Zeina Al Quraini
Faculty: ENCS
Position: Council
Affiliation: Change
“We want to return the control of council to students and get it to work in the interests of students. There are a lot of things that I would like to change personally in my faculty, for example students are not well prepared going into the exams . . . I think that tutorials should be implemented more often for engineering students because there aren’t enough tutoring sessions.”
Shandell Jack
Faculty: ENCS
Position: Council
Affiliation: Unity
“I felt like there was a lot of petty politics that were guiding the actions from some of the councillors and I felt like there needed to be a stronger pull towards unifying the body for the betterment of the university. I felt that we’ve made great strides this year and I think that a lot of that work needs to continue in terms of trying to actually make sure the issues important to students are addressed by council.”
Heather Gore, Daniel Madero and Feras Younis are also running for council for the faculty of ENCS.
Sheldon Baerg, James Barry, Kenroy Broderick, Catherine Dicaire, Julie Girardin, Dalia Guy, Ben Jackson, Alejandro Lobo-Guerrero, Amero Mainy, Kyle Nayman, Bryan Solloway and Roberto Tesolin are running for council for the faculty of Arts and Science.
Louise Birdsell Bauer
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Independent
“I think I can make a difference. I have a lot of experience working with and for students. I’ve been a mentor for two years, I’ve also worked with the sociology and anthropology student union . . . as an independent I would provide a certain amount of transparency to council avoiding partisan politics. Councillors should be independent, I don’t think they should be based on a party system . . . it’s supposed to be students fighting for students.”
Ryan Burnham
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Change
“To return the power to regular students. We’re not professional student politicians. Just to give the power back to the students, the regular students. The councillors from Unity, they’re more professional politicians, a lot of them are doing it for their own personal gain . . . We’re more everyday students, you know they complain, they don’t like what’s going on. But we actually got pissed off enough to go for it and to move into politics to try and change something.”
Amine Dabchy
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Unity
“As an international student . . . I would like to stop the increase of student fees for international students because I believe that Concordia has some problems attracting international students lately, so to fill this gap they’re trying to tax international students even more money.
But the problem is that we don’t see any change at Concordia even though we pay more.”
Nicole Devlin
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Independent
“It seems like a lot of the councillors didn’t even know what the issues were. As a bystander, I knew more about the issues. I have [students’] best interests in mind, because I am one, I have no agenda . . . I’m in favour of cutting costs, I don’t like this tax-and-spend . . . We shouldn’t be paying more money, like the extra fee levy. Expense accounts and salaries definitely need to be looked into.”
Dania Fawaz
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Change
“There’s a lot of things that were accomplished on council this year and there’s a lot of things that still need to be done for next year. I believe that someone that’s been on council . . . would understand better how it’s going to be next year. [I want to bring] change and democracy, there’s a lot of things that happened this year that were against the bylaws or the regulations and we can’t afford as a union to have this throughout the years.”
Andrew Fernandes
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Change
“I believe there’s important work to be done in student government and that it can be done best from council. I believe in fighting for lower tuition fees, in fighting for more open student government and I believe that the current slate of executives and the Unity team needs desperately to be held accountable by someone, and that’s the role that council is meant to fulfil. The highest priority in the coming school year is tuition fees. With the lifting of the freeze by the government, [and the fact that] the university has a nine-figure debt-load, there’s a very real possibility that our fees will be going up in the near future.”
Nicola Kinley
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Change
“I’ve been to several council meetings this past year and I’ve been very disappointed with the way things have been run. We understand students because we are students. We’re not looking out for number one, we’re not trying to flesh out our resumes, we’re honestly worried about where our money is going and we want to find out . . . all the money not just the CSU money . . . right now all I see is money going into a black abyss and disappearing and I want some sort of accountability for it . . . ancillary fees, my tuition, the money that I pay towards the CSU. Every cent of what I pay I want to know where it goes.”
Nicole Murphy
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Unity
“I want to help students out. I want to do something good for other people . . . I want to help out and represent international students, arts and science students and learn about the CSU. I think a really important thing is building a Concordia community and finding types of events and doing things that get all types of students interested in wanting to come out to our events. I find that a lot of times not that many kids go to things. It’s kind of cold here sometimes; people aren’t that friendly and I think we need to be more open to each other, accepting.”
Prince Ralph Osel
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Unity
“I’m doing a specialization in psychology, so Loyola is my main campus. I think the CSU is missing at Loyola. I think to vote another Unity group into power would be to continue the good work that’s being done.
First and foremost I think the Hive at Loyola is a good thing and the food that they serve from Monday to Thursday. I think they’ve gone a step in the right direction.”
Amir Sheth
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Unity
“I wanted to join an organization [that] represented students. I don’t feel that students have a direct say. That’s why I’m doing it and I hope other councillors are running so that if people want a direct say they can go to the councillors, who will bring it to the meetings and not just shun away their problems.”
Kevin Thompson
Faculty: Arts & Science
Position: Council
Affiliation: Unity
“Even though I’m running for Unity I don’t totally support Unity’s stance on everything, so I want to voice my opinion. . . I was talking to some rez students and they were telling me the food there is atrocious, how they’re paying $417 a month and pretty much no one eats the food there because it’s really that bad and apparently students are getting sick from it . . . I want people to express what it is they want and what they want fixed.”
Katherine Belanger
Faculty: Fine Arts
Position: Council
Affiliation: Change
“I’ve looked at how much money I’ve been paying to the school and to my student union to get stuff done and it’s not happening and it really bothers me . . . If I win I’d like to see more fiscal accountability, looking at where money is spent and why . . . I’d like to see the [CSU budget] put up on the website, that’s super easy, lots of organizations put their budget up on their website. If we’re the ones paying the fees we should have that information. If there’s nothing to hide why can’t we put it up on the website?”
Samantha Banks, Kayla Cardinal, William James Macgregor and Rio Mitchell are also running for council for the faculty of Fine Arts.
Jessica Cohen, Duy Ba Christopher Nguyen, Sleiman Fakhreddine, Eddie Fuchs, Stephen Paek, Kaysy Marie Paolucci and Sean Zimmermann are running for council for the faculty of JMSB.
Patrick Magallanes (Arts & Science), Waqar Ahmed Siddiqui (JMSB), Catherine Reimer (ENCS) and Noah Stewart (A&S) are candidates for seats on the Board of Governors.
Megan Sheppard (A & S), Audrey Peek (A & S), Samuel Bellemare (Fine Arts) and Kalil Diaz (JMSB) are are candidates for seats on the university’s Senate. Diaz has already replaced Andrew Fernandes on Senate.
Noah Stewart
Program: Arts and Science
Running for Board of
Governors
Affiliation: Unity
“The board of governors is clearly the highest decision making body in the university and is the battleground for a lot of the most important discussions and fights. I feel that the most important thing that a governor can do is to be a strong voice for accessible, affordable and high quality education. I intend to take that message to the university’s highest decision-making body. I think the biggest issue is the BoG [is] voting to increase international student tuition fees by 10 per cent.”
Elections for all positions, including executive positions, for which the Unity slate is the sole candidate, will be held March 25 – 27.
