Michelle Diamond Wins CCSC Presidency

Michelle Diamond, CC '08, was named next year's Columbia College Student Council executive board president as her One Columbia party took nearly 60 percent of the vote in this year's CCSC elections.

One Columbia had more than double the support for the runner-up, junior Tracy Chung's Rebel CC party, which had 25.9 percent of the vote. The Voice party of Natali Segovia, CC '08, came in third with 14.3 percent of the vote.

"I'm ecstatic, we're all absolutely ecstatic," Diamond said, referring to her ticket of Alidad Damooei, CC '09, vice president for policy; Jennifer Choi, CC '09, vice president for funding; Lindsey Lazopoulos, CC '08, vice president for campus life; and Glenn Thompson, CC '08, vice president for communications.

After celebrating the end of the campaign at Nacho's, members of One Columbia returned to Diamond's suite to await the results with more than 25 supporters.

"I was so happy to be surrounded by all these people that helped me and who are so important to me," Diamond said.

With a total of 1,410 voters, turnout represented 34.3 percent of the student body, according to the results released by the elections board last night. That number was "significantly lower than last year," according to elections board chair Subash Iyer, CC '07. He said that 50.5 percent of the CC population cast ballots in last year's race between Seth Flaxman and Nishant Dixit, both CC '07.

Iyer attributed this drop to several changes including the relocation of the voting site to Lerner Hall instead of the Low Steps, a new rule requiring candidates to stay at least 100 feet away from the site, and uncontested bids for Class of 2008 and Class of 2009 councils and for the two student services representative positions.

"I don't think it will be close to last year," Iyer said yesterday, a half hour before the polls closed at 7 p.m.

In the other races, Eric Wang and Felipe Tarud, both CC '08, defeated four other candidates to take the two open Columbia College Senate seats. Priyanka Gumaste, CC '10, beat Derek Hou, CC '09, to become pre-professions, scholarships and fellowships representative with 54.9 percent of the vote.

"It was good campaigning," Hou said, "and it just reflects that both candidates were qualified, in such an even vote."

"Of course it's disappointing not winning, but Pri will do great job," he added.

In the year's tightest race, Donna Desilus, CC '09, edged out Kenneth Liu, CC '10, for the academic affairs representative spot by a mere 26 vote, 2.2 percent margin.

With 39.6 percent of the vote, AJ Pascua and Sue Yang of the Go party, won as Class of 2010 president and vice president. The election was marked by allegations of foul play, including alleged death threats against incumbent 2010 class president Mark Modesitt. His Alma Matters [Remix] party came in last, also trailing the Toga party of Maximo Cubilette II.

"It was an interesting case," said Pascua, who was downtown when the results were sent out via email. "Charlotte Freinberg, the representative who won for the Toga party, was the first to call just to congratulate me and say she'd be happy to work with me. … Go meshes very well with Toga."

"It was a very long process," Modesitt said. "I'm glad it's over. As corny as it sounds everything happens for a reason, so now I'll focus all my attention on something else."

Neda Navab and her Access party and George Krebs and his Fusion party were both re-elected as class presidents for the Class Councils of 2008 and 2009, respectively, in uncontested races. Meanwhile, Molly Conley, CC '10, and Brian Leung, CC '09, were both elected as student services representatives.

As for next year, "The entire school is going to see fantastic things from us," Diamond said.