After a week of heated accusations brought campaigning to a close, George Krebs of the Experience Columbia party has been elected president of the Columbia College Student Council. The race between Krebs and his opponent, Alidad Damooei of Connect Columbia, looked close until the end, but ultimately Krebs pulled out a solid victory with 58.94 percent of 1,856 votes cast.

"I'm very happy but I recognize we have a lot of work to do," Krebs said amidst a celebration in his Watt suite. "We're celebrating tonight but we're getting started working this summer."

Krebs, the current junior class president, based his campaign on two years of experience as president of his class as well as his spearheading of the new Flex Off Campus program. However, internal correspondence released this week by current CCSC president Michelle Diamond generated doubts about how pivotal Krebs’ role actually was in developing the program. Krebs countered that the information was being released so late in an attempt to undermine his campaign and tried to file a rules violation, which was rejected today. Apparently, voters were not deterred by the late disclosures.

Krebs’ executive board will include Adil Ahmed, CC ’09, as vice president for policy; Laura Doan, CC ’09, as vice president for funding; Robyn Burgess, CC ’10, as vice president for campus life; and Ian Solsky, CC ’09, as vice president for communications.

“This confirms that the campus wants to view council differently,” Ahmed said of the win. “We’re ready to bring that change.”

Much of Experience Columbia’s campaign centered on criticisms of this year’s executive board and promises to change business as usual.

Elections board chair Andrew Ness, CC ’08, guessed that one factor in Experience Columbia’s victory was its ability to mobilize voters.

“I was expecting the parties to be closer,” Ness said. “Sixty-forty is a pretty large margin. I think George was a little more successful at motivating people to come to the table and vote, and vote in their rooms. I saw him and his party members around Low, they had a constant presence. That’s not to say Alidad’s party wasn’t around, but George was good at making himself known.”

On Damooei’s ticket are Jennifer Choi, CC ’09, for vice president for funding; Donna Desilus, CC ’09, for vice president for policy; Cliff Massey, CC ’10, for vice president for campus life; and Veronica Colon, CC ’10, for vice president for communications.

“I wish George the best of luck,” Damooei said against a noisy party background at West End. “It was a good campaign, and what happens, happens.”

With a total of 1921 ballots cast, voter turnout represented 42.69 percent of about 4,500 Columbia College students. That’s up from last year’s 34.3 percent, but still lower than the 50.5 percent turnout from the year before.

“I think that people were treating last year’s executive board as uncontested,” Ness said. “This year’s executive board was highly contested, which draws people from all classes.”

Ness said he was pleasantly surprised by the number of voters, given the poor turnout at debates and for elections for the Engineering Student Council and the Student Government Association.

The contest between Mark Johnson and Colin Drummond for senior class president was somewhat closer, though Johnson came out with 53.78 of the vote.

“We’re going into senior year, which is gonna be the biggest and greatest year Columbia’s ever seen,” Johnson said. He’ll be joined by Mallory Carr as vice president and Zahrah Taufique and Heather Oh as representatives. One of Drummond’s party members, Colin Felsman, took the final representative post. Drummond also ran with Jason Patinkin as vice president.

In the tightest race, the two one-year senate positions went to Tiffany Dockery and Rishika Samant, both CC ’09, with only thirteen votes separating them. Their nearest competitor, Billy Freeland, CC ’09, lost by a mere eight votes. Also running were Joseph Daniels, CC ’09, and David Zhu, CC ’11.

Incoming two-year senator Monica Quaintance, CC ’10, earned a decisive victory with 43.02 percent, while her rivals James Downie, CC ’10, and Stephanie Wilhelm, CC ’11, garnered 33.56 percent and 21.41 percent, respectively.

Aaron Edmonds, CC ’09, and Priyanka Gumaste, CC ’10, won easy victories over write-in candidate Zawadi Baharanyi for the two student services representatives.

Karen Woodin, CC’11, and Melissa Santos, CC ’09, ran unopposed for academic affairs representative and pre-professionals representative, respectively.

Also uncontested were the sophomore and junior class councils. AJ Pascua will lead the junior class, along with Sue Yang as vice president and Valerie Sapozhnikova, Matthew Harold, and Joey Goldberg as representatives. For the sophomore class, Learned Foote will continue as president with Sara Partridge as vice president and Tom Amegadzie, Melissa Im, Sean Udell as representatives.

Ness said results are not official until 7 p.m. Friday, but doubted that anyone would dispute the outcome.