For the past three years, the CUSA election season has followed a predictable pattern. Two slates, led by two presidential hopefuls, competed for domination of the next year’s CUSA executive.
The 2014 election has thrown a wrench into that pattern, with four candidates, three on slates and one independent, all vying for the same job.
Erica Butler – Collective Carleton
Butler said her connection to students around campus gives her a leg up in the election.
“I feel like I’m in touch with a lot of students . . . I’m connected to a lot of different communities here on campus and I have a really solid understanding of how CUSA works,” she said.
Butler is a current CUSA councillor, sitting in one of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science seats. She said being what she calls one of the only “progressive candidates” on council, she can see what needs to change.
“I would say that most of the current CUSA council is sort of more apolitical and conservative in the way they approach issues. I think it’s important to take a stance when things are impacting students,” Butler said.
She said she’s happy to have competition.
“It’s really awesome. The elections office is totally unprepared. They didn’t know how to divvy up the postering space. I think it just shows that people are getting more engaged and interested in what’s going on,” she said.
The name for the Collective Carleton slate came partly from wanting to have an alliteration, but Butler said the bigger reason was the collaborative nature of her slate, something she said extends to every student.
“We wanted to address that every student at Carleton should be valued because a lot of people express that they’d been feeling disconnected and disenfranchised,” she said.
Ian Gillies – Independent
Gillies may be best known for dressing up in a gorilla outfit in his election video. The reason, he said, was simple.
“I just felt like wearing a gorilla suit that day,” he said.
Gillies is running as the only independent candidate in the presidential race. He said the decision was intentional.
“A lot of the time people forget that slates, those people are still running as independents. You vote for them independently, regardless of the slates they’re from. I’m really no different than those people,” he said.
“The difference is I’m not running with a group of my friends that I’m hoping to stack the council with,” Gillies said.
Gillies has not held any position in CUSA before, but said he’s been paying attention to what CUSA has done over the past year, and thinks there’s room for improvement.
“I don’t want to say anything too hurtful, but it’s one of those things where it could have been done a lot better,” he said.
He said his best quality is that he is the “most average guy imaginable,” which he said allows those students who don’t usually have much to do with CUSA relate to him.
“I’m just another student. I’m like anybody else. Those people that aren’t involved in many things can relate with me, and hopefully I’ll be able to represent them,” he said.
He said he’s especially targeting those students who otherwise don’t want to have anything to do with candidates or elections. Though he doesn’t want to bother them by approaching them directly, he said he hopes his message will be enough to engage them.
“I think by doing this, with the posters, I’m going to be less intrusive than the other candidates, but at the same time show these people that I’m there to represent them and maybe do a good job,” he said.
Josh Noronha – Prestige Campus Wide
Noronha said he decided to run for president, though he has no direct experience with CUSA, because he wanted to make big changes.
“Go big or go home. If you want big changes you have to be in a big position,” he said.
Noronha said he’s an avid skier, loves action sports, but also has a nerdy side, as he enjoys playing games like Starcraft II. More recently he has been trying to spend time learning about CUSA, but he said it’s not easy.
“I’ve been looking into it but it’s been difficult to see what’s going on. I hear a lot of people saying they’re going to be transparent with their election, but it seems like they’re so transparent they’re invisible,” he said.
Noronha said his slate name, Prestige Campus Wide, was named after a start-up company in the movie Step Brothers. It’s part of an attempt to be humorous, but also show their serious side, Noronha said.
“We mean business, but we want to take a humanist approach with everything,” he said.
Noronha said he wants to improve CUSA’s reputation, adding that it was the reason he chose to run in the election.
“If I ask anybody what their pains of CUSA are, it’s either nothing positive or they don’t know what CUSA does. And I really love my university, and it really bothers me to hear this kind of nonsense,” he said.
Folarin Odunayo – A Better Carleton
Odunayo is known to Carleton students as CUSA’s current vice-president (finance), but is running as president in the 2014-15 A Better Carleton slate.
The slate has run for the past two years under Alexander Golovko. Folarin said he wants to continue the slate.
“I feel like we’ve sort of come to the end of an era with Alex stepping out and I feel that I have the passion and the determination to get CUSA to continue what we’ve started,” Odunayo said.
Odunayo said he didn’t want to choose a new name to run under, partly because of how successful A Better Carleton’s brand has been.
“We wanted to sort of keep going with that same image, same brand . . . and I feel like students are responding to that,” he said.
In previous years there have only been two presidential candidates. Though there are four this year, Odunayo said it doesn’t change how he will campaign in the election.
“I really want to focus on me and my team. I think if we do that all will go well,” he said.
The strength of his campaign is in the realistic goals and promises he has, Odunayo said. He said he is focusing on giving students what he can, instead of promising things he can’t.
“Students don’t want when you promise the world to them and you don’t deliver to them,” he said.
