Tag Archives: elin tayyar

The First Annual Flamingos

Awards season appears to be over with the climax of The Oscars…or is it? Full disclosure, I was too busy watching the Justin Bieber movie instead of the Academy Awards, so I don’t really know what kind of competition we’re up against here. Anyway, here’s AMS Confidential’s take on the last years entertainment in council chambers. We give you…The Flamingos.

[image redacted to protect people doing better things with their lives now]

Brittany Perna was elected as the International Students Rep, and at her first meeting the AMS decided to axe the position altogether for next year’s elections. BritBrit still could have retained her seat for the whole year, lobbying for the international kids and all, but chose to skip all the council meetings instead.

Elin Tayyar never failed to make us swoon with his hipster style every meeting. Just look at this photo, it’s like pixel sex. And seriously, who else do you know who can rock PLAID pants?

Bijan Ahmadian doesn’t win a flamingo, but hey, this is us being nice to him. We could have said a lot of other things, but we just really don’t like this shirt. Or his fur lined jackets. Or his cuffed jeans, etc.

Amanda Li is fierce. Not only is she super hot, she’s also an engineer. Besides having to put up with guys all the time and a severe lack of ladies, she is also President of the EUS and can probably outdrink every other non-engineer guy on council. Who wouldn’t tap that?

Michael Haack wasn’t elected as VP Admin, but unlike every other person who doesn’t get elected, he decided to run in the AUS Elections for AMS Rep. Since then, Michael has gotten involved in a lot of committees and has grown from being somewhat knollie to being a good leader-of-the-opposition type of guy. We were really sad he didn’t run for VP Admin again, and it’s been fun watching him evolve into a cute little butterfly over the last year.

Ben Cappellacci came on the scene as a relative no one to anyone not in Sauder. At first we thought he was your typical frat guy, but over the year we’ve found out that he is so much more than that. Ladies, he is also single. Ben worked really hard this year on a whole bunch of things – like implementing Credit/D/Fail but most notably for lobbying on the Land Use Plan. He stepped in to fill Bijan’s shoes by leading the referendum committee and was overall stellar at pretty much everything he did, especially for having no earlier hack experience. We already miss him, and his ridiculous tweets on Wednesday nights.

Oh, Ryan Trasolini. Pretty sure that he is at the point now where he just wants to forget that he was ever involved in AMS politics. However, let’s reminiscence: after his election resulted in a tie, with the tie breaker being cast for the other candidate, he appealed. After the appeal didn’t go the way he wanted, he went to student court, where they tried to throw out the entire election. Then Brian Platt stepped down in order for the AUS Executive to vote to appoint an interim President, and Ryan brought some of his frat friends to proxy and vote for him so he could win. After that, he got to be AUS President, woopdeedoo, where they got their account frozen for operating without a budget. But back to the AMS – Ryan was the chair of the Student Life Committee which was supposed to be dealing with the Block Party fiasco and making a plan for it to be fiscally sustainable. Turns out that he didn’t do any of this, leaving Crystal Hon to pick up the pieces in just a few weeks. We advise Ryan to just stick to spinning sick beats in the future.

Have some other suggestions for The Flamingos? Leave in the comments or email to amsconfidential [at] gmail.com

Don’t forget to vote for us in VoterMedia, right here!

Sparkle Endorsements 2011

So, apparently the cool thing to do is make videos. We present, THE WORST ENDORSEMENT VIDEO OF THEM ALL. It is cheesy, fantastic, and pink, just like our little cute selves. Enjoy.

YouTube Preview Image

Special thanks to Ekat, Ben Cappellacci, Kathy Yan Li, Sean Heisler, and Luca Chitayat.

Oh, also in recent news, Taylor is single and free of any conflicts of interest.

Liveblogging is Overated, Anyways @ CiTR Debates One

If you weren’t listening to CiTR 101.9 today or don’t read the Minimalist Owl Blog because it may/may not hurt your “Arts student” eyes , then you might have missed the first of many (and sometimes simultaneous) debates of this election. Well, do we have a treat for you!

Yeah, that's what I said, too

Yeah, that's what I said, too

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People Who May or May Not Run

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

  1. 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?
  2. There is no schedule of events anywhere…debates? Beer garden? Anything?
  3. 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).
  4. There is no VFM funding right now and elections are about to start!
  5. 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.

  1. The Frat Boys and Token Sorority Girl (Bijan’s picks to continue his legacy of UBC’s Got Talent)
  2. The Incumbents (the political hacks who think they can change the world with the AMS)
  3. 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!

Your Complete Guide to The AMS

new to ubc? here’s what you missed…

PREVIOUSLY on AMS CONFIDENTIAL:

The AMS stands for your Alma Mater Society. The name doesn’t make sense, but it was formed to be your student society; you pay them fees and in return they keep the university from doing whatever it wants. Plus, parties and stuff!

anyway.

MIKE used to be Alma Mater Society President and he poledanced a lot

there’s like a million of these on facebook.

but then he turned things over to BLAKE

guido guido guido (photo c/o gerald deo)

go o~on….

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This Is Very Peculiar.

Shinerama is one of those things you hear about all the time but don’t actually know what it is. There are currently no events listed on their website, but stay tuned. A while ago we tweeted about how if your team wins their little contest Shinerama, not only do you get a TROPHY but you also get a FREE PIZZA PARTY! University students, as we always say, are essentially the same as second graders.

Anyway, behold the wonderful powers-that-be over in the President’s office while they try to explain what, exactly, Shinerama does. Is? Oh, man, we sat through like three meetings about this…

And Now: our skilled scientific analysis.

this is a very peculiar photo.

Who are those sexy hunks of sex appeal? these mysterious morph suit men? The Confidential Investigative team reports.

We’d recognize those chiseled abs on Blue Steel any day. Combined with his head size shape, Blue Steel is definitely Ben “The Sitaution” Cappellacci, one of UBC’s most eligible bachelors (NB: We said it first, Kate and Darrell). Which means our taller, oranger, chuckling friend could only be… El Rico Suave, Elin Tayyar? Way to expand those portfolios, boys.

Also going on our totally eligible & totally copyrighted list: Shinerama Hottie (Nicole? um, we totally missed her perky, charitable name in all the excitement). In this screenshot, she’s totally captivated by the morph men…one of whom seems a little, er, excited.

it happens to everyone at one time or other...

sell that cause, sweetheart. sell it reeeaaalll subtle.

Let the memes begin! There’s already a YTMND (yeah, seriously).

Freeesssshhh Meeeeatt

Last night’s AMS Council meeting was full of some fresh hacktastic meat. Those newly elected to hackville are presented to you, along with the others who are in some spankin new positions. We’re looking forward to fun filled year with the new exec and their new nicknames/alter egos…and we’re taking this opportunity to plug the AMS Annual General Meeting, where you can meet them all too! and get fed. Here are some of our doodles from the meeting and your new hacks:

Ben “The Situation” Cappellacci

Fist pump? Check. Fake tan? Check. Ripped abs, oh hell yeah. Will this new hack be Snookin for Love in the AMS? Only time will tell.

Ekat “Smiley Miley” 

If you read her interview with Emails That Matter, you’d know that she chose “Party in the USA” for her campaign song for the best reasons ever..

I think the song that best represents my campaign is the musically post-modernistic piece Party in the USA (replace USA by AMS) by Miley because it artistically embodies my internal struggle with finding myself in an entirely new situation.

If elected, Ekat promised to sing us all Party in the AMS….and we’re holding her to it. Come to Hack Karaoke in the Gallery this Tuesday!

Elin “El Suave” Tayyar

Showed up late, didn’t bring his laptop.  Did bring his campaign manager.  Iiiiiinterestinnnnng.

Okay, so honestly, all we really know about Elin is that he looks good and wears that dang scarf everywhere.  Significance? Affectation?  Hideous neck disfigurement?  TELL US, ELIN.  WE’RE DYING TO KNOW.  Until we have a better reason, we’ll just dub it Man Fashion.  And we’ll dub you…

Jeremy “The Crooner” McElroy

It’s a well-known fact that McElroy bears an uncanny physical resemblance to former N’Sync-er Joey Fatone, but since taking office, he’s followed in Fatone’s privacy-seeking footsteps.  JMac has removed all those lovely facebook pictures of RBF events (& RBF hijinks!) since he began his campaign—no doubt, like Fatone, trying to distance himself from his past.  Of course, Fatone went from boy bands to Broadway, and McElroy’s gone,well, from AMS to AMS.  But you see our point.  And, luckily, because we have Sources, you see this uncanny resemblance too:

We can only pray this will, somehow, be recreated.

A few less well-established hacks made their first appearances, too:

Brittany “Save the Cheerleader, Save the …” Perna, was there prepping for her new job as International Rep.  As a former blond, I’ve gotta say, I’m kind of rooting for Miss Perna here.  She’s said that she’s intimidated to take part in Council—and who can blame her, really?  Our girl was serious in lace (wait, did that make sense?), even though she had to be seated on the periphery last night.  She seemed pretty into the presentation on international engagement, too (which would make her the only one).

Dylan Callow, new CUS rep (well, almost new—he hasn’t signed the paperwork yet, apparently—and how totally like a CUS kid to draw that line) was there for his first big official meeting.  He is a bunny rabbit, and we want to pinch his cheeks.

The only hilarious soundbite of the meeting was the presentation by Colin, head of the Society Act Review Subcommittee … also known as SARS.

Stay tuned for more Council fun as there is another meeting next week to make up for the extended reading week. Hearts and unicorns!

3 hours!!!

There’s only THREE hours left of voting. Get your vote on, be sexy, and cast that freaking ballot! It’s super easy and everything you need to know is right HERE. So far, 5634 have voted, let’s get another 1000 before 4pm!

Tonight, Gallery at 6pm for the final elimination round results! See you there for copious amounts of beer and hackery.

MIGHTY MORPHIN AMS EXECUTIVE

Also, I know you all think we’re supa kawaii, so don’t forget to vote for us on your ballot and………here in Continuous VFM! We’re at 26% right now, amazing and love love love.

You listen to Paris.

Sparkle Happy Endorsements 2010

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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Delicious Debates, Part 2

Well, the debates have come and gone. Unfortunately, they were rather mild-mannered but we were glad to see the great turnout.  In particular we were happy to see you, loud clapping groups who were there solely to give encouragement to your candidate of choice.  Your presence reminded us of why we’re drawn to politics: a deep and abiding love of the sportsmanship and enthusiasm the scene sometimes embodies.

For the Presidential debate, we were glad to see the arrival of a joke candidate, Pak Ho! Or…is he? We’re not sure what to make of a dude whose slogan is “serious business.”  Sean Kim was looking excellent in his suit, and Bijan dressed to match his poster in some black/beige getup as Natalie rocked the blazer.  Hands down, this race will be between Bijan and Natalie, and looks to be a close one. Bijan had no problem citing his resume and was acting flamboyantly “politician” whereas Natalie came across incredibly genuine and focused on interacting with students and businesses.Her leadership experience in the past coupled with those beautiful, wavy blonde locks had us going googoogaga—as did her wicked black suede pumps.  Who knew the plaid contingent could coordinate jeans & heels??  Forestry lady is hawt hawt hawt, professional, and humble, and for this we deem her our first female Dreamboat.

This is what equity looks like (?)

The VP External debate was the most lively by far, with Timkachu, Stas (sans baby and wearing the exact same outfit as seen on his posters), Jeremy “Mr. Beret” McElroy and Aaron Palm taking the stage for debate about Translink, housing, and….gasp! TUITION. Aaron Palm was kicking some serious Sarah Palin ass, representing Texas-style with his cowboy hat and strong drink. He dared to say what none of the other candidates wanted to (minus Timkachu): our tuition really isn’t that high, and its acceptable for tuition to rise at the rate of inflation. Tim represented sweater-vest style and got in some passionate shouty bits, but all hilarities and unicorns aside, Mr. Beret himself was dominating this debate.  Although we hear some candidates went so far as to bring their opponents’ platforms to the debate, he came across as extremely prepared and articulate.  Plus, as we’re suckers for good design, his website is definitely the most beautiful.  Sorry, Johannes, but these editors were swooning over his platform. Look at this thing.  It’s sex in a .pdf.

My photoshops: like buttah

For the VP Finance debate, the Invisible Man failed to show up. Or…did he? Apparently he is an amazing kisser, and we’d like to find out more about this candidate. Perhaps he could return our glittery survey? Unfortunately, since his presence was unclear, this debate wasn’t, therefore, a debate and was over within a few minutes. On the plus side, Elin (totally rocking skinny black jeans, a black belt with a wide silver buckle, and the most professional plaid shirt we’ve ever seen) was looking super sexy and thus…sexier than the Invisible Man.  If any of you ladies have seen or experienced this stud, we’d love to hear the gossip.