Flex Party Victorious in First-Year Elections

Correction appended.

Columbia College first-years have found their leaders.

Yesterday's turnout of 484 first-years amounted to around 47 percent of the class-a marked increase over last year, when only around 17 percent of the class of 2008 voted in fall elections.

The newly elected President Jessica Cohen and Vice President Scott Zaloom, both CC '09, will join CCSC as voting members, and Allie Kushner, Ian Solsky, and Elizabeth Tarras will serve as non-voting class representatives. The five are all members of the victorious Flex Party.

The high turnout at Wednesday's election was preceded by a well-attended candidates' forum, held on Monday night in the John Jay Lounge. The forum featured free JJ's Place food for spectators, speeches from the candidates, and a question-and-answer session. There were 10 parties and three independent representatives running for office, and the audience filled the available floor space and spilled out into the hall.

"We were really pleased with the turnout at the forum," said Beth Katz, CC '06 and co-chairwoman of the Elections Board. "There were over 100 people, so definitely more onlookers than candidates-which isn't something that always happens at this school."

On election day, first-years voted electronically at computer terminals in the John Jay lobby, utilizing a new site that included pictures of the candidates, along with party affiliations, to help voters match familiar faces to names. Katz said that the new system is a vast improvement over last year's online voting policy for first-year elections, which allowed students to access a Web site and vote from any computer on campus.

"With electronic voting, we weren't putting the responsibility on people to remember from a late-night e-mail to go vote on their own," Katz said.

According to Katz, the adoption of electronic voting policies for all CCSC elections is a possibility. "It's definitely something the Elections Board will look into for the rest of the semester, because it was definitely a success; it streamlined the whole elections process," she said.

Cohen and the rest of the Flex Party expressed excitement at the prospect of working with the Council and meeting the rest of their classmates. "We're glad the election process is over, but we're ready to get into our platform and get the work started," said representative Ian Solsky.

The Flex Party's goals for the school year include establishing a universal peer advising system that pairs first-year students with upperclassmen based on academic interest, and instating town hall meetings specifically for first-years that would allow them access to administrators.

"Basically, we want to unify our class to make it cohesive, and to have freshman who aren't involved in Council to have a voice that they wouldn't otherwise have," Cohen said.

Correction: Voter turnout in first-year elections in 2004 was 33 percent. The number was incorrectly reported in Spectator in spring 2005.