A town hall hosted March 19 in light of the ongoing Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG) elections saw a significant lack of attendance from students and candidates running to be elected.
This year’s CASG elections—taking place from March 20-21—have seen all four executive positions uncontested.
A coordinator position from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) for next year has not seen a candidate apply, and is currently vacant. But, there are two candidates running to be elected as a coordinator from the Faculty of Public Affairs (FPA) on council—the only contested race in the 2019 CASG elections.
“I’m just disappointed with FASS because that was my program.” said Shawn Humphrey, CASG council chair who moderated the town hall, to attendees.
Emily Grant, current CASG president, told the Charlatan she “was disheartened by the attendance” at the town hall.
“It’s not unheard of that there are uncontested positions for CASG,” Grant said, adding that last year’s elections only saw a single contested executive position as well. “A lot of it has to do with people not thinking that they have the time to be able to devote to these positions, which I think is understandable.”
But, Grant said “it’s unfortunate” that most people who run for CASG elections are current councillors because the only position which requires prior experience from candidates to run is the president.
“I definitely think we’ve done a really good job this past year in trying to increase more awareness and presence for CASG on campus, and there’s also been more attendance in council meetings,” Grant said. “Bringing in candidates for other vice-president positions from outside council would really help our reach, and that’s not something we’ve seen happen in recent years.”
At the town hall, each candidate running to be elected was given five minutes in their opening remarks followed by a round of up to three prepared questions, as well as any questions from the audience.
A common campaigning point from the candidates at the town hall was to bring more awareness on campus next year for the work CASG does.
The next question for Lajoie is: how would you make sure there’s more awareness on campus for @casg_online? Lajoie says she’d continue working and meeting with other student groups on campus to ensure they know about the work CASG is doing @CharlatanLive #CASGElections2019
— Temur Durrani (@temurdur) March 19, 2019
But, Matt Pelletier, current vice-president (internal), said a lack of awareness is not the only reason he thinks this year’s CASG elections have seen a lack of candidates. He said it’s important to note that the organization’s structure—modelled after Carleton’s Senate system—is such that only previous councillors can vote for who gets elected.
“Awareness or a lack of it doesn’t necessarily tie to elections and candidate turnout,” he said. “If you look at other student groups’ elections at Carleton, you can see that by our voting structure, we allow elections to be more about the candidates than about campaigning for votes in the tunnels or negative campaigning.”
A total of 106 people can potentially vote to elect next year’s CASG executives. This pool of voters include councillors and university administrative members who have ex-officio status on the council.
Voting is ongoing via online ballot and will conclude March 21.
Photo by Lauren Hicks
