Darrick Trent “Nighthawk” Evensen grad was re-elected as graduate student trustee in last week’s trustee election. 

The three Democratic candidates for Mayor of Ithaca attempted to avoid entanglement in the thicket of town-gown relations at a forum held Tuesday in Collegetown, finding common ground on many of the pressing issues between the city and Cornell.

The final vote passed 16 to one with one abstention and four members not present, according to S.A. President Vincent Andrews ’11, who does not participate in voting.

After a close race that played out through Facebook pages, sidewalk chalk discussions with the student body, Darrick “Nighthawk” Evensen, grad, was voted the new student-elected member of the Cornell Board of Trustees following last week’s election.

A group of recently unionized Ithaca Coffee Company employees has decided to cancel an election that could have allowed them to collectively bargain with the company, in favor of a "community campaign."

Early exit polls from Virginia’s gubernatorial race showed that the percentage of voters who were under 30 shrank significantly from last year. The same seems to be true for the Tompkins County local elections, as most Cornellians did not turn out for what were largely uncontested elections.

Maybe it’s because Michael Jackson has died—it’s a sad and unnerving feeling to think that he’s gone—but today has had a very peculiar quality to it. Even for Iran, today was rather strange.

Let’s look at what’s happened.

Seems like Iran is in a state of flux, alternating between days of horrific violence and tense calm. Today is the major exam day of Iran, during which the Konkoor---Iran’s college entrance exam—is administered. It’s of a different mode than the SATs.

After several weeks of chalking, handing out quarter cards and waving a flag outside Libe Café, Asa Craig ’11 has been elected as the newest undergraduate student trustee for Cornell, the Office of the Assemblies announced yesterday.

Out of the 3,423 ballots cast for the 10 candidates, Craig was ranked first on 651 of those ballots. Using the Hare-Clark system, the candidate with the least amount of votes is systematically eliminated. The eliminated candidates’ votes are then transferred to other candidates depending on the rankings of voters’ preferences. In the end, Craig defeated Raymond Mensah ’11 with a final count of 1,578 votes.

At its last meeting for this academic year, the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly held elections last night for the assembly’s 2009-2010 executive council.

Darrick Evenson grad was elected the president of GPSA. Erica Gutierrez grad was elected executive vice president, and Brian M. Forster grad was elected the vice president of operations.

“The main issue I want to focus on is that the GPSA needs to be more representative of the graduate student body,” Evenson said. “While all 96 — including three professional schools — have a seat available in the non-voting body of the GPSA, only 42 percent are actually filled.”

As for Gutierrez, making sure Cornell is environmentally sustainable is her most pressing concern.

This year’s undergraduate student trustee elections hold special significance for Cornell. It was 40 years ago that the Takeover of Willard Straight Hall helped elucidate the need for a transparent University. Many credit the Takeover, and a series of tumultuous events that followed, with Cornell allowing four students to serve as voting members on the Board of Trustees.

Four decades later and with two fewer student Trustees seats, 11 Cornellians are vying to continue the tradition of student governance.