The CUSA byelection has resulted in the election of a mixed-slate executive for the 2018-19 year.
The byelection resulted in David Oladejo being elected as CUSA president, Natalie York as vice-president (internal,) and Diana Idibe as vice-president (student services). They will join Luke Taylor (vice-president finance), Lily Akagbosu (vice-president student issues), and Abdullah Jaber (vice-president student life) as the incoming CUSA executive team.
Idibe is the only one of the six executive-elects to have campaigned as part of the Confidence slate; all the others ran together as One Carleton.
The last time the CUSA executive team was a mixed-slate was in 2016-17, when five executives were from the Your Carleton slate, with the sixth being a member of the Change slate.
In a written statement to the Charlatan, Idibe said she is a “collaborative person” and she believes the mixed slate will “create a real opportunity to make real change for students.”
“Different slates have different approaches but the thing in common is wanting to make the experience better for Carleton students,” she said.
Idibe said she is looking forward to working for Carleton students “despite differing perspectives” among the executive team.
Current CUSA president Zameer Masjedee, who also acted as One Carleton’s campaign manager during both elections, said he doesn’t think a mixed slate will be “detrimental” to CUSA.
“I’m actually excited to see the effect that it does have on next year’s executive,” he said. “It’s better to have a mixed slate because that keeps people more accountable and encourages people to have varying perspectives.”
Oladejo said he agreed with Masjedee, and like Idibe, he is looking forward to working with a mixed slate.
“I believe that having a difference of opinions can be healthy, so that’s something I’m looking forward to,” he said.
He explained that he had worked with Idibe before and thinks that “she will be a great addition to our team.” Oladejo confirmed that he has spoken to Idibe since the election.
“Her perspective on the things she wants to do and the things she wants to implement . . . will be healthy for the team and good for the association,” he said.
Ashley Courchene, a campaign manager for the Confidence slate and former CUSA vice-president (student services), said in an emailed statement to the Charlatan that students should be the ultimate focus of the executive team.
“We hope that at the end of the day, all incoming executives remember they are chosen to represent the students first and everyone acts accordingly regardless of the slate they ran for. We have confidence that Diana will complete her mandate as [vice-president student services], as set out in her platform points,” Courchene stated.
On March 21—the day before voting in the byelection began—both One Carleton and Confidence received violations for negative campaigning from the Elections Office.
The official ruling given to One Carleton was because of a Facebook post made by Masjedee accusing a member of the Confidence team of operating a Facebook page called “Rank One Carleton Last.” Confidence received the violation because campaign volunteer Jacob Kenney was found to be operating the page.
Masjedee said he believes the ruling against One Carleton was “just,” and that he “talked with the Elections Office prior to making that post . . . to let them know.”
Masjedee said he knows “some students feel that it was inappropriate to make that post prior to there being any verdict reached,” but he wished to counteract the amount of “misinformation” and “slander” the page was posting. He added that he hopes his post only swayed voters who had previously made their decisions based solely on the information from that page.
Courchene called the ruling against Confidence “unfortunate” and summarized the incident as a “valuable lessoned [sic] learned.”
“It’s important to remember that the management of Confidence are full-time students who were volunteering what little time they had for [three] extraordinary candidates . . . we did not have the institutional backing to vet every single volunteer worker who came to support us,” he said.
Idibe, Oladejo, and Masjedee said they agreed that the best way to move forward into the next year is communication.
Idibe said that moving forward she will be “learning from [the] current executive and continuing dialogue with students about what they’d like their association to look like.”
“Understanding everyone’s personal goals as well as what they want to accomplish as a team is important for me . . . I’m going to be taking some time to speak to everyone individually,” Oladejo said.
Masjedee said that meetings will be scheduled between the outgoing executives and their incoming counterparts, and that the incoming team has been invited to the remainder of the current team’s weekly executive meetings.
CUSA will begin the two-week full-time transition period on May 1.
