CSU campaign period in full swing

The Concordia Student Union’s campaign period for the upcoming elections began at 12:01 a.m. last night.

Historically, poster night, when candidates rush to put up their campaign posters on the walls of both campuses, has been a competitive tradition at Concordia, but this time around one of the affiliated teams decided to take another approach.

As of 9 p.m. Monday, Melanie Hotchkiss’ affiliation Concordia Could Be began tacking up posters throughout the Hall building, while Schubert Laforest’s affiliation, A Better Concordia, was nowhere to be found.

CEO Ismail Holoubi said that he had given each team notice of the 9 p.m. start and that it was simply a matter of one being ready and the other not.

Arts and Science Federation of Associations VP internal and presidential candidate Laforest, said in a phone interview that his goal was not to overload students with too much information all at once.

“We’re taking an incremental approach,” he said. “We were focusing on other aspects of the campaign.”

Laforest went on to say that he doesn’t see the team’s lack of poster exposure early in the campaign as a disadvantage.

“It just wasn’t the first priority in our mind,” said Laforest. “Students are intelligent, they will see the posters and they will decide for themselves.”

Laforest said that he could not give a definite time when posters would be up, but he assured The Concordian it would be done by Tuesday night.

Although current CSU councillor and other presidential candidate Hotchkiss was wondering where her opponents were, her focus remained on the campaign.

“There are so many opportunities of what Concordia could be,” said Hotchkiss. “We want to be the ones who make Concordia more accessible, representative, collaborative, sustainable, empowering and fun. I want to be the candidate who is there to support both my team and the students.”

The competition is not shaping out to be very fierce with 15 candidates running for the 14 Arts and Science council seats, one candidate running for student representative, three running for each of the three council seats available for Fine Arts and Engineering and Computer Science, and four candidates running for the six available seats for John Molson School of Business.
At an information meeting held on the evening of March 4, of the 42 candidates running, only three showed up.

The CEO and the deputy electoral officers decided to hold two debates, on Thursday, March 8 and on Thursday, March 15, that will see each candidate running for an executive position debate with his or her opponent.

The first debate will take place in the common area of the 7th floor of the Hall Bulding and the second one will be held at the The Hive at Loyola. Both debates will feature a Q&A session for students to ask questions directly to the candidates.

At Sunday’s information meeting, Holoubi also addressed the concern that some candidates could use their current offices to promote themselves or their affiliation during non-campaigning time.

“If I witness any violation or get any contestation, I will immediately ask candidates to step down from their current offices,” Holoubi said.

President
Melanie HotchkissSchubert Laforest
VP Finance
Stephanie Beauregard           Keny Toto
VP Academic and Advocacy
Chuck Wilson Lucia Gallardo
VP External Affairs
Cameron Monagle Simon-Pierre Lauzon
VP Clubs and Internal Affairs
Museb Abu-Thuraia           Nadine Atallah
VP Student Life
Lina Saigol            Alexis Suzuki
VP Sustainability
Iain Meyer-Macaulay        Andrew Roberts
VP Loyola
Jonathan Braziller             Stefan Faina

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