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For many Notre Dame residence hall communities, hall election season is a time of joy, excited anticipation and hope for the future. However, for one community, this year’s elections led to unprecedented unrest, disruptions and unease. The Coyle Community in Zahm Hall (formerly Fisher Community in Zahm Hall, formerly formerly Fisher Hall) experienced some complications during their hall election campaigns that many residents believe resulted from fraudulent practices.

During the campaign process, photos surfaced in the Coyle community’s all-hall chat of various candidates defacing their competitors’ campaign posters with googly eyes, fake mustaches, buck teeth and the like. The appearance of these images caused an uproar throughout the entire Coyle Crew; cries of foul play and bad sportsmanship echoed through the hallways. However, further analysis of the images revealed that AI tools had been used to edit (or, in some cases, create) the photographs, defaming the names of good men who had been innocent of their purported crimes all along! These events brought unnecessary confusion, doubt and unrest into the community as more doctored images appeared, and residents began to wonder who — and what — they could confidently trust.

Further debates arose when certain members of the community attempted to express their thoughts about matters related to the election, only to find themselves censored by chat administrators. Statistics from the community’s group chat indicated that nearly 15% of the messages sent during the campaign and election processes were unwillingly removed. In response to the censorship, prominent figures within the residence hall proposed the following thoughts and statements:

“WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED”

“#censorshipstate”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”

“I hate Woodrow Wilson”

While the reputation (and average IQ) of the Coyle Crew renders it reasonable to conclude that the removed messages likely ranged from profound (and likely largely irrelevant) philosophical musings to utterly nonsensical memes and jokes, disruption and turmoil erupted within the community solely due to the fact that messages were removed at all. Verbal riots and heated debates broke out over the apparent infringement of residents’ First Amendment rights, the inherent danger of the Coyle Hall government’s control over the media, and why we didn’t get pizza on Tuesday, Feb. 16th (I was mad about that too; they robbed me of my dinner).

The election day proceedings were riddled with further issues. When voting began in the morning, many Crew members found themselves unable to access their online ballots, inciting some candidates to accuse others of working with a pack of malicious computer science majors to hack the election forms and prevent members of the Coyle community from voting. These theories were further supported by a large quantity of “mail-in ballots” (candidate names scrawled on beer-stained napkins) brought in by some of the candidates in an attempt to compensate for the votes lost to system glitches. In response to these proceedings, Coyle Crew members provided the following quotes:

“STOP THE COUNT”

“Something’s a little fishy”

“#stopthesteal”

“I want more Canes! More Donuts! More! More! More!”

Eventually, however, when the election proceedings concluded, many of the accusers rescinded their statements, and the Crew members reunited as brothers. Reflecting on the tumultuous events surrounding the hall election process, one Crew member stated the following: “The people have spoken and elected Fr. Greg Haake as president for world domination. He will do an effective job ensuring that other residence halls do not foil our plans.” It would seem that, in the aftermath of all the chaos and unrest, the Coyle community has emerged stronger and more confident than ever before.