Our feelings about Bacchanal/impeachment.

Things got ~dramatic~ at last night’s CCSC meeting, complete with suspenseful Jeopardy music. But, first things first, Monday marauder Joe Milholland brings you up to date on the latest resolutions for Bacchanal, which may or may not pass.

Bacchanal Resolution

At Sunday night’s Columbia College Student Council (CCSC) general body meeting, VP of Communications Grayson Warrick brought up a potential resolution to Undergratudate Student Life and the Bacchanal Committee based on the responses CCSC received from the Bacchanal survey.

Since many students in the survey said they wanted to keep Bacchanal as a de-stressing, all-campus single event, Warrick wants such a reccomendation in the proposal. As for the lion tamers introduced last year, Warrick acknowledged that they are “definitely something the administration won’t let us not have,” but he wants their visibility to be increased, their roles better defined, and for their name to be changed.

Because many students wanted Bacchanal to be held on Low like during Lupe Fiasco’s 2014 performance, he included that recommendation. The administration has said that the steps are less safe than College Walk, and Warrick’s response at the meeting was that there isn’t any data on injuries on the steps. He added that having the concert on College Walk rather than on Low could lead to a crowd falling all at once.

In terms of ticket sales, Warrick does not want Columbia to charge for Bacchanal. If they do charge, he wants ticket subsidization. VP of Policy Vivek Ramakrishnan brought up that Columbia lacks the infrastructure between the ticket office and Financial Aid in order to effectively do ticket subsidization.

The council also discussed the issue of partitioning, how many people to allow in the concert area, and how to keep track of who was let in. Warrick proposed as an alternative to tickets a first come first serve system for Bacchanal, where the first to show up at the partition would be the ones who are let in.

Finally, Warrick brought up the fact that the Public Safety fee for Bacchanal has been getting larger and larger each year and has been taking more out of the Bacchanal budget. He recommended thatin the future the administration or Public Safety cover the cost over a certain set amount. However, Alumni Affairs Rep Daniel Liss warned that this could lead to the administration simply taking the money from the Bacchanal budget without telling, a prospect he thought was worse than knowing exactly how much money they would have to spend each year.

Impeachment Vote

Additionally, CCSC voted at their meeting not to go forward with impeachment proceedings for 2018 Rep Sosa Omorogbe.

This vote came after an extended discussion among council members about how impeachment votes should take place. According to their constitution, CCSC had to perform the vote because Omorogbe had 3 unexcused absences.

The council first discussed whether they should hold the vote in a closed or open meeting, with the discussion centering around whether the constitution mandated an open meeting during an impeachment vote. After a while, CCSC President Ben Makansi simply asked for a vote on this issue. Since less than 2/3rds of the council wanted to close the meeting, the question of what the constitution mandated was rendered moot for the time being.

Then CCSC debated how it would do a blind vote, as stated in the constitution. They eventually decided to write their votes on slips of paper. As the music from Jeopardy’s final round played, Warrick counted the votes and found there were not enough to put impeachment proceedings against Omorogbe.

Updates (updates doc is here, minutes doc is here):

• Allie Lavine is CCSC’s new class of 2016 Rep.
• Inclusion and Equity Rep Ewoma Ogbaudu, GSSC President Elizabeth Heyman, and Ramakrishnan came up with all the food insecurity resources on campus and put them into an infographic desined by Columbia College junior Rana Irmak Asoy. The infographic is available here.
• The State of the Sandwich will be held Sunday December 13 on the sundial from 5-6pm with free sandwiches.
• Prompted by Deantini’s visit to CCSC, the council made a survey asking students for their top five issues at Columbia. The council wanted to have all their responses by now; however, since the survey only got 20 responses, Makansi will promote it more aggressively this week. The survey is available here.
• According to Ramakrishnan, Housing will soon allow students to specify if they can house someone in the case of an emergency.
• Academic Affairs Rep Nicole Allicock had several updates this week. First, more meaningful course numbers are coming. Second, she is hoping to get Global Core petitions to rely on the consent of the professor teaching the class. Third, the Committee on Instruction declined to extend Columbia College’s drop deadline (they’ll have an official reasoning soon). However, Allicock is still looking into allowing students to P/D/F some core classes.
• USenator Marc Heinrich brought up two new committees forming, one on financial insecurity and the other on accessibility on campus.
• Makansi met with Director of Student Community Programs Josh Lucas and talked about allowing Deans to pin posts on class Facebook groups because they are “frustrated” over the low readership of their e-mails. Makansi admitted this plan still has “kinks” to be worked out.
• Ramakrishnan is working with GSSC members to see if they can expand their dining options (GSSC has used the largest number of EMF meals).

Sadboy via Shutterstock