This Week in MIT History
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Votes are cast by students for a penny each. At the end of the week, the candidate with the highest total of votes wins a small prize, the honor of being UMOC, and right to choose which charity receives the total earnings of the fundraiser.
Often, the UMOC candidates are encouraged to run representing their living group. Random Hall resident Adam C. Powell ’92 bragged of their “fourth UMOC in the last nine ” in a letter to the Tech after the 1995 competition. [“Congratulations to UMOC Victor” November 3, 1995]
Robert D. Warshawer ’54 was the first UMOC winner in December 1953. Cindy C. Helgerson ’70 (1966), the first woman to run for UMOC, sold kisses in Lobby 7 for one dollar and ran with the slogan “I’m not pretty as a man.” Other notable UMOC winners include mid-seventies long term candidates Aqualung and Sadie Bilgewater, “the Hump” and Brian Hughes, “Count UMOC,” who was famous for his vampire costume and coffin in Lobby 10, and 1996 winner Steven E. Jens ’97 (who had lost to the Random Hall milk the previous year by 47 cents).