An undergraduate student was blocked from posting to the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) Twitter account over her comments about the clubs and societies referendum earlier this month, before being unblocked after a meeting with CUSA executives.
Charissa Feres, a second-year law and psychology student, was outspoken on Twitter about last semester’s referendum.
“I didn’t feel that achieving a balanced budget should be at the expense of clubs and societies, nor did I feel that CUSA should turn to increasing the student levy just because they mismanaged the budget in previous years,” Feres said.
“I feel it’s such a conflict of interest that [CUSA] campaigned only the ‘Yes’ side when they’re the ones receiving and handling students’ money,” she said.
Feres also said she objected to the lack of a “No” committee as required by CUSA’s electoral code. This is a requirement for every referendum question.
As a result of several tweets, Feres said she found she was blocked from the CUSA Twitter page that she had previously been following, which she then shared on Facebook. This prompted an email response by the CUSA communications team to explain the decision.
The email, which came from CUSA’s communications office, said many students had complained about Feres’ comments and the Office of Student Affairs had been monitoring her communication patterns and was jointly part of the decision to block her profile. Director of Student Affairs, Ryan Flannagan, said no such instance took place.
CUSA president Fahd Alhattab said the conflict arose from a misinterpretation by the communications office of the social media policies, which is designed to block spam from appearing on the page. Alhattab said social media policy is not to remove constructive comments by students.
In December, Feres had a meeting with the CUSA executive of student affairs and the manager of the communications office, where she said they apologized and lifted the block.
“The policy is outdated, so we have allowed this to be autonomously interpreted by the communications director and president,” Alhattab said. He added the incident was a “student to student” mistake made as part of a learning curve, given the communications office is new this year.
“Our communications staff is filled with students also—they make mistakes, they are learning, it was a mistake to block a student who was voicing a concern,” Alhattab said.
