I was thrilled—thrilled I say!—to pick up today’s Spectator and spot the A1 headline “Funding Committee Opens Discussions to CU Students.” Bucking the popular trend of trying to keep council proceedings off the record, it seemed, the Funding at Columbia University Committee had wisely elected to make next Thursday’s hearings public. Briefly, for those of you not familiar with what the f@ck F@CU is, the article explains:

Every year the FaCU Committee, composed of the incoming and outgoing presidents and treasurers of each student council, convene during reading week in May to hear presentations from the five governing boards and decide on the appropriate amount of funds to allocate to each.

In the past, this process has been criticized (particularly by members of the Student Governing Board) as being opaque, so it was refreshing to read this:

Following a decision by the four undergraduate student councils last night, the meetings in which the councils allocate undergraduate student life fees to club governing boards will now be open to the public.

As part of an effort to make the Funding at Columbia University Committee’s deliberations more transparent and hold members accountable, the councils worked with club boards and voted to allow students to quietly observe the decision-making process.

Huzzah! Another triumph for the freedom of information! Well, kind of. Read the fine print after the jump.

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Moments ago, we got word from the CCSC Elections Board that George Krebs’ Experience Columbia beat out Alidad Damooei’s Connect Columbia in the race for CCSC executive board. No word on the margin yet The margin was apparently a whopping 17 points! Elections chair Andrew Ness sent along these results:

Executive Board
EXPERIENCE COLUMBIA
George Krebs (President)
Laura Doan (VP Funding)
Adil Ahmed (VP Policy)
Robyn Burgess (VP Campus Life)
Ian Solsky (VP Communications)

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Bwog has it from Alidad Damooei that, on Robert Taylor’s instructions, the Elections Board has declined to hear Experience Columbia’s elections violation complaint. If that’s true, I’m disappointed. Much has been said about the inefficacy of student council and the absurdity of the CCSC elections process, but I doubt that either of those problems will be alleviated by an acquiescent elections board giving uneven treatment to possible rules violations, especially given the gravity of Experience Columbia’s latest charges. (A guilty finding could, in fact, have led to the disqualification of Connect Columbia.)

Damooei’s comments to Spec last night refer to a deal reached on Tuesday between the two campaigns: Experience Columbia agreed not file a charge over Michelle Diamond’s comments to the Spectator if Connect Columbia would agree to withdraw its claim that Experience had illegally flyered on a glass surface. (Does anyone else think those are slightly uneven offenses?) It seems that this deal is the basis for the board’s decision, which is troubling. According to Krebs, the agreement was reached informally between him and Damooei with the knowledge — but not the official sanction — of the board. If it wasn’t a formal settlement, it shouldn’t be treated as such.

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Updated: 2:26 p.m.

(Full disclosure: I’m on friendly terms with George, Alidad, and Michelle.)

On the heels of last night’s CCSC Executive Board Debate comes this little tidbit from a round-up by Spectator news writer Lien Hoang:

In an interview beforehand, [Alidad] Damooei, the candidate for Connect Columbia, accused [Experience Columbia's George] Krebs of taking undue credit for the initiative after “dropping the ball” on his responsibilities, referring primarily to delays on a survey that asked which vendors students would like to see on Flex.

Now, it’s standard fare for supporters of Connect Columbia to argue that Krebs has exaggerated his involvement in the off-campus Flex program (which, mind you, hasn’t exactly gone swimmingly). So while it’s notable that Damooei uttered this in an interview with the campus rag, it’s not exactly a new charge. But the fun doesn’t end there. Read the rest of this entry »

Through no fault of the candidates themselves, this year’s CCSC presidential campaign just screams Bush-Kerry. While there are plenty of Columbia students who probably remember that election as a near-metaphysical clash of good and evil, I remember it most for the candidates’ delightfully mismatched accents: Kerry’s aristocratic Massachusetts drawl versus Bush’s skeet-shooting, pickup-driving Texas twang (of course Bush was born in Connecticut, and came from every bit as populist a background as his Francophiliac opponent. But I digress). Inevitably it’s the shallowest and most superficial of differences that endure, and the one that stuck with me after a day of interviewing the CCSC candidates had to do with the circumstances under which we spoke.

We (myself and Commentariat staffer Meghan Mannion) talked to Connect Columbia presidential candidate Alidad Damooei in the second floor lounge of Beta’s palatial 114th St. brownstone. The candidate was nonplussed about the crucial three days ahead of him, and he spent a generous hour and a half with us, much of it dedicated to explaining the intricacies of Columbian student government.

When we met Krebs at around six that evening, he was celebrating the CQA’s endorsement of him for president, and could talk for an energetic twenty minutes before leaving for a mid-afternoon dormstorm. We pushed the rest of the interview back until Krebs was finished with a late-night campaign run and strategy session. We met with a still-wired Krebs at around two in the morning.

But the CCSC contest is more than a battle of personality types, and the student body’s choice will have as much to do with the candidates’ divergent philosohphies on student government as it will with their radically different leadership styles.

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Update 2:44 a.m.: As several commenters have pointed out, we don’t have any video from tonight’s debate, but if you’re looking to get a better sense of the candidates, the televised CTV/Spec debate from earlier this month is available here.

Coming to you from the Wien Lounge, The Commentariat presents live coverage of that most pointlessly gladitorial of Columbia traditions: the Columbia College Student Council Executive Board Debate! Just to remind you, here are the two competing slates:

Connect Columbia
President: Alidad Damooei
VP Policy: Donna Desilus
VP Funding: Jennifer Choi
VP Communications: Veronica Colon
VP Campus Life: Cliff Massey

Experience Columbia
President: George Krebs
VP Policy: Adil Ahmed
VP Funding: Laura Doan
VP Communications: Ian Solsky
VP Campus Life: Robyn Burgess

8:45 - I’d say there are about 25 people in the audience, many of them no doubt attracted by the free food (a pretty reliable fulcrum of student democracy). The candidates are seated in side-by-side clusters of lounge furniture, well-dressed and ready to go.

8:49 - And they’re off! Each ticket gives a 3-minute introduction, followed by several rounds of questions submitted by student media outlets.

8:56 - Connect Columbia fields the first question about the apparent scheduling failure of a leadership summit that Damooei is spearheading (part of the Community Principles Initiative). He retorts that the conference has been scheduled for August. Everybody mark your calendars!

8:58 - Experience Columbia is up. Krebs responds to the assertion that he wasn’t heavily involved in off-campus Flex, despite making many public claims to the contrary (e.g. - calling it his “baby” in the Spec). “Some of the things that I did, you can judge for yourself my involvement,” Krebs says, before discussing his travails (chiefly, contacting Harvard to ask how it runs its system).

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