A candidate running to be president of the undergraduate Student Association is denying dozens of allegations of aggressive and harassing behavior toward students, colleagues and employees, both at UB and at another college he previously attended.
At least 23 complaints have been made against SA Senator Grant Peterson, who is running in this week’s SA e-board elections, SA President Aisha Adam told The Spectrum.
The complaints came from 12 fellow senators, eight non-SA affiliated students and three UB employees, Adam said, with the majority coming from women.
The Spectrum has not reviewed the complaints.
Since his election to the SA Senate last fall, Peterson has repeatedly clashed with fellow senators, particularly around the Senate’s response to the university’s closure of a student-run LGBTQ+ community room in the Student Union. Earlier this month, 13 senators voted to reject Peterson’s request to resign from the body’s advocacy committee, with Adam saying she sought to avoid normalizing a culture of “not taking what you sign up for seriously.”
Around that time, several senators and e-board members approached The Spectrum with complaints about Peterson’s “textbombing” — a word used to describe excessive texting in a short period of time — and his “aggressive” behavior during Senate meetings. Text conversations reviewed by The Spectrum showed a pattern of recurring message bursts within a single day.
Invasive, unwanted behavior
The allegations against Peterson erupted into the open last Thursday, when Manning Xiao, a sophomore business administration major, and Ryder Albano, SA’s engineering club council coordinator, confronted him at a candidate forum.
Afterward, Adam disclosed the complaints the SA had received about Peterson. She said a UB administrator had described him as “hostile,” and said he had “badmouthed” a faculty member to other students.
“I have easily received more complaints about him than I have about any other senator, executive, officer or staff member on my 100-plus staff at SA,” she told The Spectrum.
While The Spectrum has not reviewed all of the complaints, interviews with multiple students who interacted with Peterson appear to show a pattern of overbearing behavior.
Students approached by Peterson during last fall’s SA Senate elections and this spring’s petition period described him as “aggressive” in pressuring people to vote for him, repeatedly sending text messages and pestering them on campus.
Patty Yan, a freshman history major, said that Peterson would call her “Pattycakes,” offer to drive her around campus and text her questions in the “middle of the night, almost every day” about whether she smoked, drank or went to parties. Eventually, she stopped showing up to Undergraduate History Association meetings to avoid Peterson’s advances.
Yan told The Spectrum she will transfer out of UB if Peterson is elected SA president.
“I don’t think I’ll be staying at the school anymore,” she said by phone on March 3.
A female member of an engineering club, whose identity The Spectrum is withholding because she fears retaliation, told The Spectrum that Peterson contacted her on LinkedIn in January, trying to help someone who had been harassing her in the fall get in touch with her. Eventually, she sought and received a no-contact order on Peterson’s friend — but not Peterson — from UPD.
She said she had to step back from the club for a month, and now avoids walking around campus on her own.
“That club was one of the best things about going to school here for me, and they both ruined that for me,” she wrote in a text message to The Spectrum. “I just don’t want to get approached anymore by the person I have the no-contact with or Grant.”
Laron Fomby, a former friend of Peterson’s who is now running against his party for the SA treasurer position, told The Spectrum that Peterson would often make comments like, “You’re gay, so you must suck good d–k,” even though he asked “all the time” for Peterson to stop.
Peterson said he never told those jokes, instead pointing the finger at Fomby, saying that he offered for Peterson to sit on his dorm room bed during a December visit, then asked about Peterson’s relationship history.
Fomby, in response, called Peterson’s allegation “the biggest lie I ever heard,” saying that he never saw Peterson in December and has never let anyone sit on his bed.
‘A deeply personal assault’
Peterson told The Spectrum that he never exhibited any of the behavior described in the complaints, and saw “no evidence” that the SA complaints existed.
He said the complaints were being used as an “intimidation tactic,” and that Adam’s involvement constituted “election tampering.”
“If there were actual complaints against me in any meaningful sense, it would have been really nice if they filed a Code of Conduct complaint and went through the proper process,” Peterson said by phone Saturday afternoon. “Because guess what? Nothing would have happened, because in that regard, UB has due process.”
Peterson said no one ever spoke to him about “textbombing,” either.
“I think if someone had a concern about me yapping too much, they should tell me to stop talking if they don’t want to talk to me,” he said.
Peterson said he reached out to the Student Conduct office and UPD Friday afternoon but hasn’t heard back.
“It’s a deeply personal assault on my character, a baseless assault on my character,” Peterson said, choking up. “It’s especially hurtful. I can’t speak anymore.”
Over text, Peterson later said, “I think any reasonable person in my situation would start fearing for their safety.”
Albano, the engineering council coordinator, said that when he notified SA officials of the engineering club member’s complaint about Peterson, “it didn’t seem like anyone wanted to go further with the thing.”
Adam confirmed that SA officers never brought the complaints to Peterson’s attention.
“Confrontation, while it may be still gratifying and whatever in the moment, may actually put our students more at risk than otherwise,” Adam told The Spectrum. “So we’ve had to figure out more creative ways to keep things away from him.”
She said she advised students who complained to SA to file reports with UPD instead.
“I believe UB is involved, but they don’t share that with us,” she said.
Adam said she previously considered impeaching Peterson from the Senate, and that several senators had asked her about the possibility, but that the SA’s legal team said there were limited avenues for recourse because Peterson is not considered a member of SA staff.
Peterson sued his former college over discipline for similar allegations
Peterson faced similar complaints at his former college, Nassau Community College, which suspended him from student government after receiving more than 40 complaints alleging harassment and discrimination.
In January 2025, NCC suspended Peterson from his position as chair of the student government’s academic senate and revoked the associated tuition stipend a month after the college’s Title IX coordinator asked him to respond to the allegations against him.
The suspension followed Peterson’s own complaint against NCC, in which he said three members of student government, encouraged by two NCC officials, made “derogatory and discriminatory” statements about him in an October 2024 meeting.
The college dismissed Peterson’s complaint on the same day as his suspension from student government, declaring the complaint “illegible.” Peterson countered that the school was discriminating against his documented handwriting disability.
In November 2025, Peterson sued the college in U.S. District Court, alleging that the complaints were filed out of “retaliation” and accusing college officials of “conspiring to silence” him over his public criticism of the college. An NCC alum, Jordon Groom, joined Peterson in the lawsuit, saying college officials retaliated against him when they found he created “a hostile work environment” and required him to complete sensitivity training.
NCC has denied the claims made by Peterson and Groom.
Peterson told The Spectrum in a Q&A Monday evening that if people got ahold of the complaint documents, “nobody would take it seriously.”
“There were a lot of claims made that were just so blatantly false that if you were in the student government meetings at NCC, you would be like, ‘This clearly did not happen,” Peterson said Monday evening.
A fiery candidate forum
Students questioning Peterson during Thursday’s candidate forum were unconvinced by Peterson’s dismissals.
“Should students, especially women, feel safe under your leadership?” Xiao asked Peterson during the audience Q&A session.
Peterson said that he doesn’t know anything about the situation and called it a “targeted question designed to assassinate character prior to the election.”
Albano also brought up Peterson’s ongoing lawsuit against NCC, which Peterson dismissed as irrelevant and unfounded.
“The fact that people are using it as a cheap political shot is very disappointing and honestly, quite frankly, disgusting,” Peterson said.
Immediately after, another audience member asked, “What about the sexual harassment?” prompting Peterson to gather his belongings and briskly walk out of the room.
Peterson’s lawsuit against NCC did not note any allegations of sexual harassment.
As he exited, Peterson told The Spectrum that what was happening was “disgusting” and that he wasn’t going to stay any longer to let people “attack my character.”
With Peterson gone, Xiao grilled Peterson’s running mate, Joe Laurita, saying Peterson made a video call to a female SUNY SA representative with “nothing but a bath towel on.”
“I have no idea if that is true or not or if that was to attack him personally,” Laurita said after several seconds of silence. “I am not aware of any of this happening, and I am not involved in any way.”
Laurita was visibly shaking onstage and texting on his phone after.
When taken outside, Laurita told The Spectrum that he was “shaken up hard.”
“I feel like I’m an easier person to attack,” Laurita said.
Peterson denied the allegation, saying that people were “desperate.”
The voting period for the SA 2026-27 e-board elections began at 9:00 a.m. Monday.
Mylien Lai is the senior news editor and can be reached at mylien.lai@ubspectrum.com.
Mylien Lai is the senior news editor at The Spectrum. Outside of getting lost in Buffalo, she enjoys practicing the piano and being a bean plant mom. She can be found at @my_my_my_myliennnn on Instagram.
