The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) has taken down a video encouraging students to vote after the video received negative feedback from students.
The music video, titled “I’m Gunna Vote,” is a parody of the 2009 song “I’m On a Boat” by The Lonely Island. The video was put up on YouTube on Sept. 28, but was taken down on Oct. 2.
The video went viral in less than a week, reaching over 55,000 views, with conflicting reviews from the Carleton community and online.
CUSA president Fahd Alhattab said the voting campaign included a Facebook profile banner and a music video, with a purpose to “get people talking about the election and getting people aware.”
The total cost of the video was $700, according to Alhattab, $500 of which came through a grant from Laidlaw Foundation, a group that encourages youth engagement in civil society. Alhattab said only $200 came out of the CUSA budget.
Alhattab said the video was meant to poke fun at the seriousness of the election.
“We’re making it into a fun thing,” Alhattab said. “We’re making it into something that you should be that excited about when you’re going to vote.” He said he doesn’t think the video puts the school in a bad light.
CUSA’s I’m going to vote video makes me laugh so hard
— Tara Mirza (@MirzaTara) October 6, 2015
“That’s not what holds reputation, that’s not what people judge schools by,” Alhattab said. The video was popular on the website Reddit and was covered by The Globe and Mail. Vice Canada and the Ottawa Citizen both criticized the video on their websites. CUSA pulled the video down on the night of Oct. 2 and issued an apology. According to Alhattab, there was no one certain determinant as to why the video was taken down. “We didn’t want it to continue distracting,” he said, and added it was now time to turn people’s eyes onto the advanced polling, the issues, and the election itself.
thank you football team for reversing the embarrassment of CUSA’s video — Darnzz (@_rasdarnell) October 3, 2015
Many students said they were concerned the CUSA music video would give Carleton unwanted attention and shed negative light on the university.
“I refuse to watch it. Someone showed me the first 15 seconds and that was enough for me,” said first-year student Amanda Marsh.
Some students, however, said they found the video more humourous. First-year student Mack Sissing said he thinks the video was weird, and they “could have done something better.”
im transferring to uottawa after seeing the cusa video
— kirsten (@crazykirstennn) October 2, 2015
Second-year student Raji Gandhi said she thinks the intention of the video was good but overall, it was uninformative and did not have a point to it.
“To create a video that encourages students to vote is exactly what we need . . . but the way it was executed was wrong,” Gandhi said.
She also went on to say there was no actual information in the video.
“The only thing students could really get out of it was that you need voter ID, but not what type or where to go,” she said.
Alhattab said CUSA did not expect the scale of aggressive negativity, but that the association is proud of the work they’ve done on the voting campaign.
“If even one person says I’m going to vote because of our video, then we have accomplished our job,” Alhattab said.
