AMS Elections 2011 Candidate List Revealed

The AMS Elections season officially kicked off today with the All-Candidate Meeting, and the official list of candidates has been released. You can get all of the latest elections information on our AMS Elections 2011 page which will be updated frequently. Without further ado…

AMS Exec Races

President
Bijan “Tender Hugs” Ahmadian
Jeremy McElroy
Michael Moll
Omar Shaban

VP Academic and University Affairs
Matt Parson
Jennifer Wang
Justin Yang

VP Finance
Arash Ehteshami
Elin Tayyar

VP Admin
Gord Katic
Mike Silley
Kathy Yan Li

VP External
Rory Breasail
Noam Chomsky
Katherine Tyson
Mitch Wright

Despite the outlawing of slates, they are very much alive. As AMS Confidential has laid out, there are groups of candidates who, one might speculate, did not independently make the decision to run. Broadly, there is a left-right division with the choice being between candidates associated with the Social Justice Centre, and candidates associated with Bijan/Frats. If both those options appear unpalatable, there is always the devil you know, which are the incumbents/current staff/current constituency execs. And if you still don’t like your choices you can stay home, like the vast majority of students.

A huge disappointment is the lack of female representation. Of the 16 candidates contesting for exec spots only 4 are females, but even worse, only 2 are serious candidates. Katherine Tyson will run a strong campaign, we hope Jennifer Wang does as well, but Kathy Yan Li intends to run a joke candidate. While it shouldn’t be necessary to pull a BC NDP, codifying gender representation, it would have been nice to see more women interested in joining the exec. If you’re curious, the 4th female is actually Noam Chomsky.

You can barely make it out, but that is Noam Chomsky's nameplate at MIT. He and UBC Insiders go way back, by which we mean about 2 weeks ago when Alex stood outside his empty office for this photo.

Speaking of Noam, the joke candidates this year are pretty lame. Currently it’s uncertain, but we’d say unlikely, that “Noam Chomsky” and “Bijan Tender Hugs Ahmadian” will be allowed to use those names on the ballot. If their aliases are rejected by the elections committee, the biggest part of the joke will be lost and it will be awfully difficult to switch to a serious campaign afterwards. We really hope Kathy Yan Li can come up with something to make us laugh.

BOG

vote for 2 candidates
Ben Cappellacci
Sean Cregten
AJ Hajir Hajian
Sean Heisler
Sassan Sangsari
Sumedha Sharma
Mike Silley

This is shaping up to be an interesting race, with Sean Heisler looking to be re-elected, and this year’s VP Academic Ben Cappellacci running against his AVP Sean Cregten. None of the other candidates have been visible on the university affairs stage, so it will be interesting to hear what they feel they can bring to the job. Again, the lack of female candidates is disappointing, with Sumedha as the only one. The last time students at UBC-V had a female board rep was back in 2006.

Senate

Vote for up to 5 candidates
Ryan Bredin
Thomas Brennan
Matthew Campbell
Eric DiStefano
Imran Habib
AJ Hajir Hajian
Spencer Rasmussen
Justin Yang
Weina Zhou

AJ Hajir Hajian, Spencer Rasmussen and Justin Yang are all current incumbent senators. Senate candidates typically come in with either a specific project/area they want to work on, or simply a broad desire to get involved. Both are fine for senate, and we’ll reserve judgement on candidates until we get more info on their campaigns.

Other Races

Student Legal Fund Society
Anthony Bryson
AJ Hajir Hajian
JJ Maclean
Aaron Sihota
Jordan Stewart
Kyle Warwick

Ubyssey Publications Society Board of Directors
Chair: Names not submitted yet.
Directors: Names not submitted yet.

The nominations for the Ubyssey Board have not been forwarded to the AMS elections committee yet because Fernie, the paper’s business manager, is on his honeymoon. Yes, really.

Referenda

After an unwieldy 9 referenda last year, there are none this year. Referenda must be submitted at least 10 days before the start of balloting, and that deadline has now passed. The AMS is planning to hold a U-Pass referendum, a fee referendum and various other referenda in the spring.

Throughout next week, we’ll have more in depth coverage of each race, so don’t forget to check back often on our AMS Elections 2011 page, and for new posts.