Engineering Council Chooses New Board

Members of the Engineering Student Council convened late Monday night in a closed meeting to elect the council's 2003-2004 executive board. After more than four hours of deliberation and debate, the ESC elected the following students to comprise the board: Vijay Sundaram, SEAS '04, president; Mohan Ramaswamy, SEAS '04, vice president-intergroup; Adam Goldberg, SEAS '06, vice president-internal; Eric Rhee, SEAS '04, vice president-student life.

The new board is the first formed under a revision made to the ESC constitution last month. Unlike former e-boards, this one has three vice presidents instead of one vice president, a secretary, and a treasurer. The total number of council members was also reduced from 33 to 28.

"[The changes] delineated power a lot more appropriately, so that each person has a specified assignment," Ramaswamy said.

The constitutional change heightened the competition of the election process.

Whereas in past years cascading elections guaranteed defeated presidential candidates a chance to run for the three other e-board positions, the new structure forced presidential hopefuls to run for one of the three specific vice president positions, without any other role to resort to.

"Having the new structure definitely brought a lot of highly qualified people for each position. It made them focus more on what exactly it is they want to do and increased the risk involved because no other position remained for them to drop down to," Sundaram said.

The demanding terms of the election and the competent candidates they pooled have yielded a group that has the support and confidence of the outgoing ESC.

"All of the candidates who have been elected to the positions are extremely well qualified for their respective positions, and they will work well together as a team," said DJ Park, the vice president of SEAS '06.

"We have an incredibly strong board going in this year. Part of changing the structure was to ensure that a specific candidate had a specific responsibility in mind that they already have intense background in," said Sundaram, the outgoing ESC secretary.

All three elected vice presidents have at least a year of experience with ESC. Ramaswamy and Rhee, both SEAS '04, are on ESC this year as a representative for SEAS '04 and student services chairperson, respectively.

Goldberg, the only rising sophomore on the new e-board, is currently the president of SEAS '06. Despite his younger age, "Goldberg has shone through in class council and no one regrets his election," Sundaram said.

The newly elected ESC leaders hope that the new structure will also allow for the "successful delegation of roles without overlap," which would facilitate "increased productivity and approachability for both the e-board and the ESC as a whole," Goldberg said.

During the coming year, students can expect to see much of ESC's attention geared toward improving the Center for Career Education to better serve Columbia engineering students, as well as financial aid, academic advising, and health services.

"A large-scale proposal has been submitted to CCE listing ways for that office to improve. We'd like to follow up on that," Ramaswamy said. "We're cooperating with all of the other councils."

A more general objective of ESC is to be more inclusive and accommodating of the student body's interest for involvement. "A main part of the plan is to reach out to students, not only to participate on the receiving end but on the planning side as well," Sundaram said.

Approximately forty people contributed to the internal elections meeting, which had full attendance from ESC, as well as several non-ESC members who were candidates for executive board positions.

On Monday night, each candidate gave a five minute speech, which was followed by a question and answer session, at which time other candidates for the position were required to leave the room. After each candidate had gone through this two-part process, candidates for a given position vacated the room while the voting members held a general discussion and cast their votes.

Although Columbia College Student Council elections are open to the student body, ESC has found that internal voting has been successful for them.

"We've haven't had issues of integrity with our council before, and ... I think that students and the administration feel that, although we don't have popular elections, the interest of the council certainly lies with the interest of the students," said outgoing ESC President JaMel Nelson, SEAS '03.

During the election process, the e-board and 32 members of the council deliberate carefully among themselves about the qualifications of the candidates as well as the demands of the elected positions. They maintain that internal elections work best for them.

"[The council members] are the ones who see ESC members working for the council every day and they thoroughly argue things out to make the best decision," Sundaram said.

Unlike the e-board elections, class council elections will be determined by student votes. Information sessions are scheduled for this Friday and Saturday, and elections are expected to take place in mid-April.