Flaxman Elected President

The Open Columbia party, led by Seth Flaxman, CC '07, will take the reins of the Columbia College Student Council in May after having beaten the Evolution party by a 14-point margin, according to preliminary election results released Tuesday night.

Flaxman, the current president of the Columbia University College Democrats, defeated Nishant Dixit, CC '07, by 57 to 43 percent, becoming the first council outsider to win the CCSC presidency in over a decade.

"There's so much we can get done next year," Flaxman said. "All I know is that when Izumi [Devalier] and I got the call, we looked at each other and started listing the things we wanted to do before break."

The president-elect will be joined on the Executive Board by Ana Ortiz, CC '07, as vice president for campus life; Andrew Russeth, CC '07, as vice president for communications; Sarah Hwang, CC '08, as vice president for funding; and Izumi Devalier, CC '07, as vice president of policy.

"I think it was a close race, and each party ran a great campaign, but I'm really excited for Open Columbia," Michelle Oh, CC '06 and current CCSC president, said. "I'm sure they'll bring a lot of experience and new ideas to the council."

This year's race saw a 50.5 percent voter turnout, or 2,057 votes, which is within a percentage point of last year's total. "We're pleased with it [the turnout], particularly the really strong numbers in the freshman and sophomore classes," Jonathan Hunt-Glassman, CC '06 and chair of the CCSC Elections Board, said. The classes of 2008 and 2009 had 64.9 and 63.8 percent turnout respectively.

In an electoral twist, Oh announced in a college-wide e-mail Tuesday morning that students would be permitted to vote from their home computers, after several voters obtained the URL for the election site and cast votes from non-CCSC administered terminals. Hunt-Glassman said that the change did not appear to affect turnout significantly, as just 52 more votes were cast on Tuesday than on Monday.

In other races, two-time candidate Tiffany Davis, CC '08, cruised to victory by a 40-point margin over Gerry Rodriguez, CC '09, for the open two-year senate seat. "This is something I've been wanting since before I got to Columbia, and after losing freshman year, it's wonderful to be given this opportunity," Davis said.

In the race for the one-year senate opening, council veteran David Ali edged out Eric Wang, both CC '07, by a 12-point margin. "It feels really good," Ali said. "Both Eric and I campaigned really hard, but it just means so much to me."

In two contentious class council races, presidential candidates vying for a second term had their hopes dashed. The Lions, led by former 2008 class president Matthew Schoenfeld, lost by 16 points to the Access party, led by Neda Nevab, CC '08 and the current class vice president.

For the past several weeks, the two parties had been locked in a contentious and sometimes heated battle for class leadership. Just hours before the votes were tallied, Nevab complained to the Elections Board that students had engaged in illegal canvassing for the Lions during the campaign moratorium. Schoenfeld emphatically denied the claim, but Hunt-Glassman indicated that the charge would probably be declared moot in light of Access's victory.

In the 2009 class council race, George Krebs, CC '09, and the Fusion party netted 56 percent of the vote to beat out the Flex and Pants parties, who received 38 and seven percent respectively. Krebs will take the helm from Jessica Cohen, CC '09, who was running with the Flex party for a second term as class president.

"I'm elated, I'm happy, I'm excited about what we can do," Krebs said. "We're going to work for the class of 2009 like no other class council has before."

Three-time class president David Chait, CC '07, and the 116th Party scored a major victory over opponent Cecilia Baum, CC '07, and The Opposition Party, 71 to 29 percent.

For the at-large races, Alidad Damooei, CC '09, won by a 26 percent margin over Ehizoje Azeke, CC '08, to become next year's academic affairs representative. In the two races with no registered candidates, write-in contenders Michael Accordino, CC '07, and Brian Leung, CC '09, won the two open Student Services representative posts, and Allan Lau, CC '09, scored 70 percent of the vote for the pre-professional representative slot.

According to Elections Board policy, the results will become official 24 hours after last night's announcement, or whenever the last alleged rules violation is decided upon by the board.