Vision: pettiness
Dear editor,
It is the time of year for CSU elections. Students must make an informed decision about who will represent them for the year ahead.
Over the past two weeks I have heard a number of classroom speeches from both the Vision and Change CSU slates. I have been struck by one thing; the pettiness of the Vision slate. While Change’s speeches have discussed their platform and what they have planned for Concordia, every speech I have heard by a Vision campaigner has focused entirely on the faults of the other team.
I may not be as informed as I could be about school politics, but I know I won’t be voting for a team that spends all of their time dishing negative politics. It’s juvenile that 20-plus-year-old campaigners spend all their time putting down the other team. Vision is playground politics at its worst and I outgrew the sandbox a long time ago.
Cayley Butt
Études francaises and political science
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Vision: anti-semitism
Dear editor,
I am writing to express disgust at a Facebook message circulating by the Vision slate that clearly made anti-Semitic statements against Jewish students running in the election. At the risk of stating the obvious, Concordia students should unequivocally condemn all acts of anti-Semitism and bigotry.
Any act of discrimination should not be tolerated by the Concordia community and makes me hesitant to vote for a team that could lead Concordia back to the days when Jewish students feared attending class due to a viciously anti-Semitic student union that went so far as to take away Hillel’s club status as was done in 2002.
I call upon the Vision party to make a commitment to battling bigotry on this campus in order to better ensure that intolerance and hate have no place at Concordia.
Leora Kimmel
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The Irony of “Change”
Dear editor,
I would like to express my extreme dissatisfaction with the Change Concordia slate. Not only do they make irresponsible campaign promises (such as promising “free Habs tickets”), but these people are the cronies and supporters of this year’s executive.
As a reminder, it’s this year’s executive that has been linked to a signed affidavit from ASEQ’s president stating that the campaign manager for Unity and its “successor slates” sought to extort $25,000 for campaign finances from him, arbitrarily attempted to kick members of the “independent” judicial board off for not toting the party-line, and committed a host of other acts breaching CSU Bylaws.
Change is only the latest manifestation of the Evolution/Experience/Unity dynasty that stole the CSU from Concordia students, and sold it out to the Canadian Federation of Students. The irony of their name is a frustration for me; do they think we are stupid? Something must be done about this mess.
Although I have my share of skepticism of any parties running this year, I see VISION as the best alternative to cleaning up the mess “Change” and its predecessors have left us with. The team is made up of a variety of people from many backgrounds in the Concordia community, three of which I have worked with personally and can vouch for. They have shown their commitment to reforming the CSU. I am especially impressed by the promise their counsellors made on Facebook to involve the other parties running this year in making changes to CSU bylaws as a means to prevent what’s been happening to the organization – our organization – for too many years now.
Louise Birdsell Bauer
