Councillors meet to discuss the international student hike campaign and look back on Orientation
During the Concordia Student Union (CSU) meeting on Wednesday, it was announced a town hall meeting will be taking place on Nov. 16 from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Mezzanine of the Hall building, where students can learn about their new International Tuition Hike campaign.
The newly-created campaign was announced when the CSU posted an open letter on their website, saying that the university was planning a tuition hike affecting students in deregulated programs.
“We want to reach out to everyone—this is a reason why the CSU exists,” said CSU vice president of external affairs and mobilization coordinator, Aloyse Muller. He said he was surprised with the Commerce and Administration Students Association (CASA), as they have not shown any interest in the campaign yet. “CASA has the biggest number of international students in the university,” he said.
Muller said the CSU has hired two international students, Ali Sherra from the faculty of Arts and Science and Aida Sidibé, who studies at JMSB, to help with the campaign. Muller said they will help inform and mobilize students, through general outreach towards student groups, flyering, postering, developing materials and event organizing, to name a few.
“The CSU is and will be campaigning against this hike—it’s our mission,” said Muller. “But the opposition needs to come and be led by the students themselves.” He strongly suggested students follow the example of Samuel Miriello and Sepideh Zangeneh, two students who helped organize the campaign independently a few weeks ago, through creating a Facebook group called “Concordia University Against international Tuition Hike.”
Following the tuition hikes discussion, student life coordinator Rachel Gauthier presented a document which detailed how the orientation events at the beginning of the Fall 2016 semester went. Gauthier said she is grateful for the hard work the CSU coordinators contributed to Orientation.
According to the Orientation budget Gauthier presented, the CSU only spent $117,388.45 of the original $160,000 budget, leaving them with a surplus of $42,611.55.
Gauthier said, overall, most of the Orientation events were a success. The one exception was the OUMF comedy show, which didn’t have a lot of attendees. She said she believes the event was not well advertised, and the fact that the show was on the second day of school didn’t leave the CSU enough time to promote the event. She ended her speech by saying she recommends the next team to take on orientation week only schedule a week of events, as the second week saw a dip in event attendance, since students began to focus on school more during the second week.
