This year’s Columbia College Student Council debates had the promise of being the most competitive in recent years, but some students bemoaned the fact that the night remained relatively calm.
Compared to the class council debates, the Executive Board sessions—with three competing parties compared to last year’s uncontested race—drew the largest crowd. All 15 candidates from the three contending parties, the Naked Party, ReNew CU, and Stand Columbia fielded questions from the Columbia Political Union’s General Manager Sajaa Ahmed, CC ’10, who monitored the debates, as well as James Bogner, CC ’10, chair of the Elections Board division of CCSC.
In an early question, Bogner posited that most students do not see the student council as an organization that helps them and asked candidates how they would remedy this.
The Naked Party’s presidential candidate Eugenio Suarez, CC ’11, said he hopes to be an intermediary who delivers University information to the students who need it. “We know about things that the students don’t, and our job is to create a centralized hub of information on this campus. … We feel that we can address the information gap on this campus,” Suarez said.
Karishma Habbu, CC ’13, running for vice president of communications with Stand Columbia, responded that councils can tangibly help student groups. “I will say that one way council is kind of looked at is as taking a top-down approach.” Instead, Habbu said, Stand Columbia hopes to “reach out to specific groups and see what they need from us. …We can invite arts societies, sports societies to voice their input in a formal council setting so we can act on that.” Learned Foote, CC ’11 and running for president with Stand Columbia, added, “We want to help every group on campus. We want to help student groups do what they do.”
ReNew CU hopes to reach students by presenting a more open council. Presidential candidate Isaac Lara, CC ’11, said, “A tangible weakness with student council nowadays is it hasn’t been transparent enough. There’s been a disconnect between students and student councils. ... We want to make sure every elected representative goes to student group meetings.”
This year’s competitive race has drawn out students who hadn’t taken much interest in student council affairs in the past.
Raahi Sheth, CC ’11, said, “I’m not really that big into the elections per se, but I thought it would be interesting to see this debate. You don’t really get a chance to see what goes on behind the scenes.”
But he added that he “would have preferred it if it were a bit more contentious.”
Felicia Bishop, CC ’12, said she came out to see the debates because she feels that so far “the process has prevented us from getting to know who they are.”
The senior class council race is also a competitive one, though for one party, candidate turnout was low. Only two of the five Party Bus Party (Bus) members were in attendance—the rest were abroad or had academic obligations.
The 2011 class council hopefuls debated what it means to be a senior and how to tailor events and programming to that vision.
Most of the talk revolved around programming, and the two parties presented different visions. The After Party supports some pre-professional programming for seniors. Presidential candidate Sean Udell, CC’11, said, “The pre-professional events are great in that they, one, don’t cost a lot of money, and two, get a lot of students out.” The Party Bus Party (Bus), however, sees things differently. Presidential candidate Nuriel Moghavem, CC ’11, said, “What expresses the prime philosophical division [between the parties] is that we don’t need to stop having fun and make it pre-professional events only—we want to have fun as well, senior year.”
Because the race for the 2012 class council, academic affairs representative position, and pre-professional representative position were uncontested, the Elections Board instead held a forum, moderated by the current CCSC president, Sue Yang, and attended by the candidates.
The University Senate race came in second for viewer turnout, behind the executive board races. Candidates Keianna Dixon, CC ’11, Scott Maxfield, CC ’11, and current 2012 class representative Kenny Durell, CC ’12, squared off on the academic calendar and the scope of the student senator’s role.
Maxfield expressed a desire to tackle “issues that aren’t necessarily under the jurisdiction of USenate,” such as allocating more funding for Bacchanal. Durell, though, disagreed, arguing that it is important to have an eye for the broader issues, instead of focusing on small problems. Dixon said she would like to keep her work within the scope of the Senate: “I think it’s important to clearly identify policies that are Senate issues—I think that your main focus as a senator is working with the plenary and make sure that your issues are specific to that.”
Earlier in the night, with fewer than five students in the audience, the three candidates for the two student services representative positions, Ryan Cho, Richard Sun, and Ganiatu Afolabi, alternatively fielded questions, mainly from Bogner with a few from the audience.
During the session, Sun and Afolabi stressed the need for increased communication between students, the council, and the administration, while Cho stated that the representative should have a more behind-the-scenes, “nitty-gritty” role.
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