Omar Chaaban has been reinstated in the Presidential Race. Details will be coming soon as we get them, but it looks like the last nominator was indeed part of the theological colleges like our commentors were suspecting.
Update: The EA’s full explanation is here. Basically, it took a long time to figure shit out due to unpaid fees that were actually paid, etc. As UBC Insiders writes, “If there’s any clear winner in all of this, it’s bureaucracy.”
Dearest readers who are normal students and not hacks: bear with us. This is going to get a little code intensive, but we’re SUPER FREAKING STOKED because this is our first lead that we’ve thought of, researched, and wrote all on our own!
Despite AMS Councillors being active in VFM the last few years (see Geoff’s Place, Radical Beer) and Brian Platt currently writing for UBC Vanguard while Crystal Hon is writing for UBC Insiders, AMS Code actually stipulates that they are not allowed to be compensated by the AMS, who supplies the money for Voter Funded Media.
Before owls start hooting and hollering, we’re not writing this to stir up shit about Brian Platt. Instead, Bijan has registered Bijan.ca as a Voter Funded Media for the Elections VFM.
so what, we already used this, our brains hurt.
However, AMS Code of Procedures says Bijan can’t get money from VFM.
Directors shall not receive monetary compensation from the Society unless such monetary compensation is received as a direct result of their positions:
i) as a Director;
ii) as an employee or paid volunteer of one of the Society’s business operations, Services, Resource Groups, programs or clubs, provided however that the Director was an employee or paid volunteer continuously in the Business, Service, Resource Group, Program or Club position prior to being nominated for the position of Director; or
iii) within one of the Society’s Constituencies.
Translation: People on AMS Council can’t get paid for anything else that isn’t their job. They’re not allowed to pick up random catering shifts, or be a security guard (real life examples with councillors) because they are a Director of the Society. So why would getting paid for a VFM blog be any different?
Read on only if you want to get super hacky or are on AMS Council.
Omar Chaaban has been disqualified from the AMS President race, by some random twist of fate that really, really sucks for him by having only 49 nominators instead of 50.
“It will not be revoked, I wouldn’t have disqualified him otherwise.” -Erik Mackinnon, Elections Administrator
In order to be nominated, you need 50 signatures. It is usually recommended that you get more than 50 in case some people lie to you/write ineligibly/be human, and that’s even allotted on the form. Omar got exactly 50 signatures, and two of them were, well, iffy.
Turns out that one of the numbers was deemed legible by enrolment services but that the other number nominator “was not currently a member of the Alma Mater Society of Vancouver.” Apparently the nominator is currently taking classes, but enrolment services is adamant they are not allowed to nominate/vote in the elections, so we don’t have exact details.
Sorry, Omar <3 To cheer you up, we give you this:
PS In a funny twist of fate, this editor’s student number was also “iffy”, but she was deemed eligible in the end.
AMS Elections are set to begin Monday at 12:01am, but this little editor needs to get to bed and is posting a couple hours early. We’ve posted the candidates list, and surprise! Someone has already withdrawn.To see all the craziness happening next week, check out our events page. And hey, might as well vote for us to win some money in the future, too.
Meanwhile, enjoy the following snapshots from the All Candidates Meeting that took place on Friday. The biggest surprise to us? Ben “The Situation” Cappellacci throwing his hat into the ring for Board of Governors at last minute. If you’re interested, other blogs have more indepth or plagiarized rambly coverage, we’re too busy compiling results from our Sparkly Surveys 2011. Yes, that’s right, we’re bringing them back.
this time around, he's single and looking.
the ea is very protective of his branding.
the board of governors discussing the ever important issue of sustainability
future fan fiction?
AMS Elections are currently a shitshow, and they haven’t even started yet.
The Elections budget is approximately $50,000. Isn’t there a little referendum coming up that has to do with fiscal responsibility? We get that the EA is probably working on the new online voting system, but he has also hired four co-ordinators to help him, and it’s THREE DAYS before elections start.
Anyway, we are coping by giving you GOSSIP. Hot Gossip.
At the end of the day, candidates are supposed to be running individually and not as part of a slate (fancy way of saying political party). Except this year, there are Three Groups Who Are Not A Slate.
With that in mind, we give you the gossip!
President: Michael Moll is Alpha Delta Phi and part of the CUS, from Kenya, and shows up to AMS Council occasionally.
VP Academic: Matt Parson is Phi Delta Theta, the President of the Inter Fraternity Council at UBC (which EA Erik Mackinnon sits on), and is probably the hottest of all the candidates running. [Though some of our editors are on record as disagreeing.]
VP External: Katherine Tyson (isn’t technically in a sorority, she was too sick to rush this year) has been on AMS Council for a year and a half and is the Chair of UnECoRn, the committee that deals with things in the VPX’s portfolio. Was known this year for being rather antagonistic to Bijan—right until elections season rolled around. What gives, KT? We were way into your powerful woman schtick.
VP Finance: Arash Ehteshami is Kappa Sigma, the VP Internal of the AUS, and dating the President of SUS.
VP Administration: Mike Silley is Sigma Chi, has been on AMS Council for a long time, and is the Chair of BAFCOM, the committee that deals with AMS Businesses.
President: Jeremy McElroy is the current VP External, former AUS/RBF guy who hearts the AMS.
VP Academic: Justin Yang is the current VP Finance of AUS, former VP Finance of SUS, former Student Senator, and is the current AMS Tutoring co-ordinator.
VP External: Mitch Wright is the current Associate VP External, former elections administrator, former AUS dude and all around hack.
VP Finance: Elin Tayyar is Beta Theta Pi, the current VP Finance, former SAC Vice-Chair, and last year’s hottest candidate.
VP Admin: A BLACK SHEEP. Er, dark horse?
They keep their Facebook profiles quite limited, unfortunately. Why do these people have no overly involved student profiles?! We’ll give you more details as we learn them.
President: Gord Katic is a kid we met off of Twitter who is a part of the SJC. He’s incredibly verbose. That’s all we know.
VP Academic: Omar Shaban is part of SPHR whose passion in life is “a secular Palestinian state where anybody regardless of his/her religion or race can live.” Awwwww!
VP External: Rory Breasail has been on AMS Council for nine months, and sits on the UnECoRn committee. He is also part of the SJC.
VP Finance: Arielle Friedman (also known as Care-ielle?!?) is part of the SJC, and a frequent contributor to The Knoll.
There’s some random guy from RezLife at Totem who is also probably running for VP Finance, and a rumoured FIFTH candidate that we don’t know about.
Things to bitch about: We’ve only heard of ONE candidate for VP Admin, so if there’s any of you who like SUB/Clubs, you should run…the more the merrier! There’s also an extreme lack of women running, with only TWO femmes fatale garnering for your votes. Oh, and no joke candidates? Where is Princess Leia, Kommander Keg, the Invisible Man, or Water Fountain?
BoG: Sean Heisler (current BoAwesome), Andrew Carne (hacktastic engineer), Sean Cregten (current Associate VP Academic)
Senate: Thomas Brennan, Sean Cregten, AJ Hajir Hajian, <insert ten other random students here, five of whom will drop out within the first week>.
Nominations close on Friday!
Yes, it’s true. On World Press Freedom Day, AMS Council cut off our VFM funding. Since like, only 50 of you actually vote (come ON! we have so many more hits than that!), you probably don’t care.
reports indicate an actual picture of a 'pink box' might be scandalous
Anyway, here is the Blackbox UBC Story, in point form. Like all True AMS Stories, its truth can only be known by the people involved, unless it came out in Council when no one was listening.
What the fuck? Yeah, let’s back up and rewind here. There are four major issues with all this Blackbox shit right now.
So, yeah, what the fuck?
We dare you, National Post. We double-dog dare you.
oh, sorry, we meant this one instead:
A TOTALLY LEGITIMATE COMPARISON
Problem #1: Bijan acted unilaterally (ie like a dick) to ban a media outlet from funding because they leaked something. Going beyond that, is Bijan trying to threaten the student media on campus to make us stop making him into a Lorax in fear of getting less money or not being deemed a “credible” student media outlet? (More to the point, we were a credible student media outlet? God, we love this campus.)
Problem #2: There are technically no “real” rules about Continuous VFM (only the Elections VFM which is a one time vote). There is convention, however. A blog called Locust and Bumblebee applied and were turned down on the merit that they didn’t contribute any content that was UBC or AMS related. We are a rare species.
Problem #3: After stirring up a whole shitstorm about being concerned where their money is going with Gazapalooza, be that to Hamas via 100000 passing of hands or the building of a boat that will sink, the AMS & hangers on need to seriously consider applying that rhetoric to everything. For all they know, they could be funding a terrorist. Or a staffer.
Problem #4: How is this supposed to happen if you cut off the incentive? Sure, AMS Confidential and UBC Insiders will still post, but what about new talent? Last year we were one of the newcomers and wouldn’t have been able to enter if it wasn’t for Continuous VFM. Broke, sad ladies need blogs more than ever, guys. Bring back the subsidies!
Problem #5: We love you, Black Box, but your use of pull quotes is totally pretentious because you are quoting yourselves. Here, I’ll show you:
“Your use of pull quotes is totally pretentious and makes it seem like you think what you’re saying is really incredibly totally important.” — A Noted Blogger
Come on, AMS Council. Yeah, so you’re facing a ‘systemic deficit’ or whatever, but which do you need more: a working budget, or us? We know you love your Robot Unicorn, so why don’t you start feeding OUR unicorns? Exotic grasses are way expensive, and it’s getting harder and harder to deal with the Virgins’ Union and their constant demand for pay raises.
Want to get in on all the action tonight? We just decided to liveblog, see after the jump.
Follow the meeting on twitter here, and use the hashtag #gazapalooza.
Watch The Ubyssey’s livestream of the meeting here.
Background info on everything Gazapalooza is right here on AMS Confidential.
But DON’T FORGET! We have an extremely exciting activity: Gazapalooza BINGO!
That’s right. Simply click here, REFRESH the page, and keep a tally! Once you get five in a row, if you are the first person to stand up and yell SHENANIGANS! then you will win a pitcher of bzzr courtesy of AMS Confidential <3
Like what we’re doing? Please go vote for us now so we can get funding, which allows us to give you prizes like bzzr!!
a very peculiar Ubyssey photo.
And now, for the liveblog-
It’s hard to believe one year has passed since the most hilariously catastrophic student government fail occurred. We had different friends, different lovers, different blogs (who here remembers UBC Spectator?) and a different President. It is now November 2010 and we are debating the Gaza strip. Have we really come that far? We give you the latest in AMS Council news, aka Bijan’s blunders, which sort of remind us of Blake’s blunders. Grab a drink or five and get ready for this trip down memory lane… (but first, vote for us in VFM right now!!)
Hello, starved readership, this is Taylor with a barely tantalizing tale. Around midnight, I was Google image creeping certain people in my extended networks when lo and behold I stumbled upon a marvelous doodle of our dearest Toope. I was impressed with this image, it had a photoshop quality so beautiful it surpassed the talent of our own Gossip Guy.
Imagine my shock when I clicked on the photo to find out that it was from an archaic post in 2008 about Toope being the #40 most powerful person in Vancouver…from Issues That Matter.
Apparently they were once in the business of Issues That Are Awesome. Also, Toope once ate 16 cinnamon rolls in one sitting.
Oh, and: from here on out, we’re getting paid to do VFM. You can vote for Confidential here every day, but don’t expect a lot of lame posts (possibly like this one). We’ll still be giving you great, hilarious content but only when it’s great. Don’t expect daily blogging just to blog, we respect your time and our time too much for that. You could be doing better things, like drinking or procrastinating.
It was just announced in AMS Council that Voter Funded Media will now be funded ALL YEAR ROUND!
VFM will be launched again in November, and we’re counting on your votes to give us a sexy 30%…which is the most we can get. Please remember that we have been giving you the sexy news all year long, despite not getting paid. Also, we miss your comments!
New Elections Administrator, we thank you. VFM Creator Mark Latham, we love you.
EA Erik MacKinnon even showed up to council wearing a tie, which is apparently “as rare as a sasquatch riding a unicorn hitting a rainbow.”
