Some students at KCOU/88.1 FM and a Pittsburgh college radio station might have been holding down their enter keys for nothing.

mtvU announced that the University of Puget Sound’s station, KUPS/90.1 FM, won this year’s college radio Woodie award Friday.

The Woodies are college-geared music awards that MTV's college division launched six years ago. Besides student radio awards, mtvU hands out Woodies for popular artists, as voted by college students. In past years, the awards helped propel bands such as Fall Out Boy, The Killers and Death Cab for Cutie to mainstream success.

Members of MU's student-run station, KCOU/88.1 FM, and the University of Pittsburgh's station, WTPS/92.1 FM, said some students at their stations tried to use a glitch on the voting Web site to rack up votes.

KCOU Program Director Greg Winegar and Music Director Kyle McDonald said they both knew about the glitch, although the station did not promote its use.

On the site, holding down the tab and enter keys made the voting confirmation window open and close repeatedly. By doing this, it appeared a user could automatically cast votes for as long as the enter key was held down (See the video below for a demonstration).

But mtvU spokesperson Janice Gatti said in an e-mail that “voting has not been compromised.” She declined to explain exactly how their systems prevented online voter fraud.

“We have advanced back-end systems in place that can deflect any type of tampering or illegitimate votes, similar to all voting systems we use for our programs,” Gatti said.

Students at the winning station, KUPS, said they did not try to use a glitch to get ahead. Promotions Director Elly Henriksen said students knew about the existence of automated clicking software, but she believed no one at KUPS downloaded the software.

General Manager Mike Stevens and News Director Sarah Brannan from WCRD/93.1 FM at Ball State University said they had not heard about the enter key trick. Neither did Web Director Michael Casadonte, Station Manager Lacey Kendall and Account Executive Jacob Poore, staff members of Coyote Radio at California State University San Bernadino.

Selection of the college radio Woodie winner involved 300 nominees that online voters whittled down to five finalists, including KCOU. People could vote as many times as they wanted on the Web site.

mtvU’s rules state, “Use of any device to automate a vote is prohibited.” But with a system that does not mandate one person, one vote, the line between cheating and simply voting a lot is blurry.

"It's not something we officially endorsed," KCOU Program Director Greg Winegar said. "We weren't promoting people to go use that glitch."

Students at the University of Pittsburgh also discovered the enter key glitch, WTPS Web Director C.J. Malm said.

"I know that people did it and that there were people who used it," Malm said. "We tried not to abuse it because we were just honored to be nominated.”

Henriksen, of the winning station, said KUPS managers took a firm stance against any automated voting programs.

"It was pretty much legit," said Henriksen, of Puget Sound's voting. "I know it could have been rigged. There are ways to set up voting machines, but we didn't want that. We wanted a fair fight."

Some students from finalist stations said they were taking the results with a grain of salt.

"Once all this plays out and someone wins, that station will advertise from then on that they won this award," said Coyote Radio Web Director Michael Casadonte on Thursday, before the results were announced. "Others will say, ‘We were in the top five’ and want to brag about it. But how did you get there? Because you clicked a lot?"

Henriksen, of the winning station, echoed these sentiments.

"Even if we win this, we're not really understanding what we're winning," said Henriksen on Thursday, before she knew her station won. "Is this really the best station or is this the station with the most trained monkeys that can click?"