CCSC was poppin’ this week with an exciting announcement from Race and Ethnicities Representative Colby King (CC ‘22), constitutional amendments, and appointment candidate speeches!

CCSC had quite the busy Sunday evening this week with an upcoming Black History month event, an amendment proposal from the president, nine appointment candidate speeches, and a closed-to-press candidate deliberation.

Before diving into appointment processes, at-large representative Colby King (CC ’22) gave us an update. In honor of Black History Month, Race and Ethnicities Representative King has begun coordinating an end-of-the-month virtual concert in collaboration with VP Campus Life Justin Rossman (CC ‘23). Representative King plans to hold a raffle with gift bag prizes to help fund this initiative. Representative King also requested a total of $1,500 from CCSC funds to support the event, specifically $1,000 from the At-Large Fund and $500 from the Diversity and Inclusion Fund. Keep reading in the coming weeks for more information regarding raffle tickets and concert details! 

President Joon Baek (CC ‘21) presented a timely constitutional amendment of the appointment voting procedures. President Baek proposed to change the ⅔ majority voting rule given that in the past this quota has proven difficult to reach, leading to prolonged appointment processes with multiple rounds of voting. Instead, President Baek suggested using rank choice voting for the three candidates for each position, thereby fairly appointing whichever candidate wins the simple majority. This amendment would only pertain to appointment process voting. VP Policy Rads Mehta (CC ‘22) motioned to vote on the amendment which was seconded by many, leading to the landslide passing of the appointment voting procedure amendment. 

With President Baek’s amendment passing with flying colors, CCSC was ready for an evening of speeches from the candidates applying for Class of 2023 Representative, Student Services Representative, and Pre-Professional Representative. Committee leader of the appointment process, Representative King (CC ‘22), with help from other general body members narrowed the applicant pool down to three candidates for each position. Each candidate delivered their prepared short speech to general body members, each of which were filled with innovative ideas to improve the Columbia student experience. Every candidate touched on the difficult reality of virtual learning, especially Student Services Representative candidates.  

Ultimately, Virginia Lo (CC ‘23) was appointed as the Class of 2023 Representative although she also ran for Student Services Representative. Virginia Lo is a Political Science major who has recently transferred from Cornell where she served on their student government as the chair of the Administration and Faculty Committee. Representative Lo is currently involved with Columbia’s Political, and Law Reviews and seeks to foster a stronger community in the virtual world through international-time-zone-inclusive activities, frequent office hours, and an individual Class of 2023 Council social media platform. She also is an advocate of student psychological services and is planning to work on making them equitably and fairly accessible to all students. 

The new Student Services Representative is Skye Bork (CC ‘21), a veteran CCSC member who had served on CCSC prior to her time abroad. Representative Bork believes that student services, “are the life and blood of Columbia right now,” a sentiment that CCSC general body members seemed to agree with. We’ll look forward to seeing how this new appointee and senior Columbia student expands student services in a safe and responsible way. 

Anthony Adessa (CC ‘22) is the new Pre-Professional Representative and for good reason; he spoke so fast and so articulately during his speech that he was able to tell us about more ideas than I could keep up with! Representative Adessa clearly does not mess around, with experience as an orientation leader and as an upperclassmen dealing with the pre-professional world, he is sure to stick to his promises of focusing on major and pre-professional track help for underclassmen, specifically sophomores, who have spent a majority of their time at Columbia off campus. We’ll look forward to hearing more about his major-track specific mentorship program ideas!

Image via Bwog Archives