“Contemplate the world and its traitors to the soul; the forces of derision and its legions manifold” sings the band Dead Can Dance. Not to be fatalistic, but this captures the current Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) executive quite well. Ryan Husk, in last week’s opinion piece, said we needed to vote the same people back into CUSA to continue the “progress” we are on. Me and Ryan have a different idea of what “progress” is.
Right now, CUSA is doing everything in its power to dismantle any and all connections to this organization known as the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). The CFS is currently the largest collection of student unions across Canada. It allows us to join forces with other student unions in order to be more powerful and effective. It’s not a faceless “multi-million dollar corporation” as Ryan paints it.
This organization lobbies and fights for lower tuition, better conditions at school — all the stuff that students should expect it to do. It also helps produce campaigns to fight things that are horrible, such as sexism, Islamophobia and homophobia and transphobia on campus. Right now, because CUSA is still a member of the CFS, we are entitled to this material. Is it progress for CUSA to purge all these campaign materials and threaten to fire service centre volunteers if they promote or carry any of these CFS-associated paraphernalia? Do note, in some cases there is no alternative campaign material to even partially justify the purge.
As for my above quote, it is unwise for students and student unions to in-fight and fragment. Fragmentation and division weakens our collective power to fight for lower tuition and other just causes. The current direction of CUSA wants to weaken the already-shaken and divided student movement in Canada.
The current framing makes it seem as if all these moves improve the experience and lives of CUSA members and Carleton students, yet it refuses to see the bigger picture. My power and influence is limited, and so is CUSA’s. But when we’re all part of a larger organization, our voice is stronger and can’t be ignored. Unification is what we need to see more of, not fracturing and petty in-fighting that our current CUSA executive will continue if re-elected.
– Adam Carroll,
first-year journalism
