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).

Elections Board Head James Bogner then presented an elections update, including a new website, two more interest meetings between now and March 6th (both Wednesdays at 8 p.m.), and, most importantly, changing the voting system to an instant-runoff system. The instant-runoff system would allow voters to rank candidates by preference, and then chooses a winner by eliminating the least preferred, and adding that candidate’s votes to the voters’ second choice. The system is currently used by many countries, including Australia (“I’m not sure why I chose Australia,” said Bogner), and by many other universities, including Harvard, Dartmouth, and MIT.

In alcohol news, CC 2009 President Mark Johnson stressed the importance of the council acting as a “mediator,” and reminded everyone who had not already read the alcohol policy to do so. VP for Policy Adil Ahmed announced that CCSC would be collecting stories about broken-up parties, as a way of presenting a better case to the administration. As for the most pressing alcohol-related issue, Johnson told the council that a decision on 40s on 40 has been reached, but “it is still unofficial.” He then declined to comment about it further, with a meaningful look at Bwog in the back of the room.

– JCD