ESC Voter Turnout Tops CCSC at 50.9%

Voter turnout for Engineering Student Council elections reached 50.9 percent, beating Columbia College's turnout of 34.3 percent in an election with close races for policy representative positions and uncontested class council elections.

ESC's general elections, which started at midnight on April 1, ended yesterday at 6 p.m. Students were able to vote online at their leisure, unlike Columbia College elections, which were held last week at designated areas around campus.

Dan Okin, SEAS '07 and outgoing ESC president, said that he was pleased with the voter turnout result. "I think it's fantastic. I think it shows that you don't need a contested class council election to get a good turnout with your classes," he said. "On top of that, we received pretty much 51 percent voter turnout school-wide, and that was without a contested executive board."

Okin was keen to boost voter turnout this year. He sent out several e-mails during the voting period to encourage SEAS students to vote. "So go vote, choose your council, and beat CC's turnout of a measly 34.3%. SEAS can do better and without leaving our rooms," Okin wrote in the last e-mail he sent out to the SEAS student body about seven hours before voting ended.

Last year's elections saw a voter turnout of 33 percent. This year, 77.5 percent of the first-year class turned out to re-elect their board, a significant increase from last year's 58.41 percent. Heather Lee, Lili Gu, Kelly Chen, and Gunnar Aasen, will remain president, vice president, and class representatives, respectively.

The representatives were actively encouraging people to vote because of a challenge Okin posed to Lee.

"Everyone from the council was involved in telling everyone to vote. I know I personally accosted a few people myself and dragged them over to the computers," Lee said. "I don't think they were angry with me, hopefully."

"Dan [Okin] said that his freshman year, they got 78 percent of their class to vote, and that's unheard of and amazing. He said if 80 percent of our class would vote, he'd throw the biggest party we've ever seen," she said.

In fact, all three of the class council elections were uncontested. Eash Cumarasamy and Shreyans Khemka, both SEAS '08, were re-elected as class president and vice president, respectively. The class representatives will be Jessica Aspis and Amy Q. Lin. For the class of 2009, Warren Reed was re-elected as president, Erin Svokos will be vice president, and Samantha John and Lauren Minches will be the class representatives.

In non-class council races, Ken Yearwood, SEAS '09, was elected CCSC Liaison in a race against Daniel Gundrum, SEAS '10. Rajat Roy and Whitney Green, both SEAS '10 and running unopposed, were elected SGA Liason and GSSC Liason, respectively. Peter Valeiras, SEAS '09, won the Student Services Representative race against Patti Lin, SEAS '09 and the current representative, by 6.9 percent. Samantha Wilner, SEAS '09, won the race for Academic Affairs Representative against the current representative Michael Fu by 9.1 percent.

James Tsai, SEAS '09, won the most contested race of this year for Alumni Affairs and Professional Development representative, a position currently known as the Preprofessional Affairs Representative. During the council's constitutional review this year, the council revised the position to include alumni affairs.

Amit Bedi, SEAS '09, was elected University senator to replace Jianshu Dong, SEAS '08, whose two-year term will end this year. Sumeet Shah, SEAS '08 and the other senator, still has one more year in his term.

"It feels great, I can help out the campus on a much broader scale than my previous position," Bedi said. It was a really close race. I think either one of us could have done a good job."