You are viewing all posts about student body president

Tim Palmer and Nora Chan win senior class officers
posted 87 days ago
By Eliza Kern

Tim Palmer and Nora Chan won senior class officers with 52.2 percent of the vote.

The election went to a runoff last week when neither group won 50 percent of the vote.

Opponents Adam Jutha and Sarah Kaminer earned 37 percent of the vote.

1,362 total students voted in the senior class election.

Pre-election rap by Palmer and Chan:

[youtube width="480" height="368"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUzJArcI_As[/youtube]

Tags: UNC Will Leimenstoll

Will Leimenstoll to be next UNC student body president
posted 87 days ago
By Alex Barinka

Will Leimenstoll, an environmental science and geography double major, won the student body president runoff election with 62.7 percent of the vote.

Winner’s reaction:

[youtube width="500" height="380"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKYrzSjOIus[/youtube]

By Caitlin Yaniec / Carolina Week

About the next 2012-2013 student body president:

1. Describe yourself in a tweet (140 characters):

I’m a hard-working, genuine, optimistic guy. There’s nothing I love more about N.C. than this University and Cookout’s Cajun French fries.

2. What is one specific initiative you think you can actually accomplish?

Every idea in our platform was developed with feasibility in mind, but one idea that we’re really excited about is the development of a website: money.unc.edu that would bring together all the financial resources Carolina has to offer.

This would include financial literacy information from the Office of Scholarships & Student Aid, application information for the emergency fund, a grant database geared towards undergraduate students, the Student Enrichment Fund and a list of merit-based scholarships. Having these resources and others all together in one easily accessible online location would make it easier for students who need these resources to find them.

3. What is the one biggest obstacle the University currently faces?

The biggest obstacle facing UNC-Chapel Hill is maintaining its wonderful balance between academic excellence and accessibility amid budget cuts and tuition increases. The current budget deficit must not be used as an excuse to fundamentally alter the ‘state-supported’ tuition model currently followed by UNC. In order to protect our state-supported budget we must advocate for the university system in Raleigh and build a network of allies from across the state.

In addition to reaching out to students and other student governments, we will also work with governments and chambers of commerce from all cities and towns that host UNC-system schools because these are allies of the university system that we have not even begun working with yet.

4. How should the University cope with funding cuts? 

The University should cope with funding cuts by becoming more efficient, engaging students in the lobbying process and advocating for a sunset clause at the General Assembly in Raleigh. With this clause, if all other efforts fail, we will accept declining state appropriations to the university in the short term but only until state tax revenue has returned to a predetermined amount.

Once that predetermined tax revenue level has been reached, the Sunset Clause is invoked, which requires that state appropriations must return to a stated percentage of UNC’s budget. This will ensure that UNC remains affordable and maintains its status as a premier public university in the long run.

5. If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?

If I had any super power it would be the power of teleportation so I could go anywhere whenever I wanted without expending time or fossil fuels!

“How are you feeling?”

[youtube width="500" height="380"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdV_0WtFlVc[/youtube]

By Caitlin Yaniec / Carolina Week

Pre-election video profile:

[youtube width="500" height="380"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzn7GDstDME[/youtube]

By Averi Harper / Carolina Week

Read Leimenstoll’s winning platform.

Related:

Tim Palmer and Nora Chan win senior class officers

Tags: student body president UNC

Live-coverage: UNC student body elections runoff results
posted 87 days ago
By Alex Barinka

The UNC student body elections runoff polls will be open until 9 p.m. Tuesday, as the student body president and senior class officers positions go to a second round of voting.

Tuesday night, the Carolina Week election special broadcast will reveal the results.

You can view the 9:15 p.m. show:

Reesenews wants to know your thoughts on this year’s elections. Tweet @reesenews and the best tweets will be read live on the results broadcast.

Follow the hash tag #UNCSBP and @reesenow during the show.

How to vote:

Log in to studentlife.unc.edu using your ONYEN and ONYEN password.

Voting will be available through the student life page on Tues., Feb. 21, from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m.

Related:

Board of elections certifies the student body president vote

UNC senior class officers to go to runoff after voting problems

Student body president candidates to go to runoff

Behind the scenes of the elections results show

Tags: senior class student body president UNC voting

Behind the scenes of the elections results show
posted 92 days ago
By Alex Barinka

Reesenews went behind the scenes during broadcast affiliate Carolina Week‘s student body elections results show to capture the action on election night.

The control room during the elections results show. (Alex Barinka/ reesenews)

The control room during the elections results show. (Alex Barinka/ reesenews)

With candidates, producers in the control room, cameras fired up and anchors in the studio, the special edition show went live on TV and streamed to the reesenews homepage.

Student body president and senior class officer candidates sat with their teams, spending Valentine’s Day night anxiously awaiting to see who was chosen by the student body to represent it.

Student body president candidates Will Leimenstoll, Calvin Lewis Jr. and Tim Longest — whom anchor Preston Stanley pointedly called “the three L’s” — sat surrounded by their entourage in the newsroom and watched the broadcast on the projector screen.

The show began at 9:15 that night, and the wait until the Board of Elections arrived must have been an anxious one.

Student body elections candidates anxiously await the results in the Carolina Week newsroom. (Grace Farson / reesenews)

Candidates nerves had to be shaken off as the candidates readied themselves for live interviews from the newsroom.

On the other end of the Carolina Week set, anchors Kathleen Witte and Preston Stanley were calm, cool and collected between shots from the studio.

Anchors Witte and Stanely smiled for a photo between shots in the Carolina Week studio. (Alex Barinka / reesenews)

When the Board of Elections finally arrived to announce the results, the tension in the room was palpable. The Board’s Chairwoman Shruthi Sundaram announced the winners with the rest of the committee alongside her.

For two out of three of the student body president candidates and the senior class officers candidate teams, there would be no instant gratification as both races would go to runoffs. That didn’t mean there wasn’t celebration.

[youtube width="510" height="413"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWifLapg9G4[/youtube]

Video by Danielle Elliot / Carolina Week

The runoff elections show:

The live runoff election results show hosted by reesenews affiliate Carolina Week will be live-streamed on reesenews.org on Tues., Feb. 21, and can be viewed on Time Warner Cable channel 24 and UNC Campus Cable channel 34.

Check back for the air-time of the results show and follow @reesenews on Twitter for updates.

Full gallery of the results show:

Tags: runoff show student body elections student body president UNC

Board of Elections certifies Tuesday's results
posted 93 days ago
By Alex Barinka

The UNC student government Board of Elections certified the results of Tuesday’s election and will not hold a re-vote after students faced technical difficulties in voting.

The Board met Wednesday night to determine whether technical difficulties students faced in voting merited a re-vote of the election next week.

The race called into question during the meeting was the student body president election, which will go to a runoff between the top two candidates on Tues., Feb. 21. In the results that were certified from Tuesday, the second and third place finishers were separated by four votes.

The Board decided that it did everything in its power to provide students with a second option for voting.

This year’s system was based on credit hours, so any juniors with enough hours to be technically classified as seniors were not able to vote for certain offices.

The Board of Elections instructed students who ran into voting problems to email the BOE listerv with their vote, but the amount of emails coming in Tuesday crashed the listserv. BOE members posted alternate email addresses and invited students to send votes to those addresses.

Erik Davies, student solicitor general, said that there was a gap of less than 10 minutes between the listserv crashing and the personal email information was posted. He said that any student who attempted to vote during that time-frame could have tried again to send in his or her vote.

While there may have been some students who ended up not voting after making an attempt during that gap, Sundaram said that many students may not have been phased by the missed opportunity.

Ultimately the Board of Elections, in a unanimous 4-0 vote with Chairwoman Sundaram abstaining from voting, moved to certify the elections results and proceed with runoffs as previously decided.

The runoff elections will be held Tues., Feb. 21, and both the student body president and senior class officers positions will be voted on.

Runoff results show:

The live runoff election results show hosted by reesenews affiliate Carolina Week will be live-streamed on reesenews.org on Tues., Feb. 21, and can be viewed on Time Warner Cable channel 24 and UNC Campus Cable channel 34. Check back for the air-time of the results show and follow @reesenews on Twitter for updates.

Reesenews Managing Editor Eliza Kern contributed reporting.

Related:

Election results could be tossed

UNC Student Body President race to go to runoff

Senior Class Officers position heads to runoff after voting problems

Tags: student body president UNC

SBP election results could be tossed after voting technical difficulties
posted 93 days ago
By Eliza Kern

Update as of 4:37 p.m.: The Board of Elections will hold a public meeting to deliberate the issue at 5:30 p.m. in the Student Union. Check back for updates, and follow @reesenews for info from the meeting.

The results from the student body president race could be tossed after technical difficulties plagued the voting process.

The UNC student body president race was narrowed from three candidates to two on Tues., Feb. 14, with the top two candidates set for a runoff election. The third candidate trailed second place by four votes.

The student government Board of Elections will meet tonight to determine whether technical difficulties in Tuesday’s elections swayed the results enough to require a re-do of the student body president election, said Shruthi Sundaram, Board of Elections chairwoman.

“I’m a little uncomfortable with it myself,” Sundaram said. “That’s why we’re meeting later.”

She said there were a number of different issues that kept eligible voters from being able to access the student body president poll. Those with issues were directed to email the Board of Elections listserv, but after 100 emails had been sent, the listserv went down.

After the listserv crashed, Sundaram said the board tried to spread the word that votes could be emailed to her or to Jon Curtis, adviser to student government. About 150 votes were sent to Sundaram and Curtis’ personal accounts.

Some voters also may have been assigned to the wrong congress district, Sundaram said.

Sundaram will consult with current Student Body President Mary Cooper and others before making a decision tonight.

She said the Board of Elections will meet in a “closed session meeting” tonight at the Student Union to have a decision by 9 p.m. Wednesday as to whether the student body president elections will be re-polled.

According to the Student Code, which governs student government elections and procedures, the Board of Elections can void an election and call for a new one:

Re-Elections are elections held in the event that the results of a previous election are voided by the Board of Elections or the Student Supreme Court.

In Tuesday night’s results, the three-way student body president race was narrowed to a run-off between Will Leimenstoll and Calvin Lewis Jr., knocking third-place candidate Tim Longest out of the contest by a measure of only four votes.

Leimenstoll received 46.9 percent of the vote, Lewis received 23.12 percent and Longest received 23.02 percent.

If a re-polling of the results were to occur, Sundaram said the other student body positions that will require a runoff will still occur on Tues., Feb. 21, as stated after the release of the first results. The student body president re-polling with all three original balloted candidates would be on Thurs., Feb. 23.

Tags: runoff student body president UNC

Five things you may not know about the UNC SBP candidates
posted 94 days ago
By Alex Barinka

Reesenews asked the UNC-Chapel Hill student body president candidates five things that voters may not know about them and their platforms.

Here’s what the three candidates had to say:

   _

Calvin Lewis Jr.

Calvin Lewis Jr. is a peace, war and defense major running for UNC SBP. (Eric Pait/reesenews)

Calvin Lewis Jr.

1. Describe yourself in a tweet (140 characters):

I am a PWAD major intent on positively shaping the Carolina community while focusing on the needs of students and the future of the student experience.

2. What is one specific initiative you think you can actually accomplish?

I firmly believe that I am capable of enhancing student government by applying a three pronged approach of increasing transparency, ownership and partnership.

3. What is the one biggest obstacle the University currently faces?

Preserving the student experience despite budget cuts and tuition hikes.

4. How should the University cope with funding cuts? 

Using think tanks to determine the best use of available resources, reaching out to find external funding and educating the student population on how we can use less resources to accomplish our goals.

5. If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?

Telekinesis so that I could be even more efficient at multitasking. (Reporter’s note: telekinesis is the ability to move objects with one’s mind or other non-physical means.)

   _

Tim Longest is an economics and philosophy double major running for UNC SBP. (Eric Pait/reesenews)

Tim Longest

1. Describe yourself in a tweet (140 characters):

Informed. Motivated. Professional. Loves Cheerwine.

2. What is one specific initiative you think you can actually accomplish?

One initiative that I not only will, but already have accomplished is the creation of a petition page that will enable students to formally petition student government on the issues, injustices and ideas that they would like to see addressed and implemented.

Too often, student government does not even know the concerns of students and this petition page will make student voice a priority. This page is already developed and available at my website tim4unc.org by clicking on “Your Voice.”

3. What is the one biggest obstacle the University currently faces?

The biggest obstacle the University currently faces is securing the prospect of an affordable and accessible education for the people of North Carolina and beyond. We have allowed the cost of higher education to be placed more and more on the backs of students and their families.

The state is allowing tuition to increase far beyond what the Constitution calls for, to the detriment of higher education and North Carolina’s own economy.

4. How should the University cope with funding cuts?

The University should continue in its efforts to operate more efficiently while preserving its academic mission. As a student government, we should do our part to ensure student fees are reasonable and not exploitative of students, all while being 100 percent transparent about the process.

5. If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?

To be as resourceful as MacGyver.

   _

Will Leimenstoll is an environmental studies and geography double major running for UNC SBP. (Eric Pait/reesenews)

Will Leimenstoll

1. Describe yourself in a tweet (140 characters):

I’m a hard-working, genuine, optimistic guy. There’s nothing I love more about N.C. than this University and Cookout’s Cajun French fries.

2. What is one specific initiative you think you can actually accomplish?

Every idea in our platform was developed with feasibility in mind, but one idea that we’re really excited about is the development of a website: money.unc.edu that would bring together all the financial resources Carolina has to offer.

This would include financial literacy information from the Office of Scholarships & Student Aid, application information for the emergency fund, a grant database geared towards undergraduate students, the Student Enrichment Fund and a list of merit-based scholarships. Having these resources and others all together in one easily accessible online location would make it easier for students who need these resources to find them.

3. What is the one biggest obstacle the University currently faces?

The biggest obstacle facing UNC-Chapel Hill is maintaining its wonderful balance between academic excellence and accessibility amid budget cuts and tuition increases. The current budget deficit must not be used as an excuse to fundamentally alter the ‘state-supported’ tuition model currently followed by UNC. In order to protect our state-supported budget we must advocate for the university system in Raleigh and build a network of allies from across the state.

In addition to reaching out to students and other student governments, we will also work with governments and chambers of commerce from all cities and towns that host UNC-system schools because these are allies of the university system that we have not even begun working with yet.

4. How should the University cope with funding cuts? 

The University should cope with funding cuts by becoming more efficient, engaging students in the lobbying process and advocating for a sunset clause at the General Assembly in Raleigh. With this clause, if all other efforts fail, we will accept declining state appropriations to the university in the short term but only until state tax revenue has returned to a predetermined amount.

Once that predetermined tax revenue level has been reached, the Sunset Clause is invoked, which requires that state appropriations must return to a stated percentage of UNC’s budget. This will ensure that UNC remains affordable and maintains its status as a premier public university in the long run.

5. If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?

If I had any super power it would be the power of teleportation so I could go anywhere whenever I wanted without expending time or fossil fuels!

_

The polls are open until 9 p.m. on Tues., Feb. 14. Here’s how to vote.

Carolina Week reporters Averi Harper, Katie Murray and Natalia Perez contributed reporting.

Tags: SBP student body president UNC vote

Video profiles: Get to know your student body president candidates
posted 95 days ago
By Alex Barinka

Before you vote Tuesday, watch these profiles of the three candidates on the ballot by reporters from Carolina Week. Voting will be available Feb. 14, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Find out who the winner is during Carolina Week’s live results show Tuesday at 9:15 p.m. on Time Warner Cable channel 24, UNC Campus Cable channel 34 and on the reesenews homepage.

Here are your candidates:

Will Leimenstoll

By Averi Harper / Carolina Week

View Leimenstoll’s platform.

[youtube width="510" height="413"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2e3snMUFXM[/youtube]

Calvin Lewis Jr.

By Katie Murray / Carolina Week

View Lewis’ platform.

[youtube width="510" height="413"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGPAIezMLZg[/youtube]

Tim Longest

By Natalia Perez / Carolina Week

View Longest’s platform.

[youtube width="510" height="413"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReV2DISmRs0[/youtube]

Related:

How to vote in the UNC-CH Student Body President election

Three SBP candidates make the ballot

Tags: SBP student body president UNC vote

Polls now open: how to vote in the student body elections
posted 95 days ago
By Nicole Leonard

Today, students will vote in the 2012-2013 academic year’s student body general election.

Registration is fast and easy: Just log in to studentlife.unc.edu using your ONYEN and ONYEN password. Voting will be available through the student life page on Valentine’s Day from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m.

Students will have the option of voting for student body president, as well as the president of the graduate and professional student federation, the president of the Carolina Athletic Association, the president of the Residence Hall Federation, senior class officers and Student Congress representatives.

Check back after the polls close today at 9 p.m. for livestreamed results of the election.

Related:

Video profiles of the three SBP candidates

Tags: student body president UNC-Chapel Hill

Tim Longest dances for the student body president vote
posted 97 days ago
By Lilly Knoepp

As the student body president candidates vie for votes in Tuesday’s election, they are campaigning with signs, websites and debating.

Three SBP candidates make the ballot

But one candidate, Tim Longest, has taken it even further: he’s produced a video of his campaign platform, in which he dances to Shakira’s song “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)”.

In the video, Longest and his campaign team dance through Wilson Library and explain why he deserves to win the election.

“Because he has great hair! ” said Suraj Shah, a campaign team member.

Will Leimenstoll and Calvin Lewis Jr. are also candidates in the election.

Tags: student body president Tim Longest UNC