Tag Archives: aj hajir hajian

People Who May or May Not Run

AMS Elections are currently a shitshow, and they haven’t even started yet.

Nominations close on Friday and there is no AMS Elections website. Maybe if they advertised we wouldn’t have three slates of people who are always involved?
There is no schedule of events anywhere…debates? Beer garden? Anything?
There are also no elections dates or campaigning dates posted anywhere except on the Facebook page, which ~50 people like and hasn’t been updated since November (same with Twitter).
There is no VFM funding right now and elections are about to start!
Oh, and NO ONE KNOWS WHAT VOTING SYSTEM WE ARE USING.

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.

The Frat Boys and Token Sorority Girl (Bijan’s picks to continue his legacy of UBC’s Got Talent)
The Incumbents (the political hacks who think they can change the world with the AMS)
The SJC/Knollies (the people who only care about the AMS when something pisses them off)

With that in mind, we give you the gossip!

The Frat Boys and Token Sorority Girl

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.

The Incumbents/Hacks

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?

The SJC/Knollies

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.

Other

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!

Sparkle Happy Endorsements 2010

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Is it that time of the year already?? Oh, how the initial campaign period has flown. They’ve impressed us on the fields! They’ve impressed us in the debates! They’ve left numerous messages in our inbox! But now it’s time to separate the cream from the chaff and give you our top picks (not entire Condorcet rankings, we’re not total wonks) for this year’s round of AMS Elections. Get ready, after the jump, for this year’s

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Aaaand they’re off.

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Day one after the announcement of candidates, and rumor has it

(and by ‘rumor’ I mean verifiable evidence plus the natural supposition that of course elections officials are in Panic Epic Work Mode at the moment)

that Chief Elections Officer & CEO of Our Hearts Isabel Ferreras has spent her morning off and on the phone to her staff. Certainly we’ve already seen three—three!—BoG candidates drop out. Goodbye, Peter Stein, AJ Hajir Hajian, and Nader Beyzaei—we hardly knew ye.

We’ve got the complete list for you after the break, but first, let’s take a little walk down quelle scandale potentiale lane, y’all.

The buzz at beer last night and brunch this morning was triplefold—quadruple if you count the cheap Gallery pitchers—but it boils down to this:

Blake Frederick. It’s been too easy lately to forget that our BF came into office as something of a golden boy, hailed by supporters and detractors alike both for his passionate commitment and political credentials.
Happier times. (Photo: Gerald Deo)

And despite—or perhaps because of—the shitshow that’s marked his end of term, Frederick hasn’t given up the political life. He’s thrown his hat into, in fact, three races—not only the usual Senate/BoG pairing, but also the Ubyssey’s Board of Directors. This last is interesting considering that Frederick & our beloved campus publication are not what you’d call the best of friends. There have been scathing editorials all round and a rather sudden crackdown on AMS communications policy getting in the way of good relations. With all that history, one wonders what the Ubyssey Board could look like at this time next year—assuming, of course, that Frederick doesn’t disqualify himself by winning another race.
The positions of interest. Although it’s not unusual to see BoG, Senate, and VP External attract a few more competitors than other positions, this year’s International Student Rep hopefuls are almost frighteningly numerous. You guys know this position is non-voting, right? (And Star, you know you submitted all materials without a last name, right? you do know? and it’s a thing? oh. cool.) It’s also heartening to see two relative unknowns rounding out the Presidential nominees, although it makes hunting for pictures a heckuva lot harder. Don’t even ask me about typing the tags up for this post. RIDICULOUS.
YOU SEE HOW I SUFFER FOR YOU
The Elections Committee’s (presumed) accountability screed. One of the new features this year will be a PENALTY BOX on the Elections official website. Isabel Ferreras is a formidable woman, as seen here:
cower, puny candidates!! leg-biting will be penalized!

and we have no doubt that she won’t hesitate to use this box, which purpose is to daily—publicly!—keep the voting public very aware of any and all “warnings, violations, infractions and penalties.” It’s a move we here at Fuzzy Kitten Unicorn Scandal are looking forward to a little too much, frankly.

BUT WHO ELSE is out there? here are the people we’ll be stalking bothering in the name of Fair Game Media Coverage for the next month: