The 2018 Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) elections concluded last week. Three of the positions received a majority vote of ‘no confidence,’ while the remaining three seats were filled by candidates of the One Carleton slate.
During the elections, the current executive team (who all ran under the One Carleton slate in the 2017 elections) acted as campaign managers for the One Carleton candidates.
Several students, on social media platforms such as Reddit, voiced opinions that by acting as advisors to the One Carleton candidates, the CUSA executives granted them an unfair advantage. Independent candidate for CUSA vice-president (student issues), Danny Ford, who lost the election to One Carleton’s Lily Akagbosu, said he shares this opinion.
“If the information regarding how to effectively do work as an executive was available, and it was all incredibly transparent and easily accessible to all students, then that mentoring thing wouldn’t be an issue,” Ford said.
He cited the shortened nomination period, saying “There wasn’t a lot of time or notice for other students who wanted to form a slate to form one,” and as a result, “we only had one slate, and that slate was the same as the slate that ran last year.”
However, CUSA president Zameer Masjedee dismissed that idea, and said anyone who wants to run for CUSA prepares for it well in advance. He said for the past decade, the nomination period has taken place between the start of the winter semester and reading week.
“[Former opposition slates] began preparing in September, October, November,” he said.
He also said election information is available in the CUSA bylaws, which are on CUSA’s website. He said “it’s not confidential.”
However, Ford said while the information is available, it’s “not easy to access.” He alleges that CUSA did not do an adequate job communicating that the nomination period was open. He said nominations only lasted two days, down from last year’s length when the CUSA bylaws mandated a maximum of three. He also said to make the elections more equal, there should be greater steps towards assuring that “all the students are more informed, not that they’re all equally uninformed.”
Chief electoral officer Nada Ibrahim said CUSA executives aiding the One Carleton slate is not a conflict of interest.
“[The executives] are paying students of the Carleton University Students’ Association and anyone who is a paying member of CUSA has a voice and has a right to choose whether or not they want to help out,” she said.
She also said she saw no way that the executives provide an advantage to the candidates other than acting as a regular volunteer.
According to Ibrahim, any paying member of CUSA can serve as a campaign manager.
Masjedee said that to further remove the possibility of a conflict, he used his vacation days during the campaign period, as did the other executives who volunteered.
Justine Brooks, a first-year political science student, said that she saw no issue with the executives supporting their slate, referencing how “[Barack] Obama campaigned for Hillary [Clinton].”
She said that it’s normal to support candidates who share your viewpoints, and that by aiding the campaigns of potential executives, they could work towards “increasing consistency in CUSA’s policies.”
Masjedee encouraged students to “still be critical.”
“If [the students] think that a candidate doesn’t meet the qualifications necessary to be an executive, then they should vote that way come voting day,” he said.
