From stephen@rabbit.eng.miami.edu Wed May 9 19:25:11 2001 Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 02:08:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Stephen Murrell To: ACM Members Subject: Election Material, Please read soon. It looks as though everybody who wishes to stand for election has now sent in their few words. I have included them all below in alphabetical order on last name. We have five people standing for four positions: very exciting! In fact, it is really important that we keep as many interested people doing something as possible, and we want to make sure that next year (when even more people will graduate and disappear) we still have some people around who know something about the organisation. Together with the fact that we really haven't had any opportunity for you to get to know each other, I think it would be a good idea if we have FIVE OFFICERS. If that does not meet with obejections, what we're doing now is deciding who will have which position, but all five people who had an interest will be involved and give us some continuity in the future. Are there any objections? Anyway, the five people standing are: Tamara Almeyda Samuel Covert Michael Drumheller Zsolt Kira Andrew Tappert (details below) The positions to be elected are: President Vice-President Treasurer Secretary Fifth Wheel (or whatever we call it, if you allow it) Nobody has objected to the idea of a kind-of free-for-all election, where the person with the most votes gets their most desired position, and so on down the list, so that is probably what we should do. We could spend hours discussing the best possible voting scheme, but we haven't got hours available. So I have made a plan, and if nobody objects, it is what we'll do. The Voting Plan: Everybody arranges the five candidates in order of preference. The person they put at the top of their list gets 16 votes, their second choice gets 8 votes, third gets 4 votes, fourth gets 2 votes, and their last choice gets 1 vote. If you hate a candidate, just don't put them in your list, and you are giving them zero votes. Of course you are allowed (and probably expected) to vote for yourself. When all the votes are counted, the candidates are arranged in order, the one with the most votes first. We then run down the list in order, each candidate gets the office they most wanted out of those offices not yet taken. So, the winner gets the position they want. Whoever comes second gets the office they wanted unless the winner already took it, in which case they get their second choice of office. And so on, down to the end of the list. If anybody does not state a list of preferences for offices, it will be assumed that they most want to be president, and least want to be fifth wheel, with the five offices in the order I listed them above. On Monday, I will send a ballot email to everyone individually. Each of you reply to that email just listing the candidates in your preferred order. Make sure your reply is sent BY early Wednesday, votes will be counted at approximately mid-day on Wednesday. To protected against the very unlikely event of florida-style vote fraud, each individual ballot email that I send out will include a secret two word phrase. Include that two word phrase in your reply. I will keep a list of all the two word phrases sent out, but I will not keep any record of who was sent which phrase. That way I can make sure that each person only gets one vote, and I can also make the voting secret: When each reply is received, I will append it (without record of sender) to a single large file of responses. I think that's everything. Sorry this is such a long message, but the virtual impossibility of meeting in person for elections (or any other purpose really) means that everything has to be spelled out in detail. Now for the candidates' "speeches". I am including them exactly as received, ordered on surname. I have no preferred candidates, and it is none of my business anyway, so I'm not going to try to push anyone. I am not adding any comments about anyone, although there are plenty that I would add if it were appropriate: I'm very pleased with all five candidates, and don't think you can go wrong whomsoever you choose. No candidate gives me that dreadful sinking feeling that I have had a few times in past years! I said that I'd remove any particular obscenities from speeches, but nothing strikes me as obscene enough to merit removal, and censorship is one of my least favourite aspects of modern society, so I left them all alone. If I had thought a bit longer, I would never have brought up the subject in the first place. Also, I don't get a vote. It is just you student members. Tamara Almeyda My name is Tamara (Tammy) Almeyda and I am going to be a sophomore next year majoring in IT. I would like to be either the secretary or treasurer because I enjoy these positions and I have quite a bit experience in them. Throughout high school I served in these offices for several clubs and I came to be quite good at taking notes and minutes and keeping all of the club matters and finances in order. If elected that's just what I'll do, and if not I'd still enjoy being an active member of the club. Samuel Covert My name is Samuel W Covert, I am a Cuban American born and raised in Miami. I would be a worthy candidate for the ACM elections, as I have been on the boards of several scholastic groups throughout high school. I have several great ideas for what we can accomplish as a group, and am willing to continue learning and working with others on interesting and dynamic computer programming projects, as computer programming is one of my passions. Michael Drumheller I feel that we should use what we have, and not just among ourselves. I really like the idea of the high school contests, and we could even set up something beyond that, opening it to the community in general, for people to be able to form teams, etc. We could sort them out into divisions and go from there. Also, perhaps we could set up some sort of "unofficial campus tech support" thing for the many students who have issues with their computers, whether it be connecting to the network, or what have you. A third thing that would be fun to do would be to give ourselves a hardware workout as well, and get into some robotics/AI stuff. True, we're a little pack of computer geeks, but this is stuff we could definately pull off. Zsolt Kira I'm Zsolt Kira. I'm about to become a senior with a dual major in computer engineering and computer science. If elected I'd like to help in setting up the high school competitions, because that's the idea I like best. I'm also pretty interested in computer graphics, having taken a course this semester in it, so the game writing idea appeals to me as well (a 3D game, not a wimpy text-based one). Andrew Tappert I've been involved with UM ACM for a couple years now. I went to the 1999 and 2000 ACM regional programming contests. The first we did well at, placing 4th out of 73. I was impressed by that result, since I had only been with the group a short time then, I'd never done a programming contest before, and hadn't practiced much for that one. It gave be hope for even better results the next year. But such was not to be. Last fall we really fucked up (sorry Dr. Murrell, but you said you'd act as an obscenity filter). After practicing far more for the 2000 contest than we had for the one the year before, we went and turned in a pathetic middle-of-the-pack performance on the day when it counted. That wasn't fun. If we're going to keep doing these contests, we've got to do better than that. I'm really not an overly competitive kind of guy, but I can't stand going to a programming contest and not kicking ass. So that would be my priority as an elected official of the ACM. Some other things: I was elected Secretary and Treasurer a couple years ago (we had a dearth of candidates). I was acting Vice President after our old one graduated last May. Not that I did much, since the ACM has been rather disorganized lately. With the President not a student at UM anymore and me taking the semester off, there weren't any elected officials around this semester. (I've been in Virgina this semester working at the CIA. I'll be back late in the summer for the fall semester.) I haven't totally abandoned my post: I've been in touch with Dr. Murrell and ACM member Zsolt Kira, constantly nagging them to have ACM meetings, do student organization paperwork, etc. I set up a mailing list for the ACM today so we can communicate with each other a bit better. The ACM tends to meet rather irregularly, so I think a mailing list is a long overdue avenue of communication. Please subscribe to it by sending mail with the subject "subscribe um-acm" to minimalist@rabbit.eng.miami.edu. (mimimalist is the name of the mailing list management software.) Our official acm email address is acm@rabbit.eng.miami.edu. I occaisonally get email from the national organization sent there regarding scholarship contests, news from other college chapters, etc. I'll be sending all that out to the mailing list in the future. In the mean time, I can think of a few good topics for discussion on the mailing list, once you all sign up: what are the most interesting programming classes at UM? (are there any?), and what programming-related summer or part-time employment have people had? (anything rewarding, intellectually or otherwise?). Look forward to talking with you all on there... The End.