EXIF Photo by Sam Sweeney, Blog Editor

The Election Commission announced tonight that Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) and James Kelly (COL ’09) won the run-off election and will be the next GUSA President and Vice President.

After three rounds of instant run-off voting, Dowd received 1,304 of the 2,549 votes cast. Runner-up Kyle Williams (COL ’09) received 1,070. D.W. Cartier (COL ’09) and David Dietz (COL ’10) finished third and fourth, respectively.

In the meeting in which the results were announced, Dowd reached out to the other candidates and said he wanted them “to be part of what we’re doing.”

“Definitely the first thing we want to do is meet with the other candidates,” Dowd said after the meeting. “[We want to] sit down with them and make sure their voice is heard.”

The run-off election was called after the GUSA Senate voted to deny certification of the first election’s results, based on problems with the confusing ballot, improper application of instant run-off voting, and the correlation between alphabetical order on the ballot and the number of votes received in later rounds.

“Whoever wins can be said to have the clear voice of the student body behind them, and will be a stronger force for change on behalf of the student body because of it,” GUSA Speaker of the Senate Eden Schiffman wrote in an email earlier today. “The runoff included a more manageable ballot, IRV correctly applied, and even higher turnout than the original vote, and has been, from all indications so far, a complete success.”

All eight candidates agreed to a run-off between the top four, according to Election Commissioner Maura Cassidy (COL ’08). However, Sean Hayes (COL ’10), who placed fifth, and D.W. Cartier (COL ’09), who won the first election, later raised objections.

Photo by Juliana Brint, Associate News Editor

• Think that Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e-Kalq should lose its classification as a terrorist group to make it easier to overthrown the Iranian government? You’re not alone, Will Sommer reports in his insightful profile of Ray Tanter, Georgeetown professor/Iranian “terrorist” group advocate/amateur tennis player.
• GUSA screwed up big time with this year’s election fiasco and the Editorial Board isn’t pleased. They also take a look back at the accomplishments of the Shaw/Appenfeller administration.
• Speaking of which, News has the scoop on when we’ll (finally) be getting those free newspapers promised so long ago.
• In the Voices section, Mike Stewart takes on Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, in which she “calls out our nation’s population not only for its lack of general education, but also for its arrogant disdain for everything ‘elite.’” (My money’s on Mike.)
• It’s almost time to say goodbye to departing DPS Director Darryl Harrison. But first, Tim Fernholz sat down with Harrison to chat about his departure, the state of security at Georgetown and what his successor should know.
• Sara Carothers takes us inside the newest exhibit at the Hirshhorn, “The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and Moving Image; Part I: Dreams.”
• It’s not the NFL, but it’ll do. Georgetown quarterback Matt Bassuener and wide receiver Brent Craft are heading off to the AFL2, the minor-league version of the Arena Football League, Phil Perry reports.

I am exhausted from midterms so I’m going to sleep now to be ready for my 2:45 a.m. flight on Saturday morning. Have a nice spring break everyone, and see you in a week or so.

If you made it through the nine rounds of IRV voting in the first election, you probably noticed the Exit Poll GUSA tacked on to the end. GUSA Speaker of the Senate Eden Schiffman said the poll was an effort to figure out who was (and was not) participating in GUSA and what was most important to them.

The Freshman and Sophomore classes cast the most votes—31% of voters were Sophomores, 29% were Freshmen. Blame it on being jaded or simply smaller class sizes, the Junior class accounted for only 20% and the Seniors were a mere 12% (7% didn’t respond).

Voting was pretty estrogen-heavy, even if the field of candidates wasn’t. 49% of voters were female, 42% were male (9% didn’t respond).

The racial breakdown was a pretty accurate reflection of the University’s composition. The participation rates for minorities were slightly higher than their percentage of the student, body, but not significantly so. 67% of voters identified as White (non-Hispanic), 7% Hispanic, 8% African-American, 9% Asian, 7% Other and 12% did not respond. According to statistics on the University website, 6.4% of students are Hispanic, 6.7% are African-American and 8.7% are Asian.

The biggest determinant in who people voted for was face-to-face meetings (56% of voters checked that box), followed by candidates’ platforms (34%). Club and Paper Endorsements came in last, influencing a measly 13% of voters. So much for the power of the Fourth Estate…

Some took the free-response “What are you looking for in your candidates?” question as chance to engage the time-honored Georgetown past-time of GUSA-bashing—one response was “Inability to deal with simple problems and overall ineptitude”—but most answered pretty earnestly. Common themes were leadership ability, dedication to the job, charisma, enthusiasm, experience, honesty and the ability to represent students and communicate with administrators.

There was a split between those who wanted the president to address the school’s alcohol policy—“alcohol policy reform” was one of the most common phrases—and those who wanted to move past it, i.e. “Someone who seems to understand there is a world beyond the alcohol policy.”

It looks like the national presidential campaign trickled down into GUSA race a bit. One voter wanted someone with “the strength to lead in this post-9/11 world, while others were looking for “change I can believe,” “Someone who can bring change. Like Matt Appenfeller. Yes we can .. hope” or, to put it bluntly, “A president that is like Barack Obama.”

A few wanted a nominee who would channel past-presidents—“Ben Shaw Re-incarnated” or “twister 2.0, someone with a cool name.”

Here are a few of my other personal favorites:
“Attractiveness, Promiscuity, Drinking Habits, and Religion”
“Being a sweet bro and magical powers”
“Chicken, Bacon, Cheese, Onions, Peppers, Bread, Barack Obama”
“feathers and ability to count. Seriously. No, seriously.”
“Height, Hair and Optimism.”
“Someone who is chill and not a pinko, gay loving, anticatholic communist”
and, finally, whoever wrote “The Voice’s endorsement is key”

It looks like Wilco may finally be ready to settle down—for now, at least. The latest incarnation of the band has been together for over three years and with Sky Blue Sky last year, Wilco decided to forgo their constant experimentation in favor of a straightforward though enjoyable folk/rock record. On Tuesday night at the 9:30 Club, Wilco’s comfort with their current situation shone through. Jeff Tweedy and Co., dressed in black button-downs (Tweedy added a tan cowboy hat to the ensemble), hit all the right notes as they made their way through the better part of Sky Blue Sky, along with twenty songs from older albums.

Tweedy calmly jigged about on stage, even during upbeat numbers as Nels Cline wildly wielded his guitar, looking like a man who has nothing to prove. When an audience member handed him a fake Grammy statue during a break between songs, his first reaction was to bite it (”making sure it’s not food,” he said). “Thanks for the Grammy,” he added. “We already decided we didn’t want one.” (Tweedy should have said “another one”; A Ghost is Born, released in 2005, won two Grammys.)

Critics who felt Sky Blue Sky lacked the innovation of earlier Wilco albums are right, but its simplicity showcases the sincerity of Tweedy’s songwriting. During “Side with the Seeds,” Tweedy looked as vulnerable and as his lyrics as he sang, “Well I’ll side with you … if you’ll side with me,” holding his hat to his heart and staring straight into the audience.

Not that he has to ask; Wilco has already built up a devoted following throughout the years that was in full force last night. The crowd requested obscure B-sides and sang along with older songs like “Summerteeth,” “War on War,” and “I Got You (At the End of the Century)”. Wilco’s popularity isn’t just confined to hardcore fans, either; they postponed their Feb. 29 show in Charleston, South Carolina to be able to perform on Saturday Night Live.

Wilco’s energy was present last night too, especially whenever one of Tweedy’s delicate songs would deconstruct into cacophonous turmoil, Cline’s riffs skidding over the noise of the band. But in some ways, the band was more toned down than usual. In previous shows in which that Wilco played “Misunderstood”, Tweedy would sing “I’d like to thank you all for nothing” and repeat “Nothing!” longer than seemed possible, the band stuck in a loop behind him. Last night, Tweedy chose a more hopeful refrain to pick up on: “We can make it better” from “Is That the Thanks I Get?” When the song ended, Tweedy made the political statement of the night, adding “The last section of that song is known as the Obama fight song.”

Wilco plays again tonight at the 9:30 Club. Good luck getting a ticket if you don’t already have one, though if you have a lot of spare cash lying around, this might be a good place to look.

You can check out Wilco’s almost complete setlist after the jump (it’s missing a few songs towards the end).

(more…)

With four GUSA presidential candidates left in the ongoing run-off election, the four who were bounced find themselves in a unique position to play kingmaker, owning a combined 482 first-place votes between them in the original election. While I don’t know of any specific endorsements yet [Ed. Note: Reliable sources inform me that Brown-Sevin will be endorsing Williams-Kesten], the ex-ticket of Sean Hayes and Andrew Madorsky have thrown themselves into the role with audacious aplomb. The pair sent the following e-mail to the remaining contenders, and then also forwarded it to both the Voice and the Hoya:

From: “Sean Hayes” <(redacted)>
To: (redacted)
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:26:09 -0500
Subject: Election Endorsement

Alright, so Andrew and I are out….

You have all asked me in the last 24 hours for our support/endorsement and we figured that we, being REALLY cool fun guys, would have some fun with this one.

We WILL, in fact, be endorsing a candidate very soon.

As for the two of us, we have already put in our own personal votes, but we do still have a facebook group with 160 members and don’t forget that smashing 182 we got in the primaries!

Therefore, there is only one fair way to decide who we will endorse.

GUIDELINES:
- No monetary bribes (we are not trying to get in trouble)
- PLAY BALL!

You can find our contact info on www.hm2008.org

So boys, now the question is: What can YOU do for H&M?

Love,
Sean Hayes & Andrew Madorsky

Sure, it’s attention-craving, but that’s not exactly out of line for ex-politicians (ahem, Al Gore). At any rate, it worked. But the question is, with voting already underway, how many of those votes can they actually still deliver?

As the above graph shows, it turns out there’s an incredibly strong correlation between how many members each GUSA ticket’s Facebook group has and how many first round votes they got. Not an incredibly surprising fact when you think about it; the factors that lead to a large Facebook following—popularity, working hard on your campaign, relentlessness—also help bring in the votes. I would make some statement about youth harnessing the power of the internet, but then I’d have to stop reading this blog in protest.

For those of you who’ve taken some kind of stat class, the value for their correlation is 0.968586 (the closer it is to one, the stronger the correlation). For those of you who haven’t taken any stat classes, consider yourself lucky.

You can see how a simple election can quickly become a muddled mess when you add in seven superfluous rounds of voting. For those unfamiliar with instant-runoff voting (IRV), if a single ticket doesn’t get a majority in the first round, the ticket with the lowest total is dropped and those votes are redistributed to the other candidates and so on. It was only in the eighth round that Cartier, fourth in the first round, finally prevailed.

Now, as Juliana Brint reported earlier, the top four candidates will have a run-off election. Karwacki, Hayes, Hawkins and Brown, we hardly knew ye.

The GUSA Senate has decided not to certify the results of the presidential election, instead opting for a run-off between the top four candidates, DW Cartier (COL ’09), Pat Dowd (SFS ’09), Kyle Williams (COL ’09) and David Dietz (COL ’10). The second round of voting will begin Tuesday evening and end Thursday at noon, with the Election Commission hoping to announce the winner by Friday (they will have to wait until after Spring Break to officially inaugurate whomever that is).

Election Commissioner Maura Cassidy (COL ’08) presented the results, which she called “cloudy.” She had to go through eight rounds of IRV in order for any candidate to receive a majority of the vote. She also said there was “an obvious correlation” between candidates’ spots on the ballots (which were ordered alphabetically) and the number of votes they received in the later rounds. The winning candidate, Cartier, did not take the lead until the eighth round.

“I think that it’s much different to say ‘congratulations on your majority’ than to say ‘congratulations on being behind for eight rounds and then picking up 300 votes at the end,’” current GUSA president Ben Shaw (COL ’08) said.

There were also concerns about the instructions to voters to rank all candidates since IRV is supposed to allow voters to rank as many or as few candidates as they like. Cassidy did count the votes of people who voted for the same candidate multiple times, treating the repeat votes as a single first-choice selection.

“IRV is a terrible choice if you have more than four candidates,” GUSA Senator Zack Bluestone (SFS ’09) said. “It’s hard to put ourselves on the line and probably get ridiculed … I don’t think we can certify an election in good faith that doesn’t look indicative [of the will of the student body]. There are too many question marks.”

Cassidy recommended that the Senate not certify the results. They agreed, voting 16 to 2 (with 3 abstentions) to deny certification. During a brief recess, Cassidy, Shaw and GUSA Vice President Matt Appenfeller (COL ’08) crafted a proposal for the run-off election.

The run-off will be between the top four candidates. Cassidy argued that there is a clear division between the top four candidates, who received more than 400 first-place votes each, and the bottom four, who received less than 200. Sean Hayes (MSB ’10) and his running mate Andrew Madorsky (MSB ’10), who placed fifth, protested, calling the cut-off “arbitrary.”

Electronic and in-person campaigning will be allowed, but candidates cannot spend more money or put up fliers or signs. The election commission is planning on putting up non-partisan fliers and setting up voting booths in Leo’s. In the broadcast email that will be sent to the student body each candidate will be allowed to include a 100-word blurb. The candidates will appear in a random order on the ballot and voters will be able to rank as many or as few as they want.

Given the history of GUSA election scandals, some Senators felt that rejecting the results would reinforce GUSA’s negative reputation. They also worried that the run-off election would have a much lower turn-out than the original, which boasted 2,428 votes.

“Are we saying this doesn’t represent the student voice and the next election will?” asked Senator Brian Wood (COL ’09). “I think it would be less legitimate. I just don’t think you’re going to get the student voice.”

Although Bryan Scary wasn’t headlining, it was pretty clear that was whom most of the crowd filling the Rock and Roll Hotel on Saturday night was there to see. Looking a bit like Alice Cooper (the eyeliner helped), Scary put on a theatric stageshow, backed up by his stellar touring band, the jumpsuit-bedecked Shreading Tears. Maybe it was just the small space echoing the yells of die-hards; nevertheless, it’s pretty rare to hear a crowd respond to an opener with calls for an encore.

With props to accompany nearly every song in his epic saga of “aeronautics” from the forthcoming Flight of the Knife album (see the Voice’s review), Scary’s high energy performance more than justified his reputation for superb live shows. The tale is patently ridiculous, involving mad scientists, aliens/astronauts (maybe?), a woman named Suzy and a young boy who dreams of an air flying machine—and immensely entertaining in its absurdity. It’s hard to tell if the story is truly tongue-in-cheek because Scary performs as each character with such sincerity that you want to believe him.

Although prog-rock is nothing new (see: the 1970s), Scary’s take on the rock opera blends musicianship with melodic songwriting—and benefits from intense, high volume performance. The squeaky clean mix on the record allows his brilliant songwriting to shine through, but at the cost of sounding a bit more rock musical than raucous, glam-inspired rock and roll.

Live, the band’s talent is beyond reproach as they navigate rapid fire key changes in typical prog-rock style, and thankfully avoid typical prog excesses by steering clear of too long songs with extended solos. Instead each number is packed with so many ideas that the “look-what-I-can-do” factor is minimized in favor of telling the story.

Oh, and did I mention the wicked guitarist of the Shreading Tears (Graham Norwood) is legally blind?

Murder Mystery opened for Bryan Scary and the Shreading Tears, playing a fairly mundane version of indie pop. Lead singer Jeremy Coleman sings a bit too much like Lou Reed, but can’t really pull it off—maybe Coleman should try singing off key a bit, and investing some energy into the performance. The band’s songs are jaunty and pleasant, heavily invested in the pop tradition and ultimately not that interesting. Mediocrity comes easy, and the band’s lack of energy was especially prominent in apposition with Bryan Scary.

Photos by Jeff Reger, Leisure Editor