Mohamed Hamed is a fourth-year psychology student. He is currently running to be Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA)’s next vice-president (community engagement).
Previous experiences
As a member of the Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG), CUSA council, and an executive member to four clubs on campus, Hamed is an active member of the Carleton community.
“All the executive positions that I hold in these clubs are like community outreach,” Hamed said of his experience. “You’re looking at Carleton internally and externally, how you can engage the communities.”
In addition to his on-campus activity, Hamed said he has also helped organize efforts for Relay for Life, among other community programs.
Reasons for running
Hamed said running for a CUSA executive position has always been something he has wanted to do.
“What made me want to run is just to make everybody, especially those around me, who know me personally and people who get to know me, is that anybody could end up doing this,” Hamed said.
“It’s something that anybody could achieve, and it’s all attainable,” he added. “I just want to show the greater community that if you really put your mind to something, then you can make a difference.”
Slate or independent?
Hamed said he wanted to run as an independent candidate to show slates aren’t the only ways to be effective in elections.
“A lot of times, candidates are put in a position where they feel the need to run as a slate,” he said. “I just felt like I had a very good chance to run independently.”
“I’ve chosen to run out of a slate to show the Carleton community that look, somebody can run autonomously and still be successful.”
Campaign goals
Internally, Hamed said he hopes to increase the visibility and resources of CUSA’s Mawandoseg Centre and create town halls where students can voice their ideas and concerns to CUSA.
“When you go walk into the centres and you see the Womxn’s Centre and you see the Food Centre, you see how much publicity it gets through the people working there and through the resources they have, the money that CUSA puts into them,” he said. “When you walk into the Mawandoseg Centre, you see that it’s very underdeveloped and it looks like it needs a lot of renovating.”
By implementing town halls at CUSA meetings, Hamed said students can have more face-to-face interaction with executives and keep open communication going past the election.
“[Students] should really have a voice anytime of the year,” he added.
Externally, Hamed said he hopes to set up meetings with other institutions such as University of Ottawa, St. Paul’s University, and Algonquin College, to share ideas about what CUSA is missing that other student governments are implementing.
Final thoughts
Hamed said it is important to study candidates and the election before voting, because the small student population that does vote isn’t always aware of the issues.
“Many of them are not even educated about what’s going on. People thought nomination period was voting,” he said.
“If I could give one advice it’s just do your research,” Hamed said. “Because I think people just neglect other candidates based off relationships, but I’ll even tell my friends to study about every other candidate that’s running against [me].”
Featured image by Spencer Colby.
