The CSU election race for 2011-2012 has the Action slate facing off against Your Concordia. Here are the presidential candidates’ thoughts about key issues for this election period.

The candidate: Khalil Haddad, Action

Current chief electoral officer at the Sustainability Action Fund, president of the Concordia Undergraduate Psychology Association and ASFA councillor, presidential hopeful Khalil Haddad said he at first debated whether or not to continue in student politics in the next school year. “Then I realized [that with] all the opportunities that were offered to me in the previous years, I had to do something next year because it wouldn’t be fair to students,” he said. “I have to give back somehow.”

On the subject of tuition, Haddad said, “A lot of students are worried that they won’t be able to pay for their studies, so one of our main priorities for next year is to be able to mobilize around the tuition hikes […] It’s very difficult of course, the government is adamant on wanting to increase tuition and we as a student body really need to be united.”

“We really need to engage the average student who is not really aware that they have the capacity to be able to show a strong stance regarding tuition hikes,” he continued.

As CEO of the Sustainable Action Fund, Haddad sees a strategic advantage in working with Sustainable Concordia to further initiatives like banning bottled water within the university. “As a university that considers itself to be one of be at the forefront of sustainability, it’s very disappointing to see that we haven’t done this already,” he said. “We’ve seen a whole movement in North America in the past few years and some universities have already banned bottled water. Water has to be accessible to everyone and we live in Canada, water is of good quality. Being able to [take] tap water, package it and sell it to students, I don’t think that’s something that should be done.”

Haddad also pointed to the Hive Café project as both a sustainable initiative and an example of a way he would further student space.  “For Loyola, the biggest thing would be to have a certain space where people can actually hang out, and what team Action wants to bring for next year is to really expand the Hive and make sure we have a Hive Café,” he said. “I mean, it’s going to be able to offer healthy food options; it’s going to be a place for students to hang out. Instead of just having a one-hour Loyola luncheon every week it’s going to be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and just looking at the design this year they started on the project and we want to be able to continue that next year.”

He added that since students made it clear that they are not comfortable with the current student centre project, “[team Action] wants to be able to make sure to hear what [it is students] actually want – Do they want one location? Do they want multiple locations? We want to look into that and we are going to achieve that by having public consultations next year.”

The candidate: Lex Gill, Your Concordia

A current CSU councillor who ran as part of the Fusion slate in 2010-2011, Lex Gill was the driving force behind the NO to the Canadian Federation of Students campaign the year before.

Gill is a third-year student of community and public affairs, and a member of überculture.

Of her involvement in the CSU, Gill said “probably since October or November, even though I ran with [last year’s victorious Fusion slate], I’ve been essentially functioning as opposition on CSU council. That’s partly because when [former CSU president Prince Ralph Osei] resigned, a lot of people felt like he represented a bit of a change, that he could push the union in a more progressive direction and when he left there was a lack of leadership. I feel like the response from the executive was to default to secrecy and lack of dialogue and so I was put in that position.”

Gill also initially campaigned for the student centre, but she [strongly opposed] the current manifestation of the project. She qualified the current contract between the CSU and the administration that governs the student centre as exploitative. “We’d like to renegotiate that contract so that it would meaningfully represent a lot of the ideas that we have about what student space looks like, what student space is, autonomous student space is student controlled,” she said. “Student space is not a shopping mall.”

Combating the recent provincial tuition hikes is also something highlighted as part of Your Concordia’s mandate. “We also have a mandate to fight arbitrary increases in ancillary fees. It’s part of our platform as well to increase the CSU bursaries program by 30 to 50 per cent which is really vital; it’s part of a broader process of doing meaningful work to fight for accessible education and that begins with strong research and advocacy and lobbying along with the ability and force to mobilize effectively,” she said.

Gill was very critical of the current executive’s actions this year when it came to tuition issues. “The CSU has really failed this year as an organization to inform, educate and respond to the clear threat of these increases,” she said. “For us, working in direct solidarity with other student organizations and federations including the FEUQ, Montreal student unions as well as rebuilding ties with Quebec CEGEPs is really vital because together it’s possible to just say ‘we won’t take it.’”

She also stressed the importance of improving on the CSU’s relationship with other bodies within Concordia, adding that she felt that after former Concordia president Judith Woodsworth’s departure the CSU “should have been standing in solidarity with the faculty who had recognized this as a major problem of basic democracy and accountability at the board.”