Elections

General Studies Student Council VP of Communications Brody Berg was elected president after Wednesday’s elections. With 50 percent of the vote, Berg won by a large enough margin to easily secure the student body presidency.

UPDATE (7:50 p.m.): As voting drew to a close, the Columbia College Student Council Elections Board announced that it would not accept the alleged rules violation complaint from presidential candidate George Krebs. In a statement, the board said that a previous compromise between Krebs and his opponent Alidad Damooei invalidating their offsetting rules violations would hold despite attempts by Krebs in the last day to revive his complaint. Krebs aired his concerns to several campus publications, including Spectator. "The media focus this morning regarding the Spectator comment made by Diamond was the result of Krebs exercising his rights as a student at Columbia to bring his concerns to the attention of campus media organizations, not a pending rules violation," said the statement.

After pushing back the voting deadline a day to accommodate technical difficulties, the Engineering Student Council announced the results of the class president and vice president positions in the council’s internal elections on Saturday afternoon.

After an uncontested election, Sarah Besnoff, BC ’09 was officially named next year’s Student Government Association president in results released Sunday evening.
Along with Besnoff, the new SGA executive board will be VP of Student Activities Maria Morad, BC ’09, VP of Communications Katie Palillo BC ’10, and VP of Finance Amy Chen, BC ’10.

With each passing week, the atmosphere of the General Studies Student Council has grown more paranoid and acrimonious, while accomplishing nothing. No single person is to blame for the failures of this council, but no one who has served this year, including myself, is blameless.

Engineering Student Council candidates presented their platforms at a sparsely attended forum on Friday afternoon, where they presented their platforms in informative—and occasionally fiery—speeches.

It’s not that we’re apathetic or ignorant. We want the war to stop. We want affordable health care. We want the campus to expand responsibly. We want a Core Curriculum that reflects the diversity and nuance of the society in which we are expected to function. All of those things are important to us, but how can our actions truly effect change?

A point/counterpoint discussion looks at the effectiveness of the current internal voting system for the Engineering Executive Board versus the possibility of changing it into an entirely student-based election.

Every year, the Engineering Student Council is faced with the issue of having direct elections, as opposed to internal elections, for its executive board. However, it is every day when we see who would be the best at various jobs and, given the power of proxy vote that you gave us, elect the best people.

As Columbia engineers, we all want the most qualified and capable people to represent us in our student government. To ensure the best go through, we believe that a system of direct elections would better serve the engineering student body.