BOE selects new member

Though he's the Board of Elections' newest hire Val Tenyotkin already has three years of experience with the Student Code.

Student Congress approved Ph.D. student Val Tenyotkin as vice chairman of student government's Board of Elections on Tuesday night.

But with three years of service in Student Congress under his belt Tenyotkin is anything but a newbie.

Ryan Morgan sophomore chairman of the BOE" said he is not intimidated by the new vice chairman's experience.

""I'm actually really excited to have Val on our board"" he said.

He probably knows more about the Student Code and election law than anybody else I know.""

But the two already are revealing differing views on election law.

Morgan said one of his major goals for the year is to revise election law in the Student Code"" clarifying terms such as ""group spending"" that he said are ambiguous.

Tenyotkin said he thinks the revisions he helped make last semester clarified the Code sufficiently.

""Last time we ­— and by we" I mean I — reviewed it I saw very little room for interpretation" Tenyotkin said.

Tenyotkin, who started attending UNC as a physics graduate student in 2001 or 2002 (he can't remember which), said he joined Student Congress by accident.

One of his friends saw a note in a graduate student forum encouraging grad students to run, and the two decided to give it a shot together.

I got elected and kind of got swept in with all the fun" so to speak. Couldn't leave. For three years" Tenyotkin said.

During his tenure, Tenyotkin served as finance committee chairman in 2006-07 and made an unsuccessful bid for speaker for the 2007-08 session.

When asked what he thought his most significant contributions to Congress were, Tenyotkin began describing legislative debates with the air of a war veteran.

Early last session, he helped defeat a measure that he said would effectively prevent any increases to student fees.

It would have required two-thirds of representatives to vote to bring the eight Congress-controlled increases to a student referendum.

Two-thirds of Congress can't agree on the color of the shirt we want to wear for that year of Congress"" he said.

Though the measure passed Congress, it ultimately was vetoed.

Later that fall, he opposed two measures that would have limited the stipends received by executive branch officials.

Tenyotkin, who hopes to graduate in December, said he left Congress at the end of last session in order to focus on his thesis.

But he said he missed being active in student government and decided to get involved with the Board of Elections, which has no returning members.

Quite frankly"" he said, part of it — I was just nostalgic to do something useful.""



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