The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Monday, December 10, 2012 - 5A The Michigan Daily - michigandailycomMonday, December iD, 2D12 - 5A CSG ELECTIONS From Page 1A "In the past, even in the smaller November elections, we've had way more candidates than there are seats," he said, attributing the lack of candidates to poor adver- tisement of the election. Walser argued that voter turn- out for the CSG elections could be attributed to other student governments on campus rather than to CSG itself. "A lot of the turnout was the result of the work of the LSA Student. Government and other student governments across campus," Walser said. "It was really embarrassing to me to have CSG do virtually nothing to advertise the election - that's just a terrible precedent going into the March election." Walser said he also tried to find an application a few days before the election and couldn't. "I imagine for students not well versed with CSG, (getting registered) would have been virtually impossible unless they were involved with a party," he said. In addition to problems cre- ated by a lack of time, issues concerning the Rackham and LSA-SG representative ballots were "unexplainable," Walser said. The Rackham ballot only allowed voters to vote for one person, despite eight seats being up for grabs. That problem even- tually led organizers to extend the election 48 hours and release an entirely new ballot for Rack- ham students. The LSA-SG representative ballot allowed voters to choose three candidates when only two seats were open. In the end, the third place finisher lost 531 to 436 total votes and 1,321 to 1,196 weighted votes, which are cal- culated based on how students ranked a candidate. "I think it's a terrible prec- edent because this election was clearly not really fair and demo- cratic," Walser said. Wasler said staff from the Uni- versity's Information and Tech- nology Services assured student government officials that tech- nological problems with the bal- lot didn't affect the results, but argued that the ballot still had errors. "ITS claiming that (problems with the LSA ballot) didn't affect the election results to me is not sufficient because there was clearly a mistake on the ballot," Wasler said. Walser said ensuring a proper election needs to a be a higher priority for CSG president Man- ish Parikh and CSG vice presi- dent Omar Hashwi. "These ideas of longer library hours, a 24-hour cafe are great, but the administration also has to focus onthe basics and getting the fundamentals down," Walser said. "I think they need to reflect on their priorities and make sure that they're getting the fundamentals down as well as the external stuff they're working on." Wasler is a member of MFor- ward, which supported candi- dates in the election in which Parikh and Hashwi were elected. Walser added that it is impor- tant that CSG start looking for a director and election commis- sion position for the upcoming March election immediately to avoid similar problems in the spring. Law student Jeremy Garson, CSG's November election direc- tor, acknowledged the problems with the elections, but said they lived up to the necessary bench- marks, especially if the time con- straints placed on the election are taken into consideration. "The election went about as well as it could under the cir- cumstances," Garson said. "The importantthingwith anyelection ... is you need to make sure every- one who has the right to vote is able to vote, everyone who wishes to run can run and when the votes are counted, there is no fraud." Garson also disagreed with Walser's point, affirming his belief that the LSA elections were an accurate reflection of the wishes of LSA students. "From talking to ITS, from talking with other people that have more experience, I'm con- fident that we were able to get the wishes of the electorate to be properly represented," he said. , Garson explained that his own health. caused additional chal- lenges into an already tumultu- ous election. "I tip my hat to my team," Gar- son said. "I was sick on the night of the election; I had to go to the hospital next day." Garson credited CSG student general counsel Lukas Garske, an LSA senior, in particular for the election's success. "Everything that went right, went right because of (Garske)," he said. With the March election now ahead, Garson said the lesson learned from this election is that time is invaluable. "Going into the future, it's just a matter of getting all the pieces into place so that we can do advertising in a more system- atic way rather than having to scramble against the firm clock," Garson said. Garske echoed- Garson when he wrote in an e-mail that sev- eral factors affected CSG's abil- ity to hold a timely and efficient election. Because the all-campus constitution maintains that the elections must be held in Novem- ber, the election dates chosen were placed as late in November as possible in order to facilitate the difficult time constraints CSG faced, Garske wrote. "The presence of the Thanks- giving break added another ele- ment of complication to this," he wrote. "Overall this meant that when the Election Code passed we had 28 days to prepare for the elections if you include holiday time and weekends; if you remove holidays and weekends we were left with 15 days. " Despite these missed dead- lines, Garske said the only per- son who could file a complaint alleging injury from the election would be a candidate and even then the statute of limitations on filing that complaint has already passed. Garske also highlighted the new election code, saying that while it added stress to this elec- tion, it would ease tension in upcoming elections. "The creation of a new, com- prehensive Election. Code is the most important development here as it will ensure elections run smoothly in the future," Garske wrote. "We could have rushed to put an Election Code in place as quickly as possible, but believed it was more important that a strong framework be built upon which future elections could rely consis- tently." Rackham Student Government President Michael Benson said he too had problems with CSG's han- dling of the election. Benson said he called the CSG front office sev- eral times throughout September and October to find out when CSG had scheduled its elections so that RSG could schedule its elec- tions to coincide with CSG's. "Given how not put together CSG was this-time-around with their elections I'm not sure if we're going to overlap with them truthfully," Benson said. "If they can't hold one of their smaller elections to the quality and stan- dard that they have in the past ... I'm not sure if I feel comfortable leaving those details to them." LEO From Page 1A educating the future of the state of Michigan and we know who is doing that here; it's our lecturers doing the bulk of this work." LSA senior Ian Matchett, the founder of the Student Union of Michigan, also spoke at the event and said that a good edu- cation isn't the result of "fancy buildings" or "administrative pay." While SUM is dedicated to freezing tuition costs, Matchett said that shouldn't come at the expense of lecturers. University lecturer Lila Naydan, a LEO spokeswoman, said in an interview after the event that raising the wages of lecturers does not automati- cally mean that tuition will rise. "It would be very easy for the University of Michigan to do this without raising tuition," she said. "Tuition for (stu- dents) would not have to go up. We don't want tuition for (stu- dents) to go up." MYFAB5 From Page 1A ni Omeid Seirafi-pour, Calvin Schemanski and John Gulbron- son, MyFab5 utilizes a restau- rant ranking system instead of the typical star-rating system used by other similar sites. "With a typical star system, you give a business a rating from bad to good," Seirafi-pour said. "One star is really bad, five stars is really good. On our system you don't ever rate a business. In fact, on our platform you never talk about bad businesses. All you do is talk about your favorite businesses." Users select their "Fab Five" in different categories of restau- rants and bars, and the possi- bilities for rankings are endless because, unlike other sites, MyFab5 has an infinite selec- tion of subcategories in which to rank different establishments. Instead of a generalized blan- ket ranking for one type of res- taurant, MyFab5 allows users to get specific,-for example giving them the option to rank certain types of dishes. "You go to any number of websites to find a great restau- rant, but then you have to do some research to figure out why it's so great," Seirafi-pour said. "With us, we can give you that information much quicker. "It also gets quirky and ran- dom because people can create their own categories," Ruff said. "If you want to find a place for good pickles, we actually have a category for that." MyFab5 seeks to open up the restaurant website to be more socially oriented and to give users more control. In turn, they'll get a better view of what's going on in their city. With the design, people will be able to show other users what they like about a business, along with each business's unique style and qualities that keep them coming back to their favorite spots. MyFab5 hopes to make the restaurant-hunting experience more organic, as users can see what makes each restaurant special - from the street-food inspired burgers of Frita Bati- dos to the late-night magic of a slice of South U Pizza. With Ann Arbor's bustling restaurant scene and tech-savvy population, the city seems like a natural choice to be MyFab5's first city of operation - not to mention its University con- nection, Seirafi-pour said. The project is based out of TechArb, a University start-up accelera- tor supported by the Center for Entrepreneurship that aims to help University students bring their ideas to life and build via- ble ventures in an educational experience. Seirafi-pour said Ann Arbor's start-up environment was a draw to the city. "There's access to people to collaborate with (and) access to socially engaged students," he said. "The one thing that Ann Arbor can do right now is really show that we are a community that supports people." That's not to say that creat- ing a start-up company from scratch didn't have its obstacles. "I enjoy- running into dif- ficulties, because if you don't run into difficulties ... you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough," Seirafi-pour said. "We fail a lot, but the important thing is we've been learning a lot. If you ask us why we're the most excited, it's because we know this next month is going to be the best month and the month after that is going to be even better." He added that failure is part of the start-up formula. "You have to learn from your mistakes, you have to adapt," he said. The developers don't plan to stop at just ranking Ann Arbor restaurants. With the goals for expansion, they hope MyFab5 could eventually rank every- thing from sushi places to Gucci laces. "The long-term mission could be - imagine ranking your top five rap songs, top five albums in 2012, top five places for suits," Ruff said. "The opportunities are endless." MPOWERED From Page 1A police. Small said he plans to use the grant money to help outsource development or design elements of the app if he can't do them himself. "I had this idea, I've been wanting to make it happen, and I figured hey, I may as well enter it into the competition," Small said. "It was nice to see how other people felt about it." The Web & Software award went to LSA junior Jessica Ruiz, the creator of Family First, a social networking-type website where users can con- nect to family members across the nation, in the vein of Google Plus. Ruiz said she plans to apply for more grants in order to finance her endeavor, as well as put a team together. She said she was required to apply to the competition as part of an entre- r- preneurship class and didn't initially give much thought to winning. "I'm happy I won, obvious- ly," Ruiz said. "It's a good foot in the door for future entrepre- neurial activities." LSA sophomore Max Gilles, the marketing director of MPowered, said the event showcased exceptional Univer- sity talent and that he's looking forward to continuing the com- petitions next year. "It was really great to see the enetgy and the passion from the students here," Gilles said. "It was really great to see all the speakers too, the past win- ners." Student entrepreneurs will have at least two more chances to win grant money to further their startup ideas. At the end of the ceremony, Thomas Zur- buchen, the University's asso-. ciate dean of entrepreneurial programs, announced he will host another entrepreneur- ial competition this coming March, with a payout of $5,000 to one winner. MPowered also announced it is hosting another competition in January in association with Start Garden, a $15-million' fund that invests in two busi- ness propositions each week. During the competition, select- ed students will participate in a live "Shark Tank"-style pitch contest - a format based on the' ABC reality show "Shark Tank". Two students will each win a prize of $5,500 for their enterprise. 1000 Pitches is one of several annual events held by MPow- ered. The club also hosts career fair, a Startup Weekend where students pitch and develop a business plan in 54 hours, and a two-week trip to Kenya in which University students aid Kenyan high school students to develop businesses. All pitchvideos and addition- al information on the winners can be found on MPowered's website. MARKLEY From Page 1A cy room at the University Hospi- tal. University Police spokeswoman Diane Brown said the man was "significantly" injured, but has since been released from the Uni- versity Hospital. Due to privacy laws, the man's name is not being released at this time, and his cur- rent condition and specific inju- ries sustained during the incident are unknown. The man was visiting from Ohio, Brown said, and University Police believe that his hosts may have been sleeping in the room at the time of the incident. Brown noted that police do not think there were any witnesses and are investigatinghow the man fell from the window. "It's a personal injury inves- tigation to determine what hap- pened including if there was a crime committed, but at this point we have no evidence to indicate anything other than this being an accident," Brown said. The campus community was not notified because the incident did not pose a public safety risk, she added. Brown said window ,limiters, which prevent a window from opening fully, were in place and functioning at the time of the inci- dent. University students com- monly keep windows open, even in winter, as it allows-for tempera- ture control without individual thermostats. "It's a veryunfortunate circum- stances but there have been a lot of people who have lived in these residence halls and stayed in these residence halls and sometimes these accidents will happen," Brown said. "(We) try to minimize those and try to prevent them." In a similar incident in 1998, then-LSA freshman Courtney Cantor died when she fell out of her sixth floor room in Markley. Cantor had allegedly been consuming alcohol at a Phi Delta Theta fraternity party prior to the fall, and an autopsy report revealed traces ofGHB, a Schedule I controlled substance, The Michi- gan Daily reported at the time. Cantor's family suedthe fraternity and the University, which eventu- ally agreed to pay $100,000. r a i Daily Opinion. Page 4. rinceton M CAT Courses Courses preparinq for 2013 MCATs Start:1/6, 119. 1/13 FOLLOW THE DAILY ON TWITTER @michigandaily @michdailynews @theblockm @michdailyarts @michdailyphoto @michdailydesign Campus Mind Works Groups FREE drop-in education and support groups for any U-M student with Depression, Bipolar, or Anxiety Understanding Depression When: Tuesday, December 11 5:30-7:00 p.m. Where: North Campus Room 133, Chrysler Center Visit www.campusmindworks.org for more info. Presented by the U-M Depression University of Michigan Center in collaboration with Depression Ceter the College of Engineering