Engineering Student Council candidates presented their platforms at a sparsely attended forum on Friday afternoon, where they presented their platforms in informative—and occasionally fiery—speeches.
In an unusual year for the ESC, the positions of president, vice president, and representatives are highly competitive, while candidates for policy representative and liaison positions are running uncontested.
Policy representative candidates vying for positions in Academic and Alumni Affairs, Professional Development, and Student Services emphasized a need for open communication between councils and student bodies, touching particularly on the distant relationship between students from the School of General Studies and SEAS.
“That [stigma] comes from us undergrads not knowing any GS students,” said Epsita Hoque, candidate for GSSC liaison and SEAS ’11.
While last year’s class council positions were uncontested, this year’s election has three class representative candidates for both classes of 2011 and 2009 and two candidates for president of the class of 2010. Returning candidates from the 2011 class council elections in the fall, such as Emma Lebwohl, who is running for student services representative, and Kimberly Lipman-White, up for the CCSC liaison position, took this election as another opportunity to seek council seats. Nicholas Chen, SEAS ’10, running against current class of 2010 president Heather Lee, SEAS ’10, criticized the current class council for what he saw as pursuing unimportant initiatives.
“I don’t really feel like the class council is doing anything that the class actually cares about, like egg hunts,” Chen said, referring to the recent Easter Egg hunt the class council had organized. But Chen, who is not currently involved with the class council, had neither criticisms of Lee nor concrete plans on what he would do differently were elected. “I’ll figure that out later,” Chen said.
Current 2011 vice president Mike Wymbs, SEAS ’11, decided not to run again this year, opening up the position for Chris Elizondo, SEAS ’11. “I wish I had more time to read The Economist,” Wymbs said. “It was very enjoyable working with ESC, but I just couldn’t manage my time well enough to satisfy my intellectual needs.”
Current 2009 president Warren Reed, SEAS ’09, has also decided to step aside to pursue other activities.
Kim Manis, SEAS ’09 and current vice president of student life, and Erin Svokos, SEAS ’09 and current 2009 class council representative, will run together as president and vice president under the party name “Kim & Erin.” Although in the past, Manis, Svokos, and Krissie Zambrano, SEAS ’09, current secretary and 2009 class council representative candidate, have served together on the same council, Manis and Svokos have decided to run independently of any class representatives.
“I’m friends with all the people running for rep, and they would all be great as rep, so I didn’t feel like we should kind of decide for the students,” Manis explained, saying she wanted to “let them [students] vote on their own.”
The light-hearted atmosphere became more heated during the senator candidates’ speeches. Brian Pan, SEAS ’10, and Rajat Roy, SEAS ’10, are both members of the 2010 class council. Roy said in his speech that “a huge part of his [Pan’s] platform has already been done,” and claimed that Pan did not do the research necessary for holding a position.
During the question-and-answer session for the two candidates, Pan and Roy were more than ready to jump into a debate before Zambrano, the elections secretary, reminded them that the forum was not a debate.
Speeches by the candidates were videotaped and will be posted by the voting period, which begins April 8 at midnight and ends April 10 at 6 p.m.
ivy.chen@columbiaspectator.com.