This article was updated at 5:23 p.m. on 4/1.

After weeks of controversy about her candidacy for University Council representative, a sharply divided Joint Grievance Board found Irene Cui eligible to run. The decision was released Tuesday afternoon, just hours before the Student Association Congress was set to confirm the campuswide election’s results.

Unofficial results were announced yesterday by the SA’s Elections and Judiciary Committee. Winners were called in each race except for council representative, where Cui was challenging incumbent Mackenzie Cooper, a junior majoring in politics, philosophy and law.

The 5-4 Joint Grievance Board decision followed a three-hour hearing where Cui, a sophomore majoring in economics, presented her case against Kenny Tran, the SA Elections Committee chair and a senior majoring in biology, and Ademola Adedoyin, the Graduate Student Organization’s chief elections officer and a Ph.D. student studying industrial and systems engineering. The board is composed of six members elected by the SA’s Judicial Board, the GSO’s chief judicial officer and two members elected by the GSO Senate.

Cui, who stepped down from her role as parliamentarian in February, argued precedent, conflicting interpretations and contradictions within the Management Policies, and due process violations on the part of the SA and GSO, should restore her to the race. 

Tran and Adedoyin said that they interpreted a clause in the Management Policies that states an SA Congress parliamentarian “shall sign an agreement stating that they are ineligible to run in a campus-wide election for the remainder of that academic year,” as the reasoning for her ineligibility. 

“The procedure for resolving inconsistencies between the GSO and the SA is a crucial step of the political process and implicates the right of candidates to due process,” read the decision. “However, by the admission of the defendants, there is no set procedure for resolving conflict in eligibility between the GSO and the SA.”

“An important aspect of due process and the law is predictability,” it added. “There was no way for the Petitioner to know what processes she had to go through, who to contact, or what she could do in the interim. Given the gravity of electoral eligibility, such a state of affairs cannot be permitted.” 

With the verdict, the results of last Thursday’s election will be delivered as if Cui was an eligible candidate. The majority ordered next year’s Elections Code contain an explicit procedure in the event that SA and GSO policy diverges.

The dissenting board members wrote that the majority “erred in several aspects.”

“Crucially, at no point was the Petitioner ever recognized by both organizations — as is required — to be an eligible candidate,” they wrote. “The majority writes that because of the procedural faults in declaring the Petitioner ineligible to run, she should be allowed to run. In doing so, the majority overlooks that the initial faulty declaration of eligibility — which the Petitioner reasonably should have construed to be in question given her own admissions — takes precedence over the subsequent faulty declaration of ineligibility.”

Cui was removed from the ballot earlier this month and filed the grievance late on March 19. She was temporarily restored as a candidate and was able to participate in the candidate debate on March 20. She remained on the ballot through Election Day, pending the board’s decision.

The GSO’s chief judicial officer had no additional comment.

Requests for comment have been left with Cui, Cooper, and the SA’s Judicial Board.

This is a breaking story, and it will be updated.