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%
VP Student Life
Richard Adams 41%
Write-in (other) 59%
VP Finance
Eleanor Colley 89%
Write-in (other) 11%
VP Communications
Evan Madeo 83%
Write-in (other) 17%
Social Chair
Lisa Fishenfeld 59%
Gbadebo Williams 33%
Write-in (other) 7%
Academic Affairs
Jacob Matilsky 91%
Write-in (other) 9%
Alumni Affairs
NO WINNER
Jessica Collins 63%
Student Services Rep
NO WINNER
Senior President
Albert Kim 49%
Write-in (other) 51%
Senior VP
NO WINNER
Junior President
NO WINNER
Larissa Higgins 63%
Write-in (other) 37%
Junior VP
NO WINNER
Ashkan Shahsavari 30%
Scott Jurkowski 26%
Write-in (other)
Sophomore President
Alex Katz 92%
Write-in (other) 8%
Sophomore VP
Joseph Spitz 89%
Write-in (other) 11%
Parent Rep NO WINNER
Student Worker Rep NO WINNER
International Rep NO WINNER
Delegate #1 Larisa Kolesnikov
Delegate #2 Nathan Miller
Delegate #3 NO WINNER
Delegate #4 NO WINNER
15 Comments
@jammin around 500 GSers voted two years ago when the polls were open for 48 hours, and nearly 450 voted last year when the polss were open for way less than 24 hours. stay tuned to see how many voted this yeasr – my money is on “not that many.”
@boot 'em all It’s satisfying to see the unfilled offices: it sends a clear message that so very few us of us in GS care about that sad little thing called a student council. Very happy to see a smaller number of office-holding assclowns.
Next year, I’d like to urge the incoming GSSC to STFU.
@Paul There is no way of knowing the total number of people who voted in the election by examining the results. No voter was forced to vote in every contest on the ballot, so they could have logged in to vote for those one or two candidates they know, and left the rest blank.
Further, for class-wide positions you’re talking about a smaller group of voters which, unless you were a sophomore, didn’t have a name on the ballot to check. That narrows it down to the people who proactively logged in to write-in someone’s name but the percentages do not count the number of people who skipped voting in that contest entirely, though they were eligible.
And yes GS is 1200 strong, but that number also includes part-time students who probably weren’t aware of the elections, or if they were, aren’t on campus enough to be informed on who to vote for.
@Apathetic Voter There is no point to a student council unless you’re one of the people serving in it. Nobody in GS cares about something for older people wishing to participate in something they couldn’t when they were 20. Hence, nobody votes and the GSSC is consistently crap, but the students don’t really care.
@perhaps too cynical I voted for Lee Bollinger for President. I felt that only he had the experience, tact, knowledge of the levers of administration, and reputation to resolve the issues of financial aid and housing for Columbia University’s School of General Studies’ students. It’s a pity he wasn’t eligible.
“If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.”
In a slightly more flippant gesture, I voted Josef Stalin for Student Workers’ Representative; back to basics with this one- gulag for the CC kids, and extermination of the educated/technical classes- I’m looking at you, SEAS. Or is that more a Pol Pot thing?
BTW- the race for VP of Policy turned out quite Clintonesque- No majority for any of them, with the best two forced to compete with an obnoxious spoiler candidate. Decide for yourselves who I’m talking about.
/hope the dems can get their act together soon, this crap is annoying.
@still too cynical and by Clintonesque, I of course refer to Bill Clinton’s 1996 “victory” over Perot and Bush I. Duh. For those who are somehow ignorant of that race.
@That was 1992. 1996 was when Clinton beat Bob Dole Bob Dole.
@ignorantly cynical haha! see? I don’t even know what I’m talking about. then again, it WAS 3 am… FAIL on me…
@random how many people actually voted in the gssc elections! c’mon bwog get us some numbers!
@it seems it was not much higher than 25
@non-geometer so if 63% is less than 25 votes, even if it were just under, at 24, that means that a MAXIMUM of 38 people voted in the two races declared NO WINNER. However, since VP Policy won with only 35% of votes, which must have been greater than 25 votes since he won, at least 71 people must have voted in that race, and presumably also in the presidential race. Still pretty pathetic, considering that there are about 1,200 students in GS… what is the point of a student council if only 5-10% of the students care to vote?
@Ross Perot It must mean that there were more write-in votes than the named candidate, but that they were spread out amongst more than one write-in so to draw a plurality.
@ok so on the ones where ‘write in’ got more votes than a named candidate, was that one person, or many people? this actually doesn’t make it clear who won
@fefe mannn why didn’t ishmael win. He’s off tha chain.
@Tim Taylor Don’t blame me. I voted Jonathan Taylor Thomas for GSSC President.