With voting kicking off today, we would like to take a moment to endorse Sam Ackerman for University Senate. We were impressed with his airtight platform and are confident he will be an effective advocate for the improvement of student life.

Sam has worked on the Student Health Advisory Committee and on the Insurance Committee, advocating for expanded gatekeeper training and strengthening the columbia student insurance plan. He plans on taking this experience to Senate and introducing some new ideas to improve student life. We were impressed with Sam’s clarity, direction, and organization, as he clearly outlined how he planned on achieving each of his goals. In order to reduce stress culture, for example, he believes creating a hardship policy for midterms (comparable to two finals per 24 hour cap) and plans on going through the Student Affairs Committee to do so. We also admire his interest in making faculty diversity statistics publicly available to at least inform students, but to also pressure Columbia to improve the diversity of its instructors. These issues, along with others mentioned in his platform, struck us as both relevant and achievable.

As stressed yesterday’s endorsement, what we feel most important is that you get out and vote! Follow this link to cast yours now.

Sincerely,

Amara Banks, Editor in Chief
Betsy Ladyzhets, Managing Editor
Finn Klauber, Internal Editor

GOTV via Sam’s Facebook