George Krebs, CC ’09, announced yesterday that he will run for president of the Columbia College Student Council.
Krebs, the current CCSC junior class president, will run as part of an as-yet-unnamed ticket with three other candidates. Adil Ahmed, CC ’09, will run as vice president for policy, Robyn Burgess, CC ’10, will run for vice president for public life, and Ian Solsky, CC ’09, will join the ticket as vice president for communications.
Current CCSC Policy Vice President Alidad Damooei, who is also widely regarded as a possible presidential candidate, declined to comment on whether he will run.
Krebs’ announcement paved the way for Mark Johnson, CCSC junior class vice president, to declare his own bid for the presidency. Johnson said that he will run for CCSC senior class president with Mallory Carr as vice president, and Heather Oh, Zahrah Taufique, and Brandon Shulman as class representatives.
“One of the things about forming our ticket is to maintain as much perspective as we can,” Johnson said. “Senior year has a lot more projects, things to think about.”
“My commitment to class council is strong and I don’t plan to give that up,” he added.
While Krebs and his running mates have been discussing a possible bid since at least December, Krebs is no stranger to early announcements. He hinted at running for CCSC president in January 2007, but dropped his potential candidacy the day election forms were due.
“When I thought about running last year, there were things about CCSC that I wanted to change,” Krebs said. “Unfortunately, a lot of issues I worried about last year are still the same this year.”
Despite lacking a fifth member to run for vice president for funding, the group went ahead with yesterday’s announcement before the CCSC election board finalizes an official calendar, which may be ready by the end of the week. The board has yet to announce a date for this spring’s annual elections.
“We don’t want to limit ourselves to the time line of the election board,” Krebs said. “Why not get excited about it sooner rather than later?”
“We know that we want to do it, so why not tell people?” Solsky added.
Andrew Ness, CC ’08 and chair of the elections board, said that his board will meet tonight to work on the calendar, which will be later than last year’s so that candidates will be elected by the end of the school year.
“Typically in the past, there’s been a dead period when candidates are elected to new positions but still have to fulfill their current positions, so they aren’t as productive because they aren’t as invested,” Ness said. Of the announcements, Ness said, “It’s exciting that people are forming their parties early because that’ll make for better parties, better platform issues, and just a better campaign.”
Election rules bar candidates from revealing their party names or platforms ahead of the campaign season.
But in their release, and in an interview yesterday with Spectator, Krebs and his ticket emphasized the importance of a “core” vision.
Ahmed rattled off a list of terms—“Peace Corps, Americorps, Core Curriculum”—that resembled the group’s aim of reaching out to and unifying the student body.
“Right now CCSC is seen as its own group that focuses a lot on its own activities,” Krebs said. “But we have the chance to be an overarching body.”
Without going into specifics, the group members said that if elected they would enact changes that weren’t necessarily difficult, but were matters of “common sense,” Solsky said. “We want to have a strong relationship with the administrators, but we don’t want to be the administrators.”
In the meantime, the candidates plan to start by “getting the vibe going,” Krebs said.
“We’ll continue on in our current responsibilities and hope that our abilities as council members will show through,” Burgess said.
lien.hoang@columbiaspectator.com