The election for the Graduate Union (GU) president has been hit with controversy, with leaked emails suggesting that election rules have been broken.

It has been revealed that Trinity Hall MCR President has used his position to tell students who to vote for as GU president, while supporters of Xin Jin are alleged to have used University mailing lists, with claims that email accounts have been hacked.

In an email with the subject line “A Plea for Sanity”, Trinity Hall MCR President Asa McKercher, explicitly advises students to vote for candidate Richard Jones. Underneath a link to the web page where students can vote online, McKercher writes “I would encourage you to please take a moment to cast your vote in the GU Presidential Election for Richard Jones.”

He states that his opponent, current GU International Officer Xin Jin, is “the assistant of the current GU president”. It is not Jin’s personal credentials which he takes to task, but his association with Arsalan Ghani, the outgoing GU president, “a man under investigation for misappropriating funds and harassing the volunteer staff at the GU”.

He adds that he “is generally unfit to run a tea party at a nursery school”. The email ends by making reference to the ‘chaos’ into which the Graduate Union has descended this year, and concludes that “It would be a shame were this terrible situation to repeat itself”, implying that Jin is too closely associated to Ghani for this to be possible were he to become GU President.

A graduate student at the college who wished to remain anonymous said of the email, which was sent to all the college’s MCR students: "I think it's highly irresponsible for a JCR or MCR president to use their official position to try to influence the vote.”

“I was probably going to vote for Jones anyway, but I felt the president's e-mail made the whole election seem rather cheap and pointless. The subject heading alone shows he's not interested in even attempting impartiality, which seems very unprofessional. The student added, “Trying to encourage students to vote is one thing, but dictating who they vote for as though they are not able to make up their own minds is incredibly patronising."

Meanwhile campaigners for Xin Jin appear to have been using university mailing lists to garner support for the candidate, going against GU election rules. An email sent on Monday night from the Hermes account of MPhil Judge Business School student Yiwei Lin read: “My buddy Xin Jin, who is reading a PhD in supply chain management, is currently standing for Graduate Union President. Last year, he has organized a number of good campaigns for the sake of graduate community, including mature students, visa and family issues. He is keen to carry out this responsibility further - please kindly vote for management grad to lead 9000 Cambridge graduates.” The email also included a link to Xin’s manifesto and the CUSU-GU voting web page.

On Tuesday morning, Lin emailed all students on the Judge Business School mailing list, apologising for the “spam”, claiming that she “did not know about the candidate” and that someone had taken her password. Lin said that she was “very angry with the person sent the email under my name” and that she would “ask UCS [University Computing Service] for the MAC [Media Access Control] address that send (sic) the email to you, if required”.

MCR President of Clare Hall, Matthew Grosvenor, said: “In either case this is terrifying: either Bruno's campaigners are 'hacking' accounts to send spam advertising to garner votes, or they are simply sending spam and claiming it was 'hacked' in order to get around election rules outlawing spamming of mailing lists which is also outrageous.”

CUSU and GU election rules state that “The use of any mailing lists in campaigning (other than lists created specifically for your candidature) is forbidden”. The CUSU Elections Committee has also stated that it is not permitted for presidents of the JCR or MCR to endorse candidates.