Former exec opens up about ‘toxicity’ in CUSA election system

Concerns over a “toxicity” within the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) electoral system are being raised after former CUSA exec Alexis Oundo released an open letter about her own experiences with campaigning.

Oundo, who served as vice-president (student services) in 2017-18, published an open letter to her mother on Feb. 4 on Medium, called “I Don’t Want To Be Sad Anymore.”

In the post, she shared her struggles with mental health as an executive during her work with former CUSA president Fahd Alhattab, who was also her campaign manager with her slate One Carleton. The slate won all six executive seats in the 2017 elections.

Oundo said the campaigning period before the 2017 elections caused her a lot of mental distress, which continued into her term as an executive.

In her letter, Oundo wrote about how Alhattab sat down with her before campaigning to discuss aspects of her personal life, saying that he brought up “skeletons in the closet.”

“[H]e brought up a pregnancy I chose to terminate, something that I had never shared with him, and the casual insensitive nature that he brought it up with crushed me,” she said in the letter. “Apparently, unbeknownst to me, all these were liabilities to my electability as a candidate.”

Alhattab told the Charlatan he disagreed with how Oundo portrayed his actions in the letter.

“The claims that are being made have serious damages to my business [and] my life beyond CUSA,” he said. “And, you know, obviously I’m upset about being the target of the letter, but I recognize the pain that she’s feeling, and I recognize the stresses that come with being an executive.”

Alhattab said he was also concerned with the way one-on-one sessions were brought up in her letter.

One-on-one sessions are meetings slate candidates have with their campaign manager before campaigning, where managers go over aspects of their candidates’ past that might be exposed during election season.

Shawn Humphrey, current CUSA council chair who also served the same role in Oundo’s year, said he doesn’t have a bias to either side of the incidents described in the letter, “having a neutral position” at the association. 

But, he said when it came to the one-on-one sessions mentioned in the letter, “there isn’t much regulation.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that every slate does this, or at least a version of it,” Humphrey said. “I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but I do think it’s kind of the nature of the game when it comes to elections.”

“I definitely think you have to be careful when you’re doing it, because there might be people that don’t like your approach,” he added.

Alhattab said his “concern was not to attack her or make [Oundo] feel inferior—it was simply to ask her how she feels about that being brought up and prepare her for when it does.”

“CUSA elections are some of the most emotionally and physically demanding periods of your life,” he added. 

“Nothing we did was wrong—nothing we did was inappropriate. It was just a really high standard,” Alhattab said.

Cat Kelly, former vice-president (internal), who ran in the same slate as Oundo, said her experiences with Alhattab were quite different, calling his approach as a manager “giving [them] tough love.”

Gavin Resch, who served as vice-president (finance) during Oundo’s year in office, said he thinks some of the stress she voiced in her letter were “effects of the campaigning process.”

“In terms of the campaign process, it’s a pretty stressful time in general. You’re having to do all these things that you never envisioned before, like being on the floor for hours on end trying to talk to students who don’t always care about what you’re saying,” he said.

But, Resch said he doesn’t remember hearing about the things Oundo mentioned in her post.

“I definitely wouldn’t say they were the best of friends, but never did I expect what was depicted in Oundo’s letter,” he said.

Kelly said she agreed with Resch about the difficulties of the election season, adding “people don’t understand what it takes to be a CUSA executive.”

“When Alexis wrote about her difficult days as an executive and not being understood by your friends or anyone, I totally understand and I feel seen,” she said.

She said she recalls an experience when someone in her class wrote an open letter “about how much they didn’t like [her].”

“I literally dropped out of that class because I didn’t feel safe anymore,” Kelly said. “But through it all, and through all that burn-out, the first person I called during that was Fahd Alhattab—the one person who could bring me up.”

Alhattab told the Charlatan he has struggled with mental health himself which, he said, is why he understands why Oundo felt like writing the open letter.

“My two years at CUSA as an executive were probably the most difficult years of my life from a mental health standpoint,” he said.

“There were times that I would wake up in the middle of the night, throwing up and puking from the level of anxiety because of the opinions shared online from people that’ve never met with you, but have the opinion of you as the scum of the earth,” he added. “People question every single thing you do.”

Zameer Masjedee, who served as president during Oundo’s time in office, said he understood what Alhattab felt.

“For whatever reason it may be, at Carleton, there’s always a sort of toxicity to our elections, and a lot of it has to do with social media—the popularity of it in recent times,” Masjedee said.

“You know, just this past weekend, at Capital Hoops, we were all talking and hanging out as friends,” he added. “I never saw anything that kind of showed any resentment or anger. So, this coming immediately after that experience kind of caught me off-guard.”

But, David Oladejo, current CUSA president, said differences in their office were never an issue for this year’s executives because “they talked it out very early on.”

“For our team, we’ve kind of developed the kind of relationship where we can tell each other, ‘hey, I didn’t like that,’ even if it’s after a couple of days,” he said.

Oladejo said while people were concerned about Diana Idibe, the only member of a separate slate winning an executive position in last year’s election, “once May hits, and you’re in the team, no one cares whether you’re mixed slate or not, all everyone wants is a good CUSA executive.”

Idibe told the Charlatan she found Oundo’s letter “powerful,” but said her experiences have been quite different.

“The overarching slate system that she wrote about in her letter is quite similar to me I’d say, especially in terms of the elections itself” Idibe said. “We both faced our own unique kind of different experiences in the context of our time with CUSA.”

“I do think this executive, and perhaps I’m biased because I’m one of them, has fostered a different kind of office culture than I have seen in my previous interactions with past executives,” Idibe added.

Masjedee said “the lesson to learn here is that changes need to be made within CUSA’s offices.”

“I’m no expert in psychology or anything of that sort, but I think that at the end of the day, we can maybe improve on the way we talk about these difficult things in the CUSA offices. Perhaps that might change things,” he said.