Harvey Mudd Student Body President-Elect Faces Recall Over Year-Old Racism Accusations

The March 10 recall forum. (Credit: Sarah McPeek)

The newly elected president of Harvey Mudd College’s student government (ASHMC) is facing recall over a comment she made during the Spring 2025 election season. Though the president-elect issued multiple apologies, the incumbent student government leadership has withheld constitutionally required onboarding training and worked with Mudd’s Dean of Students to organize a public March 10 forum where the president-elect and her accusers, including the candidates she defeated, read brief statements. 

The controversy began during last spring’s ASHMC election, when the current president-elect—then a dorm president—was assisting in campaign efforts for the current 2025-26 ASHMC president and senate chair. The alternative candidates, the current ASHMC challenger and his running-mate, had not held an ASHMC position in the past. The president-elect's preferred candidates, now serving in office, had over two years of experience.

The current president-elect approached a friend to ask about her vote. The friend explained her intention to vote for the ASHMC challenger and his running-mate because, “They’re black and I wanted to support them.” Both the friend and the president-elect confirmed this account to the Claremont Independent.

Specific details of the interaction at the core of the controversy vary. However, a preponderance of sources the Independent spoke to agree that the president-elect, a student of East Asian descent, responded by asking, “Would you vote for a qualified person or a black person?” The friend told the Independent that she responded to this question with, “‘A black person,’ because why would she ask me that?”

The Independent verified that the president-elect subsequently apologized to the challenger and his running-mate for the hypothetical question she posed, both in-person and through email. The challenger and his running-mate lost the Spring 2025 election.

Upon launching her campaign for student body president this spring, the president-elect expressed concerns to the incumbent ASHMC leadership that the 2025 incident would follow her into her candidacy. The past year’s ASHMC challenger was running again, now against her. Leadership insisted that the proper proceedings had taken place and had been settled; the challenger and his running-mate had tried and failed to petition the ASHMC senate in Spring 2025 regarding the president-elect’s comments. The contents of the petition remain private, but the Independent was informed that the petition was rejected by the senate chair. 

In early February 2026, before the issue was raised again, the president-elect sought advice on whether to run from incumbent ASHMC leadership. She was told “we can’t ask you to drop or anything,” leading the president-elect and her running mate to feel that the incumbents opposed their campaign. They claim they were told by the incumbent after the election happened that “in [her] ideal world, [another student] ran and won and none of this was happening.” 

Still concerned in the run up to the ASHMC election scheduled for the last week of February 2026, the president-elect emailed the challenger and his running mate to ensure that the matter was settled. The email, obtained by the Independent, includes the president-elect stating, “I am sincerely sorry my words made either of you feel invalidated or disenfranchised.” 

The president-elect then met with the challenger and running-mate in-person, telling the Independent, she recalled that she asked them, “How can I alleviate [this] and what are things I can do to show you that this is not who I truly am?” to which they responded, “We don’t really want to brainstorm solutions.” 

During this meeting, the president-elect questioned what the response would be if she had made reference to “any other group.” She maintained that she would have the same concerns if someone were to vote for a candidate just because they were white or transgender. The president-elect told the Independent that, regarding her reference to a hypothetical trangender candidate, “the idea was to clarify.” She described it as part of her general approach of writing problem statements, a typical set-up in engineering problems, for issues across her life. She described the entire controversy as broadly arising from “mismatches in communication style.”

A second meeting was proposed to discuss possible solutions. This meeting was canceled over email by the challenger and his running-mate, who notified the president-elect, “We generally think that a second conversation would not be productive.” 

Despite the race having been two-way, the president-elect and her running mate were announced as winners of the election two days behind schedule on February 25. Presidents-elect have historically shadowed the incumbent leadership of ASHMC in the weeks following their election. Indeed, the ASHMC constitution requires onboarding training for newly elected leadership. However, neither the president-elect nor her running mate have received any onboarding training, though two onboarding documents from last year—an advice guide and onboarding spreadsheet—were sent to them after multiple email requests. 

The president-elect confronted the incumbents over this delay, accusing them of violating ASHMC’s constitution. She alleged to the Independent that the incumbents promised to amend the ASHMC constitution to retroactively permit their actions. 

The president-elect's running mate told the Independent, “I almost forgot we were elected because they’re not treating us like we’re going to be here much longer.” The running-mate has received no training or shadowing despite not being included in the recall petition. She also claims that she was confronted by ASHMC leadership outside the Hoch-Shanahan Dining Commons on Thursday, March 5. Leadership brought up resigning, to which the running-mate expressed a desire to “just finish my exams and go home for break.” The running-mate told the Independent that the incumbent ASHMC president told her “you can’t wait. You have to make a choice or it will all become public.” 

This alleged verbal ultimatum was delivered 15 minutes prior to a private ASHMC executive board meeting where the challenger proposed his recall petition. The executive board voted to proceed in launching recall efforts without inviting the president-elect, as ASHMC’s constitution would require. The current ASHMC president, along with the senate chair, asserted this was done under the assumption that the president-elect’s removal was inevitable due to the recall petition. 

The minutes of this March 5 meeting were erroneously placed in the public record for the entire school to access. They have since been returned to the private record.

Harvey Mudd’s Associate Deans of Students, Chris Sundberg, reacted to the recall effort by requesting that the president-elect and the challenger both write 250-word statements to provide context for the motion. The president-elect told the Independent that she objected to the length, feeling that it inhibited the opportunity for nuance, but agreed to the format regardless. She told the Independent, “Honesty seems like it’s been harmful for me, even if it was the right thing to do.” 

ASHMC leadership also organized a forum on March 10 where the president-elect and the ASHMC challenger could each read their 250-word statement aloud. Dean of Students Cindy Martinez advised the process; administrators are prohibited by ASHMC rules from involvement beyond advising.

Participant availability was not solicited prior to the scheduling of the forum on March 10. As a result, the challenger’s running-mate was unable to attend the forum due to a class commitment. Participants were not given any opportunity to provide feedback on the forum's format, which denied attendees the opportunity to ask questions. 

In the run-up to the forum, students sent reminders regarding the event’s time and location to dormitory-wide email lists. One dorm president wrote to the Atwood Hall email list, “hoch aviation at 6.15pm. make sure to hydrate.” “Hydrate” is campus slang for drinking alcohol. The dorm president later apologized to the residents for the “tasteless email,” but said that “We stand with [ASHMC challenger].” Another student serving as a residential mentor sent an email to the Drinkward Hall email list, writing “Let’s get down to business and defeat the Han,” referencing the film Mulan with regards to the president-elect’s last name. The student subsequently apologized. 

At 6:15 pm in the Aviation Room of the Hoch, the ASHMC challenger opened the forum. Recalling the president-elect’s comments in spring of 2025, the ASHMC challenger announced: “we’re here because [the president-elect] believed my only justification for being upset was the fact that I was black.” 

The challenger has continued to deny that any apology was given. At the forum, he claimed the president-elect never “once…[admitted] regretting her actions,” alleging “she never apologized to me, [and] couldn't even see why she should apologize.” 

The ASHMC challenger ended his speech stating that “[president-elect] tried to justify prejudice,” bluntly asking his peers: “how many of you are willing to try to do the same?” 

Expressing regret for her actions, the president-elect stated she was at the forum to “acknowledge and apologize for [her] mistakes, [and] take responsibility for the insensitive statements [she] made regarding the qualifications of black and trans candidates.” She said she had engaged in “transformative and restorative justice” since the initial incident, and spent time “examining and unlearning biases.” 

The president-elect ended her speech by emphasizing the work she has done as a “community member” and for the HMC Advocates, encouraging audience-members to “contact her” with any “further questions.”

On the night of March 10, the recall ballot was sent via email to the Harvey Mudd student body as a Google form. Though ASHMC elections have recorded notably low turnout rates compared to other student governments at the Claremont Colleges, the president-elect and her running mate observed to the Independent, “at Mudd, gossip travels really fast and really viciously.” They feel the issue is compounded by Fizz, the Claremont Colleges’ anonymous discussion board, where anonymous posters spread malicious statements and false information. Most posts on Fizz’s front page on Tuesday were back-and-forth disputes regarding the controversy. 

Additionally, while it is common for dorm presidents to circulate notes after meetings, this forum lacked official ASHMC minutes, leaving students to rely on unofficial recounts. Several Mudd students expressed concern to the Independent that voters would be insufficiently informed. 

One Mudd student, who is voting to recall, told the Independent, “I genuinely don’t think Tessa’s racist,” but admitted “there were better ways to phrase that comment.”

An ASHMC senator remarked that the petition sent out to the student body was “very one-sided” for stating the president-elect’s comment but lacking the context leading up to it. “It feels like a giant game of telephone,” the senator observed. 

The heat of the controversy has torn through Mudd’s community, polarizing friend groups and dividing dorms. One student, who is voting to recall, told the Independent that it has “become a bit of a race war on campus” since the forum brought the dispute into the public. 

Voting will remain open until midnight on March 17. 

The challenger did not respond to a request for comment. This fall, the challenger filed a complaint against the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men’s swim and dive team alleging a racist culture, resulting in the team’s temporary suspension and investigation.

Shelby Tang contributed reporting.