ESC E-board Nominations Start Elections

Engineering Student Council elections started last night at 11 p.m. with the council beginning to accept nominations for Executive Board positions.

Undergraduate engineers have been receiving e-mails from ESC President Dan Okin, SEAS '07, and class council presidents encouraging them to nominate themselves or fellow engineers for the positions of president, VP policy, VP student life, VP intergroup, and secretary. Nominations should be e-mailed to Okin.

Unlike within the Columbia College Student Council, ESC Executive Board positions are elected internally. All nominations are due at midnight on March 18. Candidates will present speeches in front of current council members on March 19, after which council members will vote in a closed meeting to decide who will fill the positions.

Last year, ESC held a referendum on internal elections of the Executive Board. While 67 percent voted in favor of converting to direct elections, only 33 percent of the student body voted, a number that was insufficient to effect the change.

Okin said there was an amendment put before the council last week during ESC's annual constitutional review to make the Executive Board elections external, but that the amendment failed.

Okin said that the debate between internal and external elections is a complex one with strong cases to be made on both sides, but "internal elections allow deep discussion by members of the council" to determine who is best suited for the positions. He emphasized, however, "That's not to say the public can't do that too, but it [internal elections] simply provides the opportunity for discourse to occur."

Former ESC President Tom Fazzio, SEAS '06, defended the council's right to hold internal elections. "The student body voted and I think it's important to note that the participation in the process was ... disappointingly low, and ... it's an indicator of the level of interest that students have in making that sort of a decision," he said. "That process of electing members internally I think affords a much more intense debate and ... it's a much more productive process at finding the best candidate."

There will be an information session at 7 p.m. today in the student government office for those interested in learning more about the E-board positions.

Josh Hirschland contributed to this article.