Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) announced at their Nov. 11 council meeting they are intending to hold a referendum by the end of the month to increase funding for clubs and societies.
During the meeting, CUSA wanted to ratify the newly hired chief electoral officer (CEO) and deputy electoral officers (DEO) of the referendum. The CEO candidate in question was Matthew Swain, while the DEOs were Damola Adeyemo and Nada Ibrahim.
The motion, however, was met by debate as the council voiced their concerns, saying the referendum was being rushed and the hiring process was unfair.
“Who was the councillor sitting in in the hiring process, and why are we not all involved?” Jasmine Shaw, engineering and design councillor, asked to start off the question period following the motion.
CUSA president Fahd Alhattab said due to the rushed nature of the motion, the first councillors to respond to his email explaining the dates of the interviews would be the ones to attend. This was met by a majority of councillors saying they did not receive the email.
Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA) president Graham Pedregosa questioned Alhattab and said the referendum period is in the end of the winter semester.
“The priority here is that the clubs and societies are supported,” Alhattab said. “When we initially strategized this in May, we said if we hold to the $120,000 mark, clubs and societies will be upset, they will be infuriated and frustrated, and they might actually come out and vote for a referendum to help them out.”
He also said they will be hosting a referendum on the summer U-Pass in the spring, so they wanted to present each funding question separately, rather than on the same referendum ballot.
“Statistically speaking we found if we had two questions on the same ballot . . . people will pick and choose which one they want to raise. That is why it seems it is rushed,” he said.
Adam Carroll, arts and social sciences councillor, voted to move the motion to a later date due to not receiving the email regarding the hiring process.
“I think it’s unfortunate that we’re setting ourselves up on a bad foot,” he said. “We’re allowing for these holes to exist.”
The council eventually voted to move the motion to ratify the new CEO and DEOs to an emergency meeting on Nov. 19 in an 11-to-10 split. Frena Hailekiros, vice-president (student services), said the significance of motioning is to keep the referendum moving at the next meeting.
“Many clubs and societies would come to the office and say they did not get the funding they needed,” she said. “It was a last-minute decision, but at the same time it was because we saw how many students were affected by the decision of the clubs and societies.”
In a following meeting, they moved to appoint CUSA members to the electoral board at the upcoming emergency meeting as well. Sean Smith, vice-president (student life), said he was uncomfortable making the decision with short notice of only being notified of the motion a couple of hours prior.
The journalism CUSA councillor spot was also filled by second-year student Mona Mahmoud after previous councillor Peter Russell resigned from his place.
The referendum nomination period is set to start on Nov. 20.
