Tag: byelections

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CSU referendum questions spark a digital debate

CSU VP Morgan Pudwell has spent years working on CSU policy reform and says the bylaw changes are well overdue. Photo by Navneet Pall

A Facebook event sprung up last week encouraging students to vote against the two referendum questions regarding the Concordia Student Union’s revised bylaws in this week’s byelections, opening up a lively online discourse.

Created last week by Ace Szmolyan, a political science student at Concordia, the event is listed online as “Demand Knowledge: Vote NO for the CSU Bylaw changes.”

“I meant to raise awareness by this campaign,” wrote Szmolyan in one of many posts on the event’s wall. “I feel like this page could be a great place for students to raise any questions or concerns they have regarding the upcoming referendum.

The topics debated on the event page range from the re-naming and re-purposing of the student centre fund, the changes made to the elections process, and the removal of the Senate of Faculty Associations, a body made up of representatives from each faculty association.

CSU VP Morgan Pudwell has spent years working on CSU policy reform and says the bylaw changes are well overdue. Photo by Navneet Pall
Some users also noted an alleged lack of public awareness about these bylaw changes when compared to the campaigning seen in the lead-up to the Nov.10 tuition fee demonstration.

CSU executives and council members have been posting direct responses to concerns on the wall of the Facebook event in back-and-forth conversations that have so far remained civil.

Morgan Pudwell, CSU VP advocacy and outreach and official chair of the “Yes” committee for the bylaw-related referendum questions, wrote that although she’s excited about the new bylaws, it’s good to see students engaging within their union.

“In general I think students have been asking meaningful questions, and I’m happy to engage in that sort of discourse,” Pudwell wrote.

The event has over 140 members listed as “attending,” including several executives from the Arts and Science Federation of Associations.

ASFA VP internal Schubert Laforest said in an interview that some of the new bylaws lack clarity. He pointed to the the wording of one proposed new bylaw in particular, which states that candidates for CSU executive positions, the council of representatives, the Board of Governors, and the Senate, will run individually. The bylaw would effectively put an end to the slate system, where candidates are voted in as a team.

His concern is that unless the wording is made clearer, someone could use the rule to prevent candidates from affiliating with each other and running as a group.

“I’ve seen a lot go wrong when things are left up to interpretation,” said Laforest, referring to the CSU’s history of contentious elections.

Former CSU president Heather Lucas joined the “Vote No” event despite having been a part of the reform process during her time in office.

“If the ‘No’ campaign had not created their Facebook page, there wouldn’t be the essential discussion and documentation that students need in order to not be going to the ballots uninformed and voting blindly,” wrote Lucas in an email.

CSU council passed a motion on Nov. 23 and a document displaying all revisions made throughout the reform process has since been made available. The CSU has also created a “Vote YES” event which has over 100 people attending as of press time.

Students will be able to vote on whether to accept the new bylaws during byelections this week on Nov. 29, 30 and Dec.1.

“Reform is much needed at the CSU, and for too long it has been put off,” Pudwell wrote. “If any changes are to be made to the CSU electoral policies they would need to be approved during this byelection in order to effect the upcoming general elections in March.”

To view the comprehensive proposed changes to the bylaws, scan the following QR code with your smart phone or visit csu.qc.ca.

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CJLO and CUTV gunning for fee levy increases

The futures of Concordia University Television and campus radio station CJLO 1690 AM are in students’ hands this week.

The student-run media outlets are asking for students to approve an increase in their fee levy— the amount of funding they receive from students—to $0.34 per credit, in this week’s Concordia Student Union byelections.

Both CUTV and CJLO are fee levy groups and non-profit organizations which exist separately from the university.

“What fee levy groups do is they provide services that the university either can’t or won’t provide,” said Justin Giovannetti, president of the Concordia Student Broadcasting Corporation. The CSBC oversees the governance of CJLO and CUTV, as well as Concordia’s HAM radio club.

“There’s this entire ecosystem that’s been built around Concordia in fee levy groups,” said Giovannetti.

Sir George Williams campus, meet CJLO
If the fee levy passes, CJLO plans to use the extra funds to expand their sound to a clearer FM frequency.

“Not all of Concordia can actually hear CJLO. With this fee levy we’d actually be able to get onto a small FM signal downtown,” said station manager Stephanie Saretsky.

The frequency would span the Sir George Williams campus east to west from about Atwater Avenue to de la Montagne Street.

The fee levy would help cover the costs of buying and installing the antenna, which according to Giovannetti can range anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 depending on the building it sits on.

“If we get a big prominent building like the MB building, a modern building with a roof that doesn’t need much bracing, you’re looking at a much cheaper antenna,” said Giovannetti, citing the long-term costs of leasing space for the antenna as part of the reasoning why CJLO is asking for sustainable funding in the form of a fee levy increase rather than just taking out a loan.

Available for online listening since 2001 and on-air since 2008, CJLO routinely picks up awards at the CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival College Day Awards in New York City, winning Station of the Year in 2010 and Best Student-Run Non-FM Station in 2008. They were also the only Canadian radio station invited to the International Radio Festival in Zurich, Switzerland this past summer.

“Only three years on-air and we’ve been doing really impressive work,” said Saretsky.

With the increased fee levy, she says the station hopes to reduce the amount of on-air advertising and set the groundwork for large-scale fundraising drives.

CUTV in your home
CUTV is looking to expand its content too—in its case, to cable TV.

Broadcasting on Vox, a public access channel owned by Videotron, is just one of several goals that CUTV outlined for itself in a strategic plan drafted last year and that the fee levy increase will be going towards.

“Space and infrastructure are the two biggest things that are holding us down right now,” said station manager Laura Kneale, explaining that the older building on Mackay where CUTV is located is not able to handle their electrical needs.

On campus in various forms since 1969, CUTV currently produces six different shows, while providing equipment and training to anyone interested in film. According to Kneale, approximately 400 students used their services in the last year and a half.

The station also live streams CSU council meetings online, a service which Kneale says they hope to extend to the university as a whole.

“There’s a need at the university for better meeting and conference rooms,” she said, describing “a room that would be a multi-purpose room for meetings, for press conferences, that would be fully equipped with the means to either project or fully live stream” as a potential solution to this problem and “a big investment in the long run for Concordia.”

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The CSU byelection race is on

While the tell-tale signs of election time have yet to pop up on campus, the Concordia Student Union has just entered its final week of the byelections period.

Students will be able to choose between four candidates vying for three seats reserved for business students on the CSU council when polling stations open on Nov. 29, 30, and Dec.1, while only one candidate has applied for the two vacant independent seats.

Newly appointed chief electoral officer Ismail Holoubi was given the position on Nov. 2 following the controversial dismissal of former CEO Bram Goldstein. Holoubi has had less than a month to pick up where Goldstein left off.

“Time was the only challenge,” wrote Holoubi in an email. “I managed to get everything back on schedule.”

Museb Abu-Thuraia, Saradjen Bartley, Yassine Chaabi, and Eduardo Alves Dos Anjos are competing for three open council seats for the John Molson School of Business.

“John Molson is not very represented at the CSU,” said Chaabi, noting that JMSB councillors rarely showed up to council meetings. “That’s why I decided to get involved in this — to encourage JMSB students to get more involved with the CSU.”

Alves Dos Anjos agrees with Chaabi that students at the business school often feel detached from the rest of the university, writing in an email that as a CSU council member he “really wants to give JMSB students a stronger voice within the student administration at Concordia.”

“In my past years as a JMSB student, I noticed too many JMSB students did not feel that what was going on outside of their classrooms at Concordia to be relevant to them,” wrote Alves Dos Anjos.

While two seats are available for independent students, Omar Abdullahi is the only one in the running.

“I have worked with the CSU on several campaigns including ‘Project Haiti,’” Abdullahi wrote when asked he thinks people should vote for him. “I have been active on campus for the last 3 years, I have worked in the CSU Advocacy defending the rights of students.”

Also on the ballot are two referendum questions from fee levy groups asking for an increase in funding. Campus radio station CJLO and CUTV are both requesting to increase their individual fee levies to 34 cents per credit.

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Students to vote on new CSU bylaws

Students going to the polls at the end of this month will also be voting on whether or not to adopt an updated version of the Concordia Student Union’s bylaws.

The updated bylaws need to be ratified by students in order to take effect. According to CSU president Lex Gill, the new bylaws have gone through “hundreds of revisions” and every change has already been approved by council.

“The bylaws have been woefully out of date for a long time,” said Gill, explaining that the process of modifying the bylaws began during former CSU president Heather Lucas’ term, carrying on into Gill’s.

One of the major changes include the renaming and re-purposing of the student centre fund to the student space, accessible education & legal contingency fund.

This allows the CSU access only to the interest accrued in the fund in order to maintain the union’s general operations in the event of a long-term strike. Gill emphasized that this is a preemptive measure for the years ahead and stated that the current CSU mandate’s funds are in order.

The fee levy for the fund has also been lowered from $2 per credit to $1.50 per credit.

“From what we’ve heard from students so far, students aren’t so keen on a centralized building,” said Gill, describing the change of wording of the fund from “centre” to “space” as a preemptive broadening to remove limitations as to where student-run areas can be located.

A survey about student space is in the process of being designed by the CSU to be distributed at some point near the start of next semester.

Quorum, the minimum number of members required to make a special general meeting valid, has also been changed in the new version of the bylaws to 450 student members. Gill said that this was done in an effort to update the bylaws to accommodate an increased amount of undergraduate students represented by the CSU and to make it easier for anyone to call a special general meeting or assembly.

The bylaws require 2.5 per cent of the undergraduate student body to be present in order to make quorum. As it currently stands, the CSU represents over 30,000 undergraduate students. According to the old bylaws, they would need to gather around 750 students in order to reach quorum, a logistical problem that was witnessed first-hand last February when nearly 900 students packed onto the Reggie’s terrace for an SGM.

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Suzuki, Jerajian, Zahar come out on top in ASFA byelections

A cloud of alleged violations may be hanging over the Arts and Science Federation of Associations’ byelections, but the winners and losers of last week’s race don’t seem duly concerned that the results might have been affected.

The VP communications and promotions race was the closest. Third-year English, art history and studio art student Alexis Suzuki edged out fourth-year communications student Katie Brioux with 209 votes, only twelve votes more than the 197 votes Brioux garnered. There were 98 abstentions. “I’m hitting the ground running and diving straight into working on my portfolio,” Suzuki wrote in an email after the results became known. “The elections for my position were very close, both my opponent and myself clearly worked very hard during campaign week and I consider myself to be extremely fortunate to have earned the position.”

Meanwhile, second-year actuarial math and finance student Paul Jerajian sailed through on a clear majority, wresting the title of VP external and sustainability from fourth-year biochemistry student Boris Degas with 236 votes. Nonetheless, Degas had the approval of 165 students, while there were 108 abstentions.

Jerajian wrote in an email that since he and Degas are on friendly terms, he can set about implementing some of the ideas his competitor wanted to initiate. Degas did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Yasmeen Zahar beat opponent Sian Mill 222 votes to 135 for the independent councillor’s seat, while 147 students abstained.

Mill congratulated her opponent, adding that she looked forward to staying involved with ASFA.
None of the candidates interviewed for this article felt that the electoral violations really influenced the outcome of the elections.

Brioux, who said she was obviously disappointed by the results, didn’t think the allegations represented a huge deal. “Had I known about the weird things going on I might have been more suspicious but it seemed to go fine even though some of things weren’t proper, but it is kind of messy,” she said.

Independent councillor candidate Mill staunchly stood by ASFA chief electoral officer Marvin Cidamon, who told the Concordian he would take full responsibility for violating ASFA’s Annex A. “I think Marvin did a great job organizing and hiring for the elections, with the limited time he had. I do not think the alleged electoral violations would have changed the results,” Mill wrote in an email.

Jerajian agreed. “These violations may have been serious, but I sincerely think that the results would remain the same despite these violations,” he wrote.

Zahar was more on the fence than the other candidates in that respect. “Regarding the allegations, I think it is very difficult to tell whether certain aspects could have changed the outcome. However, I strongly believe that the ineligible poll clerk had no effect on the results,” Zahar wrote, adding “I think that the length of the polling period is the aspect with the biggest uncertainty surrounding it. Other than there being a larger voter turnout, it’s impossible to tell whether or not the outcome would have been different.”

Voters also approved the two referendum questions, which polled students on their feelings towards adding a “promotions” component to the VP communications’ portfolio and on giving the VP external & sustainability the clear responsibility of being the primary spokesperson for ASFA outside the university. Of the nearly 18,000 undergraduate arts and science students, a total of 512 turned out to vote in the byelections, or 2.8 per cent of ASFA’s members.

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