ANI BEZJIAN
FWF REPRESENTATIVE
ABOUT ME
I am a CC freshmen who was born in Boston and raised in Armenia. At my Armenian school, I joined the school’s first student council. As a council member, I advocated for what students really needed. I led initiatives on anti-bullying and anti-racism and my desire to bring about real change in our post-soviet style school grew. At Columbia, I feel fortunate that I have already met students who share my passion for student-led change especially in regard to the education we receive and hopefully the one we co-create with faculty and the administration.
MY PLATFORM
Being part of the group, Five Ways Forward, we have common campaign goals like the facilitation of student-administration interaction, creation of a Columbia Guidebook, improving the class registration process, and integration of more student public spaces on campus. If elected, I will focus on improving the class registration process. My goal is to make registration an easier and more informed process that enables students to register earlier and ensures that they get into the classes they want. I will strive to create a timeline in which students and advisors have Skype meetings during the early summer and initial registration takes place mid-summer. I believe expediting registration to mid-summer will create an approximate expectation for most classes and will help possibly eliminating caps on certain high-demand classes and/or create more introductory classes for students. As a representative, I would like to ensure incoming freshmen and rising sophomores feel comfortable during the entire process, and that they feel that they are in full control of their schedules and academic plans. I believe we need a more informative way to find out about classes and professors. CULPA, although a great resource for students, leaves me with mixed impressions about the professors. I would like to work towards compiling information about professors which are not all based on extreme opinions, rather a more informative way for students to understand if the class and professor are the right match. We also plan to coordinate with the Engineering Student Council to ensure that there is organization between two schools regarding class registration. My plans, however, are open to the opinions of my fellow students and I will act based upon what you would like to see happen most.