Lest he be beaten by abstain votes or the election doesn’t attain quorum, current ASFA and CSU councillor Alex Gordon will be ASFA’s president next year. While he’s confident that he will be in that position once polling closes, Gordon said he would have liked another candidate running against him.
“I almost wanted competition, I was really up for debating someone and having a battle,” he said.
In 2010 three candidates ran for ASFA president. Aaron Green of the Innovation slate ultimately came out on top. Without opposition, or a slate behind him, Gordon said his take on the campaigning process has changed.
“It makes me want to work a little harder,” Gordon said. “If I had someone to go against there would maybe be a platform or forum where we could discuss what’s important to us openly. But now there’s not so I have to work harder to get every student to know who I am and to see why they should vote for me.”
While his campaign plan is simply to get his name out to students and inform them about ASFA, Gordon has bigger plans if elected. The biggest issue on his list: tuition.
“I’m a Montreal resident so I pay Quebec fees, but still I pay for my own schooling, I pay rent, and it adds up. I can only imagine for international students and I think it’s atrocious how much it’s going to go up very soon,” he said. To tackle to tuition issue Gordon said he has a multi-faceted plan which aims to raise awareness and educate students about what’s going on. This, he added, serves a broader purpose.
“Canadian voter turnout for 18-25 is the lowest in Canada amongst all age ranges by a big margin. So, in my mind, the government doesn’t really care when we like riot and bitch and moan because we don’t really affect who’s going to be elected in office. So I think that one of the baby steps in getting them to listen to us is being socially and politically aware and educated.”
The larger issue of youth voting mirrors the poor voter turnouts which plague student elections at Concordia, another fact Gordon would like to help change in these next few weeks by finding out why a student doesn’t vote and ideally informing them as to what ASFA can offer them.
“If you haven’t heard of ASFA and you’ve never been to a cultural night or a midnight breakfast or frosh or the academic panel… then ASFA does nothing for you really,” Gordon said. “It defends your rights on tuition, bottled water and all these stances, but the direct benefits you don’t see it. I understand why some students are apathetic, but what I really want is involvement.”
Gordon summarized his goals as just to get people participating in their university and overcoming the apathy he said is currently afflicting Concordia students.
“It’s hard to reach out to 17,000 students and do what everyone wants, but that’s what I’m going to try,” he said. “University is once in a lifetime and you’ll never get a chance to do this again.”
