The results are in: Sue Yang is your new CCSC president, and Cliff Massey and Aki Terasaki have won their respective class council races.

Massey defeated incumbent president AJ Pascua with 64% of the vote, while running mate Eve Phan won the vice-presidency over current 2010 rep Valerie Sapozhnikova. It was not a clean sweep for the Clear Party, though, as Party Party rep candidate Maximo Cubillette will join Clear Party candidates Asher Grodman and Lena Fan as senior class representatives. Current BSO president Ruqayyah Abdul-Karine was the only Clear Party candidate not to win, though she too would have won if the Council had not implemented instant runoff-voting this year.

At the 2012 level, it was a clean sweep for Access Columbia, led by presidential Aki Terasaki and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Chai. They will be joined next year by Kenny Durrell, Brandon Christophe, and Jasmine Senior.

The rest of the candidates ran unopposed, including Yang’s Action Potential Party (Sarah Weiss, Deysy Ordonez, Sana Khalid and Nuriel Moghavem) and incumbent 2011 president Learned Foote’s ticket. The rest of the results, and more helpful graphics, after the jump.

- JCD & JYH Read more…

Columbia College Student Council elections are now officially open! You’ve read the interviews. You’ve seen the debate. Now make your voice heard, CC students.

As per outgoing President George Krebs’ e-mail today, here are the candidates and the log-in for the ballot. The voting process this time around requires you to rank all the candidates for each position in order of preference (see our CCSC wrap-up for further explanation). This is a curious choice for a year in which almost all the races are uncontested, but you can take the opportunity to linger lovingly over your write-ins. Let your muse guide you.

You have until tomorrow night, at 7:00. Take care, and remember these are the people who will control your 40s on 40.

Oh, and hey, GS students! Today is your last day of GSSC elections! Candidates, ballot: Get on it!

- CEE

On the eve of CCSC Elections, Bwog sat down with the dueling slates for 2010 Class Council. Below is our interview with AJ Pascua, Shirley Chen, and Joey Goldberg of The Party Party (not a typo). CC juniors can also read our debate coverage, and can find our second interview, with The Clear Party, here. Voting begins tomorrow.

“You’re perceived by some as the party of incumbents, yet many have also had problems with class council in the past – how important do you think that council experience is?”

AJ: We’re also the party of a fresh perspective. Valerie, Joey and I have experience, but we also Shirley and Maximo, who are foreign to student government.  They’re active in other groups, and they bring that fresh perspective. We have the best of both worlds.

Shirley: When AJ’s explaining events to me, I can see how hard it is for someone with no experience to come in and get started right away. I think you need to have students with council experience

Joey: I think that’s really the point to hit home: we’re not saying that the other party is not capable, but we’ve been to these events, and we understand what it takes to put on a given event, and make sure that these are memorable events.

AJ: Both parties want to have Lerner Pubs, but Joey and I have been involved with the planning this year. We know who to talk to and how to put on these good events so the people have fun. Read more…

In a two-part series on the eve of CCSC Elections, Bwog sat down with the dueling slates for 2010 Class Council. Below is our interview with Cliff Massey, Eve Phan, Asher Grodman, Ruqayyah Abdul-Karim, and Lena Fan of The Clear Party. CC juniors can also read our debate coverage, and can find our first interview, with The Party Party, here. Voting begins tomorrow. 

“You’re running against a party with several incumbents – what do you think is the importance of experience on the council, and what experience do you bring to the council?”

Cliff: For us, we think that real experience comes from being members of a diverse cross-section of the student body, of putting lots of events of different areas.

Asher: Class council and the events at Columbia are often the same thing over and over again, and to people inside of it, they’re think about doing these. And so when you’re within, you’re lacking at just those events, but with us, we look at branching out.

Cliff: We understand what goes into planning an event – we’ve reserved space, we’ve know what administrators to talk to. So in that sense we have a lot of experience for what takes up much of the class council’s time. Read more…

Even if the Executive Board was chosen by internal machinations, SEAS students can still have some choice in the rest of their representatives by voting in ESC elections. The (electronic) polls are open until Wednesday at 6 p.m, and the various candidates’ speeches are on YouTube.

- Anonymous photo of the CC ’10 presidential candidates in friendlier days (aka “last week”)

The 2010 Class Council hopefuls gathered in cramped Lerner 568 to wade through students’ favorite topics this evening.  Guessing, perhaps, that there would be little new and exciting to hear, there were not more than ten people in the audience, including the moderator, Brenden Cline, and Elections Board Head James Bogner.

The debate was between The Party Party (not a typo) and The Clear Party.  Though punsters both, The Clear Party was clearly more tickled with its name, never missing an opportunity to end its alloted time with a flourish of, “I think we’ve been Clear.”

Cline’s questions covered familiar territory and were met with familiar answers.  Both parties responded on topics ranging from engaging and uniting the senior class to student life initiative proposals to throwing parties.

Indeed, engaging the senior class after three years of moderate disinterest was the focus of both parties tonight. AJ Pascua, The Party Party President, was firm in his belief that senior year has to be a turning point: “Senior year is incredibly different,” he said.  “It’s all about traditions.”  Cliff Massey, The Clear Party President, countered that new perspectives were needed; the council should not rely on tradition alone. Read more…

The Elections Board has released  the full list of candidate for CCSC, and the competitive races are few and far between. In fact, only three races are contested this year – 2010 and 2012 class councils, and academic affairs representative. The races for Executive Board, 2011 class council, University Senate, and student services and pre-professional representatives all have just enough candidates to fill the positions.

The race for 2012, though, could provide some entertainment, with five different sets of candidates for president and vice-president. Oh, and one student representative candidate? A Mr. Jose “Stephan” Perez. Perhaps the celebratory swig will become “Pregame LOL!” Full list below, with contested races first.

UPDATE: Cliff Massey’s ticket now includes a third candidate for representative, Lena Fan. According to Massey, “there was an issue with Lena’s registration form” that has since been resolved.

2010 Class Council

Clear Party:  Cliff Massey (president), Evelyn Phan (VP), Asher Grodman, Ruqayyah Abdul-Karim, Lena Fan

The Party: AJ Pascua (president), Valerie Sapozhnikova (VP), Joey Goldberg, Shirley Chen, Maximo Cubilette Read more…

On the night of the filing deadline, Sue Yang’s “Action Potential Party” has announced their ticket. The other nominees:

• VP for Policy: Sarah Weiss, CC ’10, head of Columbia Urban Experience, former Hillel board member, and a member of the search committee that selected Michele Moody-Adams
  
• VP for Communications: Sana Khalid, SGB rep, Intergroup Chair in Ahimsa, Project Health Mentor, MSA Events Coordinator, CC ’11
• VP for Funding: Nuriel Moghavem, CC ’11, CIRCA treasurer, COHOP coordinator, ABC rep-at-large
• VP for Campus Life: Deysy Ordonez,  CC ’10, President of Sabor, Treasurer of Student Organization of Latinos, and Secretary of Organization of Pakistani Students, and treasurer of CU Bellydance
  

As for the laptop in the middle – that’s Weiss by webcam, as she’s in Ecuador this semester. Let’s just hope this action potential has no refractory period.

UPDATE (9:53 PM): Yang’s ticket is running unopposed, as is Learned Foote’s ticket for 2011 class council. Of the council races, A.J. Pascua will run against Cliff Massey (the rumored Molina-Clark ticket did not materialize), while two new tickets will duke it out for 2012 rep: Access Columbia (Aki Terasaki for president, Sarah Chai for vice-president, and Jasmine Senior, Kenny Durell, and Brandon Christophe for class rep) and the Papageorge Party (Anthony Arias for president, Theo Papageorge for vice president, and Jiwoo Lee and Evan Johnston for class reps). A full list of all the candidates will be released later tonight.

The weekly CCSC meeting began with a rousing singing of Happy Birthday for the members with February birthdays, and the distribution of free M2M coconut wafers. In a textbook case of crossed wires, a birthday cake appeared five minutes later (with trick candles! Teehee!), and a second round of Happy Birthday singing ensued…

On the “inky newsprint” front, Student Services Representative Aaron Edmonds talked about a possible program that would increase the number of free newspapers available on campus from one to three (though one would have to be USA Today). Currently, CCSC provides 600 copies of the New York Times, which cost $5280 for fall semester. The program would also potentially include swipe access for the papers so that only CC students (whose Student Life fees are supporting the papers) could take them. Apparently, many of the free copies in Lerner are currently snapped up by Lerner administrators (for whom tuition checks clearly aren’t large enough). Read more…

On Wednesday, our first batch of piping hot CCSC gossip stated that CQA head honcho Jeanette Clark had decided against running for senior class president. Now, insiders tell Bwog that Clark is running for a position, but it’s not president.

Instead, Clark has apparently accepted the VP slot on the ticket of musician/comedy writer/cartoonist Michael Molina. Molina’s resume includes being a member of The Kitchen Cabinet, the first freshman to be in the Fruit Paunch as well as the Varsity Show, and a Spec cartoonist (in the interests of full disclosure, he’s also been a Bwog “theater expert”).

A small complication for the ticket: Molina is in London for the semester, and out-of-the-country tickets are not normally successful…at all. With Clark and Molina’s powers combined, though, it could be the strongest outside challenge since that dude from Chicago.