Undergraduate students will decide the next president of the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) in the upcoming general election from Feb. 6 to 8.
Students will vote through a ranked ballot sent to their Carleton emails.
This year, five candidates have been nominated and are running for the position. In last year’s general election there were only two candidates.
Kamran Azizli, Sarah El Fitori, Sean Joe-Ezigbo, Burte Aruinbold and Finlay Maroney sat down with the Charlatan to discuss their platforms and initiatives ahead of the election.
Kamran Azizli
“Students for long have been victims of leadership that is not good for them, that has negatively impacted them. So when I ran for RRRA, my goal was to bring a leadership that cares for students,” Azizli said. “[I] want to make sure that when we get the job, we get things done.”
Azizli is confident his background in student government has prepared him for the role. He said his previous campaign experience gives him insight into the student body.
“I got to know what students’ concerns are, what they care about, what they want from a student leader […] these are the exact same things that have shaped my policies.”
Azizli said students have been promised tuition guarantees by past candidates, but CUSA does not have the power to lower tuition.
“I would obviously advocate for lesser tuition, but from what we see year after year, it’s not in the hands of CUSA,” Azizli said. “With that being said, I will definitely use my voice to raise concerns.”
Azizli’s said his main platform points are to remove unnecessary student fees, restore discounted textbook sales, restructure club funding and create a CUSA closet, a service that would provide students with professional clothing.
“I have a proven track record. I’ve done it with RRRA. All I’m asking is for a chance to repeat it in CUSA, and I think it can definitely be done.”
Sarah El Fitori
“I figured out that as a student, I have a voice and I can make change within my university,” El Fitori said. “I want to be able to do [what Riazudden did for me]. For all the other people that feel like their voices aren’t heard.”
Although El Fitori does not have previous student government experience, she said she is confident that her experience as the CEO of her non-profit business, Sarah’s Sweettss, being involved in the Science Student Success Centre as a first-year representative and a mentor prepares her for the role of CUSA president.
El Fitori said her platform points are to amplify student life and work experience, create a new service centre to implement new advocacy initiatives and improve current academic accommodations for students.
El Fitori said she will support international students with her plan to create a new justice service clinic on campus.
“One of the main things that we’re doing is opening the social justice centres, which will provide legal aid for immigrant [students].”
El Fitori said she would learn the strengths and weaknesses of her teammates and utilize everyone’s skills to build a successful CUSA team.
“I would take [the position] every day as if it’s my last day,” El Fitori said. “I feel like it’s a very serious position, and people don’t understand how serious it is.”
Sean Joe-Ezigbo
“A lot of people see CUSA, they hear CUSA, but they just brush it off,” he said. “A lot of students would be better off if they actually knew what CUSA did.”
His main platform points are to improve student mental health support, create an off-campus advice centre and improve communication between CUSA and clubs.
“A lot of clubs are not happy,” he said. “If [CUSA] can work with [clubs], have regular meetings with them, regular check-ins with them to be able to say, ‘Hey, what do you guys need? How can we provide services?’”
As the current vice-president (finance) at CUSA and an equity analyst on the Sprott Student Investment Fund, Joe-Ezigbo plans to introduce an investment strategy to strengthen CUSA’s finances and allow for more students’ needs to be addressed.
If elected, Joe-Ezigbo said he wants to tear down barriers students might be facing to ensure students succeed both academically and in life.
“I want to make sure [student] voices are heard,” he said. “You can’t solve a problem if you’re not hearing the issue. So that’s what I want to do.”
Joe-Ezigbo plans to support domestic low-income students by improving the food centre on campus. He said he also plans to advocate for international students by working with university and government officials.
Burte Ariunbold
Last year, she was the president of the Asian Canadian Association Carleton, the largest Asian club on campus, and she said this role taught her how to manage a team and lead an association.
She also said working at the Mongolian Embassy for four years taught her how to advocate for people and gave her office experience.
“In Mongolia, we take our dad’s first names as our last names,” she said. “His name has the word bold in it, and that’s what I really embody in my life. Being bold, being there for myself [and] advocating.”
To Ariunbold, “bold” stands for betterment, opportunity, listening and diversity.
Her main platform points are to improve student mental health support, create a new financial literacy clinic and fund a campus-wide student experience data collection survey.
If elected, she said she wants to bridge the gap between CUSA and students.
“This is what the listening aspect is going to be about,” she said. “It’s going to be discovering new ways for CUSA to help students and implementing policies that positively affect students.”
As an international student herself, Ariunbold said she plans to advocate for international students by continuing to freeze tuition.
She also said she plans to support domestic low-income students by creating more jobs on campus and improving mental health support.
Finlay Maroney
Maroney does not come from a student political background, but he is the vice-president of finance for the lock-picking club, a club dedicated to teaching people how to pick locks.
Maroney’s main platform points are to get rid of CUSA and provide more student jobs.
“I dislike most student government positions. I think they’re mostly kind of useless,” he said.
“Pretty much anything’s better than CUSA, in my opinion, and that’s kind of the consensus among engineering students.”
If elected, he said he will employ more students in the Mackenzie Building as “pushers” to help push the building to a better location.
Maroney said his biggest concern for students on campus is how much money CUSA takes from students and how little they provide.
“Personally, I don’t agree with a lot of the stuff CUSA does, for example, paying their executives a lot of money,” he said. “Not to be accusatory, but I consider [paying executives] closer to embezzling from student money.”
If elected, Maroney said he will donate his salary elsewhere, probably to clubs on campus. He said the money from executive salaries should go to clubs, and CUSA should pay more attention to individual clubs’ funding needs.
He plans to support domestic low-income students through scholarships and said “there’s not much CUSA can do” besides advocacy to support international students as it is a larger university issue.
Featured graphic by Maryam Teima.
