Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) voted to eliminate seats specific to students in journalism, public affairs and policy management (PAPM), humanities, and computer science in a meeting on Jan. 16.
Under a motion titled “Where Are Our Seats?,” put forward by councillors from the Faculty of Engineering and Design, the bylaw regarding CUSA council composition was amended so that student representatives will now be elected from the five faculties at Carleton, rather than ten constituencies.
While CUSA council used to have seats specifically reserved for representatives from the journalism and PAPM programs, these programs will now be contending for any of the seven seats available for representatives from the Faculty of Public Affairs.
Similarly, the School of Humanities will now be vying for any of the six seats available in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, and the School of Computer Science can contend for either of the two seats available for students in the Faculty of Science.
“The main spirit of the motion represents the uneven distribution of seats currently,” said engineering and design councillor Yannick Brisebois, who put forward the motion. “For the past five years, the seats haven’t changed, while the amount of people in each faculty have changed, so currently the seats don’t represent an accurate proportional amount for each member in each faculty.”
While seats on CUSA council are currently divided based on fees, “when we did our research, CUSA doesn’t actually know how much fees everyone pays,” Brisebois said.
There was opposition to the motion presented from public affairs councillor Julia Parsons and Adam Kouri, speaking on behalf of the Arthur Kroeger College Educational Student Society.
“There’s no reason that we need to strike an entire group of people’s representation from a council,” Kouri said. “PAPM and journalism are two distinct programs on campus, and this would be to completely strike both of their voices from council.”
Journalism councillor Mona Mahmoud, PAPM councillor Jessica Beaudoin-Walker, and public affairs councillor Julia Parsons all voted against the motion.
Ranked voting delayed
Council also voted to hold off on implementing a ranked-ballot system for executive elections until 2018. Councillors passed ranked voting unanimously last year, with one abstention.
Frano Cavar, Chief Electoral Officer of the CUSA elections, said the ranked ballot system hasn’t been sufficiently tested, and may pose technical issues during elections.
Council voted to keep first-past-the-post voting for executive positions in the upcoming CUSA general election, and to pilot ranked ballot voting in single-seat counsellor constituencies.
But with the decision to eliminate the journalism, PAPM, humanities and computer science seats, which were all single seat constituencies, special students are currently the only group on CUSA council represented by a single seat.
According to CUSA president Fahd Alhattab, there is usually no more than one candidate for this position. If this is the case during this year’s elections, ranked voting will be tested over the summer months, he said.
Engineering and design councillor Julia Dalphy also proposed that “a full voter education program be put forward and run by CUSA in preparation for the launch of ranked-ballot voting,” and that CUSA work “to simulate and prepare an adequate system for ranked-ballot voting.”
Both amendments were accepted and passed.
The writ of election for the 2017 CUSA general election was also passed by council.
The campaign period is set to start on Jan. 25, with voting taking place on Feb. 1 and 2.
– Infographic by Shanice Pereira
