F r i d ay , F e b r u a r y 1 , 2 0 1 3 — I s s u e 3 0
the journal Queen’s University — Since 1873
AMS elections
BGP celebrates executive election victory Berkok, Green and Pritchard win election after receiving 59.7 per cent of the vote on the second reading B y Vincent M atak Assistant News Editor Team BGP’s victory Thursday morning was met with screams of joy by the team members and their supporters. The screaming began as soon as the AMS chief electoral and chief returning officers entered the third-story JDUC common room BGP had been waiting in with their campaign volunteers. The rest of AMS council accompanied both CEO Caileigh Simpson and CRO Ali Tejpar in announcing BGP as next year’s AMS executives, bringing with them champagne and congratulations. “Catharsis has never been so well defined for me until this morning,” President-elect Eril Berkok said. The members of BGP were anxious prior to the announcement, which had been delayed almost 15 hours. Following the release of the results, teammates Berkok, Peter Green and TK Pritchard hugged each other, thanked their volunteers and ventured to Queen’s Pub for celebratory drinks. The AMS reported that 41.4 per cent of AMS members voted in this year’s election — the highest turnout since 1991. BGP won with 59.7 per cent of the vote in the second ballot. Today, the president and vice-president-elects will begin preparing themselves for the roles of AMS executives, positions which will commence on May 1. “The most important thing we need to be doing right now is to start transitioning,” Berkok said. “That will be a good step to ensure we’re ready for May.” “You’ll see me in Tristan’s [Lee, vice-president of operations] office tomorrow,” Green, AMS vice-president of operations-elect, said. Pritchard, AMS vice-president of university affairs-elect, echoed his statement and said he will begin meetings with the current vice-president of university affairs, See Highest on page 7
Team BGP rejoices over their win with supporters shortly after learning they’d won the election on Thursday morning.
Photo by Alex Choi
AMS Elections
Voting validation delays election results Results stalled as the CRO and CEO awaited raw voting data from VoteNet B y H olly Tousignant News Editor The AMS elections team will provide next year’s Chief Electoral and Chief Returning Officers (CEO and CRO) with a strong transition
to avoid the same mistakes from happening again, the current CEO told the Journal. The results of the 2013 AMS election were released Thursday morning at approximately 11:20 a.m., just over 15 hours after
the voting period ended. “Last year was the first year that preferential balloting was used and so moving forward we’re going to look at how it can be used more effectively,” AMS Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Caileigh
Fraternities
Policy amended at Assembly Nearly 80-year-old ban on fraternities receives updates
B y J ulia Vriend Assistant News Editor The policy that banned students from involvement in fraternities and sororities outside of Queen’s
Seven for six
Queen’s defeated the RMC Paladins 7-2 last night at the K-Rock Centre to win their sixth straight Carr-Harris Cup. See page 16 for full story.
Photo by Peter Lee
was amended last night at the a report to Assembly, which included letters from Queen’s and AMS assembly. The amendment means that the AMS’ legal counsel and the penalties are no longer in place for results of an online feedback form, AMS members who choose to join among other documents. The ban on fraternities a fraternity or sorority. Such groups are still prohibited from affiliating was originally implemented in the 1930s. themselves with the University. “The void that we saw in the The amendment, which was devised by the AMS executive last statement was that it really team, carried in its first reading at didn’t list all of the reasons why Assembly on Jan. 17. On Jan. 31 fraternities and sororities were it carried in its second reading and banned,” Dineen, ArtSci ’11, said. the voting members of Assembly “It was really short.” She added that the old policy adopted the addition to policy. Vice-President of University didn’t outline how the AMS would Affairs Mira Dineen said she and enforce the ban or what kind of Vice-President of Operations sanctions that they would impose Tristan Lee began looking at on a student who was involved existing policies in October. with one. She said students expressed “[The ban] was symbolically concerns that fraternities and taken into account but there was sororities would “detract from no practice of it,” Dineen said. the school environment that we Although the University and the have here, which is really unique AMS believe that fraternities and to Queen’s.” sororities have no place at Queen’s On Nov. 22, Dineen, Lee and or in the AMS, the constitution will President Doug Johnson presented See Ban on page 7
Simpson said. She took over the post after CEO Scott Mason took leave to campaign for ASUS presidency. Simpson was formerly a PHEKSA representative on AMS Assembly. The delay in releasing the results occurred in part due to the system of tabulating votes used by VoteNet, the service used to conduct elections. According to a statement released on the AMS website, VoteNet selects winners based on “ballot points” for votes involving preferential ballots, rather than raw votes, as is AMS policy. Simpson said a solution to the problem was discovered at 8:30 p.m. which involved obtaining the raw data from VoteNet. “At that point we were waiting for VoteNet to provide us with this raw data and the problem was that the file was too big, so we needed a compressed file that had to come from their end,” Simpson said. She noted that the same system of preferential balloting was used in last year’s election, but the file was not as large and therefore could be downloaded the same night. Not a single election, including faculty society, undergraduate student trustee and residence society, was uncontested this year, and the additional teams on the ballot resulted in the larger file. Simpson said she wasn’t told to look out for such a problem. “I wasn’t transitioned on it,” she said. See Preferential on page 7