at-Large Justin Sulsky '09 to first-year students in support of Brooks. Mills declined to comment in detail. "The student body has made their decision in regard to the vice presidential election, and I feel it speaks for itself," she said.

Brooks strongly disputed the allegations and said he had been campaigning last-minute in the Renfield dorm and other first-year dorms on Monday night, unaware that Mills lived there.

Brooks said that while he was discussing the results of the first round on his cell phone in the hallway, Mills came out of her room and yelled at him in a loud and impolite way to be quiet. Brooks said other students on the hall came to his support because they were angry at how she had been going around the dorm campaigning against him. Brooks said that Massell Quad Community Development Coordinator Brian Koslowski understood his side of the story and hoped to resolve the issue through a mutual discussion with Mills. Koslowski declined to comment because of confidentiality of his conversations with the students.

In an e-mail to the Justice, Director of Student Development and Conduct Erika Lamarre wrote, "My office will neither confirm nor deny any report at this time in order to respect student privacy."

In the final round, Hughes received 57.39 percent of the vote, or 524 votes, compared with 39.40 percent, or 360 votes, received by his opponent, according to an e-mail from Student Union Secretary Tia Chatterjee '09. The e-mail also stated that 3.18 percent, or 29 votes, were abstentions.

"I feel like my election . represented a clear continuation of the mandates of past elections, for instance of [Kerns] and [Senator-at-Large] Noam Shuster '11, to have a strong focus on activist issues on campus," Hughes said.

Last spring, the Union Judiciary voted against Brooks after he alleged that Shuster had broken election rules and committed libel as a write-in candidate against him when he ran for re-election as Senator-at-Large. Innermost Parts also played a large role in this campaign.

Brooks said he was disappointed with the Elections Commission, noting frequent downtime of the link to the Student Union elections Web site. He also said that many Transitional Year Program students were unable to vote because a message came up saying that only undergraduate students could vote.

Chatterjee explained that the server outages resulting from many users accessing the site at one time affected both candidates equally, so the Elections Commission felt that no action was necessary.

Brooks said, "To lose in the final round, especially by [that] margin, was really very humbling and disappointing. Clearly, I credit [my loss] to Adam Hughes' really good turnout machine. I simply did not have the same manpower, unfortunately," he said.

Hughes said his first priorities are to address the implementation of gender-neutral housing and environmental issues, respond to student complaints about dining services and work to improve cell phone infrastructure

Student Union President Jason Gray '10 said, "I'm happy to be working with [Hughes], and I'm glad that the election went smoothly.