CSU Elections

Change

“We really want to bring change to Concordia,” said Kurt Reckziegel, candidate for president. “Get rid of the petty politics, set that all aside and focus on what the CSU is supposed to be doing, which is actually serving students.”
The CSU this year has been involved a lot of bullshit politics,” said Audrey Peek candidate for VP university affairs. “There have been a lot of nasty things that have gone down and we really want to take a 180 degree turn away from that, focus on getting the student union back on representing student interests.”
“There’s not enough emphasis on financial information,” said Reckziegel “So we’re looking to open a financial office so people can get information on finances. How to apply for loans and bursaries, how to file their taxes, how to apply for a credit card, how to get rid of the credit card, get rid of credit card debt.”
Change said they wants to look at how the union spends its money.
“We’re going to do an effectiveness budget,” said Peek. “Look at making sure that all the money students pay is being used effectively.”
Peek said they would try to end CSU infighting by working “with everyone to bring issues to the table. Work with all the groups to make sure everybody’s being treated equally and that all students are being served properly.”
“The CSU office should not be a fortress,” said Peek.
“There’s kind of a disconnect at the moment between the student union and the students,” said Reckziegel.
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Fresh

Presidential candidate Joel Suss said he got the idea to run for the CSU after he couldn’t get anyone from the union to help him start a club.
“We couldn’t get anyone to talk to us,” he said. “With that and the fact there’s so many scandals attached to the CSU, we just said ‘hey, this is ridiculous, their not helping us, we’re paying them and they’re not helping us’ and we though ‘hey, why not just run for the CSU?'”
His team want to have a more McGill-style frosh, which he thinks will help boost school spirit. “The concert’s great, and people love that, but it’s not the best uniter.”
If his team is elected, Suss said they’d reach out to students, through surveys and getting people to give suggestions online and in person. “Trying to get people to give their opinion about what they want from the CSU,” he said. “The vast majority of students have no clue about the CSU.”
“I think it’s a huge problem, because a lot of people don’t know this and don’t know where their money is going and don’t know they’re paying money into this organization.
The also want to create a financial counselling service, “to help people plan their finances and reduce their debts.”
“We’re not going to promise things that aren’t going to happen,” he said. “We want to promise things we can achieve and we will achieve.”

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Vision

According to Prince Ralph Osei Vision candidate for VP services and Loyola, their campaign is “about the students of Concordia being offered a better choice.”
“It’s a question of trust, we want, and we will if elected to rebuild the trust between the students and the CSU,” Amine Dabchy candidate for president.
Osei said that if Vision is elected they would give students a plan at the beginning and then at the end of the year. “Let them know how much was actually received and how much was actually spent on the various programs and items we intended to do for the students.”
Stephanie Siriwardhana candidate for VP clubs and promotions said student clubs are important to her team. “I love clubs and I think that’s the biggest way students get in touch with their Concordia and if you look around there’s not a lot of school spirit,” she said. “That’s how people follow their passions outside of going to class and then leaving back home.”
The team also wants to look at buying property for a new student centre right away, using the $6 million the CSU has collected so far for the project.
Dabchy said the want to “make it more transparent, make it trustworthy, we need people to trust us, I think this is the big issue, because without trust there’s nothing that can be done.”

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Decentralization

“We want to restructure the governance, right now students don’t really have a say in what’s going on, they’re not represented,” said Marouf Mahmoud, Decentralization’s candidate for president.
“There isn’t fair representation,” he said. “It’s a small body of students acting on behalf of 32,000 student.”
The slate would replace council with a “general assembly,” composed of representatives from student departmental organizations.
Mahomoud said he thinks this system would work better because students are closer to their representatives.
“If someone is not doing his job, then we know who he is, he’s the president of my association, I know him by name, I probably have one of my classes with him. And we can get rid of him, if we want to, much easier.”
“The chances of corruption are much less in this type of a system,” he said.
Because representatives would be in closer contact with the students they represent, he said they would be more accessible.
CSU funds would be divided among the departmental associations, by the General Assembly.
“If we were elected we would get rid of executive positions once we put the system in place,” he said.
“That will cut a lot of overhead, students will save a lot of money,” added Humza Ali Makhdoom, who is running for VP internal affairs.

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Attention

Unlike the rest of the slates running in the CSU election, Tessa Star, the sole member of ATTENTION, said she has no intention of winning. Instead her goal is to raise awareness about the CSU among students. She wants to get “as many eyes as possible on the CSU and on the council so they’ll go by the rules.”
“I don’t have any faith in the system anymore,” she said. “They don’t go by their own rules, that’s their biggest problem.”
She’d like to see the CSU give more support to student groups like the Co-Op Bookstore and CUTV.
“It seems like everything’s going the commercial way instead of the independent way, I think I would try and focus more on bringing it back to when activism was a big thing here, and I’m not saying I want another riot, but I’d like a lot more student voices being heard and student ideas and student initiatives and the CSU helping them.”

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New Union

“We’re running to reform the CSU from top to bottom,” said Robert Sonin, candidate for president. “We want a much fairer, more transparent election system.”
“Basically what’s happened over the years is each winning team puts in measures that make it easier for the incumbents to win, and over the years it’s meant that the incumbents win,” he said. New Union wants to set up an independent student election office that could be used by any student group. “All the groups that use it would have a member on the board that runs it,” he said.
He said this office would help level the playing field for elections because it would provide all the resources for candidates, eliminating the possibility for slates to break spending limits.
“Even if you run a person in every single spot I think it comes up to $3,000 and these guys are spending way more than that,” he said.
He also wants to ensure the information about finances of the union are available to all students, when he was a member of council he wrote bylaw 15, which requires the CSU to make their financial records to all students in their office during “normal business hours,” a rule he said hasn’t been followed.
“We want to take a good look at all the fees. And make sure students are getting their money’s worth,” he said I don’t see where they’re spending the money, if they’re spending $1.8 million, what are they spending it on?”
“They behave like their under siege, like their under attack all the time, so they behave in a kind of secretive and paranoid and defensive way and that’s no way to run a student union, you have to run it openly,” he said.

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