food trucks. Bwog knows it can be difficult to keep track, so to ease your bureaucracy-induced agitation is Bwog’s CCSC correspondent Brian Wagner, here to untangle the web that is Columbia’s undergraduate student government.”>

Alexander Hamilton, an alum, founded SGA.

Bright young things: in the next few weeks you will be introduced to a dizzying array of organizations, acronyms, slang, and food trucks. Bwog knows it can be difficult to keep track, so to ease your bureaucracy-induced agitation is Bwog’s CCSC correspondent Brian Wagner, here to untangle the web that is Columbia’s undergraduate student government.

The Senate and The Councils

Columbia University Senate

The Senate is Columbia’s überlegislature, and a testament to the fact that we were the first University with a formal bureaucracy. The unwieldy body represents “faculty, students, and other constituencies.” The plenary meetings of the Senate take place roughly once per month throughout the academic year.

Hyperbole aside, here are the cold hard facts: The Senate has 108 voting seats, with 63 reserved for faculty, 24 for students, 6 for officers of research, 2 each for administrative staff, librarians, and alumni, and 9 for senior administrators including the president, who chairs monthly plenaries.

Action on the Senate floor may not seem as immediate as that in meetings of your Student Council (or Government Association—hey Barnard!), but these heirs of Webster and Calhoun get to weigh in on some of the Columbia community’s most pressing issues: from the lively and sometimes rowdy return of ROTC to the much-discussed-outside-Butler smoking ban, the budget-monitoring resolution on fringe benefits for university officers, and “rules governing political demonstrations.”

Read more…

We’ve already seen the election results for CCSC, ESC, and SGA. Now, here are the election results for the General Studies Student Council!

Student Body President: Jacqueline Thong – 54.3% of votes

VP-Policy: Benjamin Paladino – 77.1% of votes

VP-Finance: Joshua Lewin-Jacus – 44.2% of votes

VP-Communications: Mahogany Wright – 43.0% of votes

VP-Student Events: Frank Castellucci – 36.6% of votes

University Senator: Jose Robledo – 56.5% of votes

The percentages reflect the total votes cast in the election, not votes cast in each individual race.

GSSC also tells us that the following positions will be filled through an application and interview process before the end of the semester: Senior Class President, Senior Class Vice President, Social Chair, Chief Policy Representative, Chief Communications Representative, Chief Student Events Representative, Chief Finance Representative, Four Council Coordinator, and Alumni Affairs Representative. All other positions will be filled at the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester.

Congratulations to all the winners!

food carts. Bwog knows it can be difficult to keep track, so here to ease your bureaucracy-induced agita is Bwog’s CCSC correspondent to untangle the web that is Columbia’s undergraduate student government.”>

Alexander Hamilton, an alum, founded SGA.

Hey 2014, in the next few weeks you will be introduced to a dizzying array of organizations, acronyms, slang, and food carts. Bwog knows it can be difficult to keep track, so here to ease your bureaucracy-induced agita is Bwog’s CCSC correspondent to untangle the web that is Columbia’s undergraduate student government.

F@CU – Funding at Columbia University

Like Zach Galifianakis, it has the power of the purse. See F@CU’s most recent funding decisions here.

The purpose of F@CU, according to itself, “is to facilitate, support, and enrich student development in the form of student activities of campus.” But if that doesn’t tell you much, you’re not alone. Essentially, F@CU is responsible for distributing the Student Activities Fee. F@CU is composed of the incoming and outgoing Presidents and Treasurers of each undergraduate Student Council, for a total of 16 members. These titans of student activity funding meet during reading week at the end of each spring semester to hear out the proposals of the governing boards (ABC, CI, CSGB, IGC, and SGB) and make their decisions. F@CU has an uncharacteristically (for Columbia) straightforward website, and they explicitly tell us why they made the decisions they did.

The money allocated by F@CU trickles down through the governing boards to fund everything from Bacchanal, to the Varsity Show, to the CSC Lunar Gala. And those are just a few events, F@CU funds also provide for the day-to-day needs of hundreds of student organizations.

F@CU can also make special allocations to groups other than the governing boards. For instance, in the past F@CU has allocated money to WKCR, the radio station housed in Lerner.
Read more…

Advocates for the Arts Initiative met in the Satow Room in Lerner at 3:00 today in order to gauge student opinion in preparation for their meeting with School of the Arts Dean Carol Becker in two weeks. At issue in the meeting will be the 30% budget cut the Arts Initiative faces for fiscal year 2011, which begins May 1. The areas from which the budget will be cut are particularly contentious since the November announcement that the Arts Initiative would be moved under the authority of the School of the Arts, meaning the Initiative’s revised budget will have to be approved by Dean Becker and her staff. Advocates for the Arts Initiative, which is predominantly led by members of CCSC and GSSC, are concerned that the move will result in the Arts Initiative benefiting SoA students, and not all University students as it has in the past.

In the meeting, which was attended by about 25 students from CC, SEAS and GS, it was clear that the students’ biggest concern over the Arts Initiative has been the lack of transparency in the direction of the Arts Initiative and in budgeting process. While AI staff have been open in communicating with student leaders, SoA administrators in particular have not been open to discussing the budget cuts. In response to this opacity, the consensus that was reached at the meeting was that the goal of the group should be to ensure some form of formal student involvement in the administration of the Arts Initiative. In other words, AAI is not trying to save the Arts Initiative so much as ensure that it continues to work for students outside of the School of the Arts.

You can sign the Save the Arts Initiative petition here.

In a shocking twist to the elections that about seven people voted in, three GSSC election results have been overturned by the GSSC Judicial Committee, overruling a previous decision validating the elections from the Elections Committee.

University Senator (no longer) elect Paul Zachary, VP Policy winner Scott Jurkowski and fallen Academic Affairs victor Richard Adams have all had their victories revoked for campaigning on Facebook through their statuses after the campaigning deadline had passed. Just for some perspective, Adams was the only person in his race to receive any votes, and don’t we all know that someone running unopposed can do whatever the hell they want? Plus, only 79 total votes were cast in Jurkowski’s race, of which he nabbed 50. A lot of the possible positions didn’t even have candidates to run for them. Apathy: because you can’t commit voter fraud if there are not any voters.

The three candidates will not be barred from attempting to regain their offices next year, when, according to a Judicial Committee report, “each of these candidates, as well as any other students who desire, will have the opportunity to apply for appointment to office when the GSSC reconvenes in the fall of 2009.”

The judicial committee added that “the importance and challenge of the work done by the Elections Committee cannot be understated, and as students and Committee members we are grateful for their service.” We’re just going to do the exact opposite of what they said. 

The General Studies Student Council results are in, and the big winner is apathy. New president-elect Katherine Edwards defeated Alfred Davis with 63% of the vote. She will be joined by Hannah Kim as VP Student Life, Jacqueline Thong as VP Finance, Clark Chaheine as VP Communications, and Scott Jurkowski as VP Policy.

More notable, though, was the thorough lack of votes for several positions – in fact, there were no winners for the positions of senior class vice-president, sophomore class president and vice-president, alumni affairs rep, student services rep, or student workers rep, while the freshman class president and vice-president received a stellar fourteen votes. GSers,  give yourselves a pat on the back – you had to work to be so indifferent. Full results after the jump. Read more…

As reported last night, the major story out of Monday night’s ESC meeting was the potential replacement of 40s on 40 with a BBQ (albiet one with alcohol). But alcohol was not the only topic of the meeting, the last before ESC begins its annual constitutional review.

The 2009 class council announced that the last SEAS fireside chat was canceled because not enough people registered for the lottery. The dean’s office is working with the council to make the chats more appealing: one suggestion (no doubt taken from months of reading Bwog) is to add free food to the equation by holding the events at local restaurants, and lowering the number of attendees to make the event more intimate.  

Happy news for 3-2 students, however: the council is investigating adding printing in Carlton Arms (the dorm for 4th year 3-2 students), or giving students access to nearby dorms to print there. As of now, students residing in Carlton Arms, located at 108th and Riverside, are required to come onto campus to print. Read more…

Fu Foundation Bureau Chief Sean Zimmermann attended last night’s abbreviated ESC meeting. 

Blue Elephant – noun, a variation on the common white elephant gift exchange, in which player can either unwrap a gift from a pile, or steal a gift someone else has unwrapped. It also was the main feature in yesterday’s ESC meeting. While eating lemon and raspberry squares (made by the secretary and president, respectively), members exchanged various gifts including: 3 Pink Berry gift cards (2 of which were stolen), Victoria Secret’s Amber Romance perfume and lotion (which was stolen), and a single gift consisting of a plate, two glasses, two condoms, a mix tape, and jasmine and bamboo scented soap (which was not stolen).

During the abbreviated meeting, the GSSC liaison reported that the GSSC had found a new VP Student Life: Alex Katz. The position has been deemed “cursed” by some members of the council. Alex is the third VP Student Life this semester; seven different people have held the position in the last two years.

Read more…

Bwog received the following email a few minutes ago from Richard Adams, the (outgoing!) GSSC VP for Student Life. “I believe [the letter] stands on its own merits,” he wrote somewhat ominously. Except the letter is nearly incomprehensible, and Adams seems to be simultaneously resigning and calling for a vote to determine whether he should resign.

According to Adams, he learned of his own resignation in an email sent to him last Friday from GSSC President Brody Berg. This “alarmed” his colleagues because… what?

Anyway, he takes the opportunity to lambast the GSSC, calling it “a body that is increasing out-of-touch with and irrelevant to the needs and concerns of the GS student body. It has become almost obsessively concerned with the needs of the Council rather than the constituency it needs to serve.”

And then he resigns! And might do so again tomorrow!

Full letter after the jump.

Read more…

The activities fair may be over, but you’ve still got a while to find your niche in Columbia’s extracurricular scene. To help you sift through the alphabet soup, our series of club crib sheets continues with groups that hand out money and groups that may eventually make lots of money.

Governing Boards and Councils (a.k.a. The Man)

Activities Board at Columbia (ABC) – This oversight organization funds publications, cultural groups, competition groups–basically everything SGB doesn’t pay for. Every club competes to have its friends on the board of representatives in hopes of upping their allocations.

Engineering Student Council (ESC) - ESC may be elected undemocratically—the executive board, which composes a much larger percentage of the total student body than any of the other councils, selects the president–but they do come up with the most wonderful web applications.

Student Government Association – Barnard College’s student council, this year headed by Sarah Besnoff. SGA mostly stays on the west side of Broadway, but frequently cosponsors events with the other undergraduate councils.

General Studies Student Council (GSSC) – Now with a cute owl logo and a website that’s at least helpful and up to date, GSSC is one of the more constituency-conscious councils out there. Bwog can only hope current president Brody Berg will be as entertaining as ex-leader Nico Cunningham. Read more…

GSSC elections results are in! An auspicious day for democracy indeed. And now, the winners and losers. (Except of course for any category marked “no winner”, which indicates that the candidate did not receive at least 25 votes.)

President

Brody Berg         50%

Virdis Bala        22%

Ishmael Osekre     13%

Write-in (other)   15%

VP Policy            

Michael Rain       35%

David Minchin      32%

Allen Settle       30%

Write-in (other)   3%

Read more…

State Assemblyman confirms what everyone already knows, Morningside Heights is old and has lots of pretty buildings.

Iraq activists: Ring my bell, wash my flag.

Columbia’s killing cancer.  Cool!

Columbia students are hot for Hookah.

Smart Women Securities for Females in Finance.

GSSC election circus continues. 

Despite (former!) GSSC President Niko Cunningham’s cries of unconstitutionality and some Maps of Injustice™ pointing to a lack of quorum, Dean of Students and Associate Dean of Faculty/GS Mary McGee has ruled that Tuesday’s vote to impeach Cunningham is, in fact, legitimate. This makes President Cunningham president no longer. In fact, GSSC VP of Policy Nancy Saunders has already assumed (been sworn into?) the position.

McGee’s full email after the jump.

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Hot off yesterday’s impeachment of an ESC member, Bwog just got off the phone with GSSC President Niko Cunningham, who may or may not have just been impeached.

According to Cunnigham, tonight’s proceedings went down something like this: Towards the end of the GSSC meeting, after Dean of General Students Mary McGee had already left, someone on council had suddenly made a motion to impeach Cunningham. This may seem like deja vu from last week’s motion to impeach Cunningham, but according to the embattled president, this week’s proceedings were unconstitutional and therefore they shouldn’t count.

Cunningham explained that as soon as the council began to vote on the impeachment and handed out slips of paper (with which to vote, exercise democracy, enjoy freedom, etc.), he got up and left the room. “I immediately got up and walked out,” Cunningham said. “[GSSC] needed 16 members to have quorum and those devils only had 15 when I walked out.”

Read more…

The Mystery of Pain. 

Asked to legitimize the illegitimate, GSSC Elections Commission resigns.

Barnard Voting: The eBear Necessities.

Congestion plan coughed up. 

Bob Dylan meet Joe Pulitzer.

How safe are we really?

In other Columbia-related news:  the NYTimes captures the different views on the boy arrested in the recent death of a grad student.