By Radwan Farraj
Elections for the Brooklyn College Undergraduate Student Government are nearing with only one candidate running for president. Running for the executive branch positions of president and vice president are Aharon Grama and Carrie Ebbin, respectively, who are currently unopposed this election season. This semester’s election also features 23 USG Senate candidates, many of whom are running for re-election.
Originally set between Mar. 22-Mar. 25, the election voting period has been pushed back to early April, according to Aharon Grama, USG’s current vice president. The new election window is now from Apr. 4-Apr. 6, with Grama bidding for president again alongside his new running mate Ebbin, who is a current USG senator that serves on the Tech Fee Committee.
“During my tenure at the College, there has not been a situation where there has only been one ticket/one candidate for president/vice president,” Hamilton Raymond, Associate Director for the Student Activities, Involvement, & Leadership Center, told the Vanguard in an email. Should an election remain uncontested, students still have the right to vote for the eligible candidates and submit write-in candidates, Raymond said.
“Due to the pandemic, the election process was moved online. While we have more in-person classes this semester, we kept the election process online to provide the opportunity for more students to vote.” Even though turnout for student government elections is at a historic low, “the online process did yield a higher participation rate than previous years,” according to Raymond.
During last election season, Grama ran with Iqura Naheed, USG’s current president who will be graduating this spring. Grama decided to run with Ebbin this year after considering multiple people. “Carrie stood out for several reasons, she has great potential and natural leadership skills. Furthermore, her background and skills with social media and communication is something I believe USG should focus on,” said Grama.
Ebbin is further familiarizing herself with USG’s governance before voting begins.
“I’ve been talking to different people in student government since I’ve come onto campus,” said Ebbin, who has had experience with student governance from her time in high school.
“I’ve heard so much about how the community was before COVID,” said Ebbin. “And I want to experience that and I want to get people excited.”
To prepare for her role as vice president if elected, Ebbin has been invited to Cabinet meetings and been introduced to BC administrators who she will work with on behalf of undergraduates. Unlike other candidates that Grama considered, Ebbin is a first-year student, which means, “she is not going anywhere so this gives her the opportunity to work on long term projects,” according to Grama.
“I’m in a lot of freshman classes and intro classes, a lot of them don’t know so much about student government. So I’ve been spending a lot of time telling them about it,” added Ebbin.
If elected, the duo hope to accomplish the necessary preparation for the transition of power to next year’s student government. “We wanna make sure that this time, the transition is very smooth. So we are already talking about replacements of those on the Cabinet that are graduating,” Grama said.
The new election dates now coincide with a similarly pushed back USG referendum that proposes changes to the student activity fee that is calculated as a part of students’ expenses.
The referendum petition deadline, which requires signatures from at least 10% of the student population to be included on the upcoming election ballot, initially left a window of six days for USG to acquire all necessary signatures.
“[…] Based on precedent, we’re supposed to get at least a month, and six days is not a month,” said Grama. With help from President Anderson, who reached out to the College-Wide Election Review Committee, the petition period was extended and the election was pushed to April.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article wrongly stated that Carrie Ebbin was new to USG. Ebbin currently serves as a USG senator and on the government’s Tech Fee Committee.