Krebs Elected CCSC President With 60 Percent of Vote

After a week of heated accusations before campaigning ended, 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 the Connect Columbia party, 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 amid 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 experience gained while serving as president of his class for the past two years in addition to spearheading 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 revealed 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 of policy; Laura Doan, CC ’09, as vice president of funding; Robyn Burgess, CC ’10, as vice president of campus life; and Ian Solsky, CC ’09, as vice president of 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 addressing the issues that incited criticisms of this year’s executive board as well as on promises to change ‘business as usual.’

Elections board chair Andrew Ness, CC ’08, attributed Experience Columbia’s victory partially to its ability to mobilize voters.

“I was expecting the parties to be closer,” Ness said. “60-40 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 ... That’s not to say Alidad’s party wasn’t around, but George was good at making himself known.”

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

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

With a total of 1,921 ballots cast, voter turnout represented 42.69 percent of about 4,500 Columbia College students. That number has jumped from last year’s 34.3 percent, but remains 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 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 going to be the biggest and greatest year Columbia’s ever seen,” Johnson said. He will 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.

In the tightest race, the two one-year senate positions went to Tiffany Dockery and Rishika Samant, both CC ’09, with only three 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, CC ’11, 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 running uncontested were the sophomore and junior class councils. AJ Pascua, CC ’10, will lead the junior class, along with Sue Yang, CC ‘10, as vice president and Valerie Sapozhnikova, CC ’10, Matthew Harold, CC ’10, and Joey Goldberg, CC ’11, as representatives. For the sophomore class, Learned Foote, CC ’11, will continue as president with Sara Partridge, CC ’11, as vice president and Tom Amegadzie, CC ’11, Melissa Im, CC ’11, Sean Udell, CC ’11, as representatives.

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

Additional coverage by CTVcan be found here.

lien.hoang@columbiaspectator.com