With many uncontested (or essentially uncontested) races, SUS elections have not had much excitement factor this year. (Except maybe this ^[1].) Still, there’s one race worth talking about, and Kevin Moore shares his thoughts on that.

SUS AMS Rep

The race for SUS AMS rep is looking to be the most exciting of the SUS elections. Every other race is either uncontested, or has a councilor in it against a bunch of new people.

Here is my overview of the candidates:

Nancy Wang
Part of her platform is based on the fact that she is going to bring a ‘new voice’ to council since she is in first year. However, she has not been a part of council at all this year or made an attempt to learn how it operates. Maria Cirstea ran last year in her first year and won, but she attended council for the entire year. She has no idea how the AMS runs, which is evident by her platform. One of her campaign points is that the UBC skytrain line is coming soon and that we need to start discussing it. Translink has said that if they do build it it won’t be until after the Evergreen line, which might not get built either.

David Kim
David Kim’s platform is essentially the same as Nancy Wang’s. I can’t endorse anyone who has the UBC-line in their platform.

Iggy Rodriguez
One of the two incumbents in the race, and a sure bet to win one of the four seats. He did an amazing job on council last year, and will do an amazing job next year.

Maria Cirstea
The other incumbent in the race. Just like Iggy she should have no problems winning.

Karen Lee
Karen Lee has been actively involved on council this year. She holds a voting seat on the Student Life Committee, and is an active guest for the Legislative Policy Committee. Her platform shows that she knows how council operates.

AJ Hajir Hajian
AJ was relatively unknown on campus until the AMS elections started. He ran an amazing campaign for senate and won. His platform shows that he is familiar with how the AMS council operates.

Aman Arora
This is the one candidate that I really can’t say too much about because I don’t really know anything about him. He’s new to science and does not have a very descriptive campaign.

Kevin’s Recommendations
Iggy Rodriguez
Karen Lee
Aj Hajir Hajian
Maria Cirstea

Soroush Liaghat barred from campaigning

On Sunday, Soroush Liaghat was penalized for ‘using an official SUS medium for partisan purposes’. You can read the formal ruling made by the elections administrator here ^[2]. What happened to Soroush could have happened to anyone. I personally was invited to a facebook group last week titled “2010 SUS Elections!”. I didn’t pay too much attention to the group and assumed immediately that it was a group promoting the elections. Instead it is actually a group promoting Nancy Wang for her race as AMS rep. Is this fair? While it is true that Soroush should have done due diligence and read what the group was about, Nancy also originally had the group photo as the UBC Votes logo. Luckily for Soroush his race is uncontested and will win but Nancy should not be making it through this ordeal without penalty.