At the Oct. 23 regular council meeting, the Concordia Student Union planned to deal with upcoming matters including using stickers as promotional material and whether a student-run initiative should take over the Java U space in the mezzanine of the Hall building.
The Community Food Coalition had requested a question on ballots for the November byelections at the CSU special council meeting on Oct. 16, asking whether a student-run co-operative can take over the current Java U location. The café’s contract at this site will expire in May 2014.
“I don’t want to listen to two hours of council playing junior lawyer and discussing this,” said CSU Councillor Wendy Kraus-Heitmann, regarding who should consider this question. “It’s their job […] I really would like [the question] to go to JB, they can think about it and get back to us.”
The JB’s role is to interpret the validity of the CSU’s regulations and bylaws and to settle disputes between members.
Council then discussed the question of whether stickers should continue to be used as promotional material, though not all executives considered it to be an urgent matter.
Upon being asked to approve CSU spending on stickers, VP Finance, Scott Carr prepared and sent a document to council members that addressed ethical questions regarding stickers as a source of communication, and where the proper usage and sustainability concerns were outlined.
“We used [stickers] for our campaign and me seeing that they were all over the place and vandalizing things doesn’t really make me super comfortable or super proud that those were our stickers,” said Carr.
Carr explained it should be discussed since referendums are coming up in which stickers could be used as promotional material and that the opinions of council members on the issue were important.
He proposed for the council to decide whether to continue using stickers as promotional material, find other ways of promotion, or to use stickers with weaker adhesives that did not require a toxic cleaning product to dissolve, as they do now.
“With many campaigns promoting sustainability, our credibility once again comes into question,” Carr wrote in his summary.
The CSU adopted the amendment to expand the scope of this referral to the campaigns committee and Concordia’s Sustainability Action Fund. The union chose to put a hold on sticker purchases and reimbursements until the next meeting, where these groups would make a report for promotional material similar to stickers.
During the lengthy closed session of the meeting, several students were appointed to committees such as the Sustainability Action Fund, the events committee, the policy committee and the external and campaigns committee. Three students were appointed to the JB.