2017 CCSC class council

CCSC’s been involved in some shady stuff lately. Last night, following other CCSC happenings, we received an anonymous (and dramatic) tip alleging that Anuj Sharma, CCSC 2017’s “successful” president, has kept his decision not to seek re-election secret, hoping to discourage other parties and individuals from running and open up the race to his VP, Chris Allison.

A member of student government confirmed the information in the tip, noting that Anuj hasn’t attended any candidate mixers—which aren’t required, however. This source continued that he/she had recently overheard a student who was tapped by the “mainly-incumbent” CCSC 2017 party “tell someone else to not spread the true information” about Anuj not running, “because they think releasing will bring challengers for their seats.”

Anuj Sharma, the current CCSC 2017 class council president, will not be seeking reelection. However, he and his current party, which includes Vice President Chris Allison, are keeping this “under raps” until right before parties are announced. Anuj is viewed as having been a “successful” president, and as such leaves himself in a strong position to fend off potential challengers, and in fact, this has led to many people even dismissing the idea of running against. If word were to leak that Allison was running instead of Anuj for the presidency (which is the plan), many more students would enter the race because the intimidating incumbency which would be advantageous to Anuj would not exist as much for Allison. As such, the two (and the entire 2017 class council) are essentially usurping CCSC democracy- which is already far too opaque- by purposefully misleading voters and potential challengers until they have no chance to stop them. It is wrong, it is a perversion of democracy, and it should be public knowledge.

According to elections rules, candidates for class president and VP must run together, whereas the E-Board runs as a unified party. Class council parties can be incomplete, meaning they have fewer than five council members.

Candidate and party registration for CCSC elections is tentatively scheduled for March 23, nearly five weeks away. There’s another mixer scheduled for February 28, and an information session on March 7. If you weren’t going to run for CCSC 2017 class council because you were worried about losing to Anuj Sharma, maybe you should reconsider.

Council via yourCCSC