Redacted results
On Friday night, the AMS announced their election results -- sort of. While they released the names of who won, they didn’t release the number of votes each candidate received. We understand that the elections staff were just following AMS code, which says the numbers shouldn’t be released until at least 48 hours after the unofficial results “to allow winning candidates to withdraw.” But code should change. Voting is electronic, and all the numbers are in. The vote numbers will be released regardless of whether candidates choose to withdraw. If the AMS is confident enough in their voting numbers to call an election, they should be confident enough in the numbers to release them immediately, whether the results are “official” or not.
Election results: some shocking, some predictable
The majority of our staff attended the AMS Elections results party at The Gallery on Friday, and we have to say that we were a little surprised by some of the outcomes.
Aaron Bailey winning the presidential race didn't come as a surprise to us. Cheneil Antony-Hale ran a good campaign but simply didn't have the AMS experience or support-base to compete with Bailey. Bailey having the frat vote was a major advantage for him, as well.
VP admin was, in our opinion, one of the more closely contested races. Alex Remtulla, in particular, had a very active, grassroots campaign and, we believe, had a decent chance of unseating Ava Nasiri. Nasiri's experience, reputation and advantage as the incumbent won the day, however, allowing her to continue in her role next year.
The result of the VP external race wasn't a huge surprise to us. Jude Crasta already has experience in the VP external's office and presented more realistic ideas, if somewhat less ambitious, at the debates. Additionally, Janzen Lee's absence from the Great Debate likely didn't help his campaign.
Although Mateusz Miadlikowski had a distinct advantage as incumbent, we still feel that the VP finance race could have gone either way. Will Pigott's campaign did much to distinguish himself from his opponent, and if it was what UBC was looking for it would have been enough to win him the election -- but apparently, it wasn't.
Probably the least shocking outcome is VP academic: Jenna Omassi ran uncontested and certainly wasn't a candidate that people viewed as unsuitable enough to vote against. Omassi's experience as AUS president helped to both build her skill set and her reputation around campus.
Board of Governors and Senate had two of the bigger upsets of the election. We believed Tanner Bokor to be the frontrunner of the BoG race: simply having the role of AMS president under one's belt gives a significant boost to a candidate's reputation. That said, we assume that it was Bokor's lack of campaigning compared to his competitors that led to him losing the election. Veronica Knott had the support of a large and extremely engaged student body (i.e. the engineers), and Julie Van de Valk ran an active campaign with an issue that a lot of students care about (fossil fuel divestment) as a cornerstone. We feel that both Knott and Van de Valk will do well on BoG, and we hope that Bokor will remained involved with campus politics.
As for Senate, the election of incumbents Aaron Bailey and Eric Zhao was not surprising. Marjan Hatai, Jenna Omassi and Gurvir Sangha are all big named on campus, so they were all likely enough to be elected. We were surprised, however, that Viet Vu didn't win a spot: we feel that he had a strong showing at the debates, AMS experience and an active campaign, though perhaps people weren't able to distinguish his serious campaign from his joke campaign as V.
Last (and only kind of least), the Student Legal Fund Society: no surprise here, other than Jokar not getting a spot. Students for Accountability had a stronger showing overall than Students for Responsible Leadership (literally, in the sense that they actually attended both of the debates). Students for Accountability promised to actually make something out of SLFS, an organization that is little-known.
Stay away from cliffs
Another month, another story of a student falling off a cliff. While the repetitiveness of this situation (Google ‘cliff’ and ‘UBC’ to see how often this has happened in the past) can seem hard to believe, the danger of losing your footing near a cliff edge when it’s dark -- and if you’ve had a few beers -- is not. With several students falling off cliff or ravine edges at UBC within the same year, we thought we’d issue a public service announcement to stay away from cliffs. Feel like having a night of running around and debauchery on campus? Go to Wreck Beach, go to the Rose Garden or even go to the fountain at Martha Piper Plaza, but stay away from the cliffs. Seriously.