Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon

Undergraduate Student Government’s offices are located in the basement of the Reynolds Club.

College Council (CC) voted Monday against allowing Nevin Hall to be seated as a CC representative due to his impeachment from other student government positions last spring. The vote was 6–1 against Hall, with five abstentions.

Hall—who served as Undergraduate Student Government (USG)’s vice president of student organizations (VPSO) and chaired several committees before his removal—was elected earlier this month to fill a vacant Class of 2026 seat on CC, but USG officials had argued before the election that the impeachment made him ineligible to hold future office.

Hall’s proposed resolution, were CC to have approved it, would have found that the “impeachment of Nevin Hall did not extend to College Council representation.”

Before beginning the deliberations, CC Chair Ben Fica highlighted the importance of remaining fair and factual regarding Hall’s behavior.

“A number of College Council members were quite dissatisfied as to the fact that Nevin’s original impeachment was viewed as a spectacle,” he said. “I want to make it clear that we are not going to have that happen [today].”

Debate at the Monday meeting centered on the allegations that prompted Hall’s impeachment, including that he changed bylaws to consolidate his own power and restricted access to and deleted USG records. Hall continued to deny all allegations, saying that he did not delete any documents and that no one ever requested relevant records. In fact, he said, anyone who requested access would have received it.

Hall argued that his election to the seat was fair and democratic. He was the only candidate on the ballot for two vacant seats, though other students received write-in votes.

“You can trust me or not, but it’s a moral question we’re asking here, which is [that] the Class of 2026 had a fair opportunity to choose other people,” he said at the meeting. “Other people had an opportunity to run… and I won anyway.”

“Nobody viewed this as enough of a problem” that another candidate should be elected, he added.

Representative Kevin Guo, who sponsored the resolution that impeached Hall in the spring, asked Hall whether anything about his “approach to student government” would change were he to be seated.

Hall replied that his previous USG roles were different from that of a CC representative. “Debate is more important in College Council than it is in committees,” he said. “My purpose [on committees and as VPSO] was to implement what you [CC] told me. In default of that, I was to do whatever I deemed best. Of course, obviously, debate here is more important.”

Representative Joseph Ayalew expressed concern about Hall’s alleged consolidation of power last year. “I never doubted Nevin’s work ethic,” he said. “When I think about what USG is, it’s about democracy, and I want to make sure someone who’s going to serve is being as democratic as possible.”