A motion to remove the Carleton Undergraduate Students’ Association (CUSA) president Fahd Alhattab from his position failed to pass by a narrow margin at a council meeting on March 29.
The meeting also saw the proposal of removing the vice-president (student services) Frena Hailekiros from her position. Both motions were put forward by councillors Roy Sengupta and Adam Carroll.
The final vote count was 17 in favour and 11 against removing Alhattab, with five abstentions. The motion to remove Hailekiros failed with four yes votes, 20 no votes, and six abstentions. The motion required a two-thirds majority to pass, which would have triggered a referendum asking students whether they wanted to replace Alhattab. The details of the referendum (if passed), including the dates of resignation and/or the determination of replacements, were not discussed.
Another motion adopting ranked voting for executive elections passed unanimously.
Carroll and Sengupta said they brought the motions forward in response to what they feel were several examples of malpractice in the past few months.
“Council is being treated like a rubber stamp, but it actually has more authority than the executive, and [council] should be using that power to keep them in check,” Carroll said.
Sengupta began the proceedings from the podium, asking the councillors in the room to ask themselves if they had perceived pressure from the executive to perform in a certain way. He discussed the recent disqualification of the Change slate, CUSA’s abstention of voting in the Board of Governors (BoG) tuition mandate, including personal appeals of the abstaining vote.
“Students shouldn’t have to feel ashamed of CUSA, like I am,” Sengupta said.
Previously, Alhattab had agreed how the decision to abstain was politically unpopular, but explained it was the only moral option.
“I am the president of CUSA, but also a member of the Board [of Governors]. That means I have to represent both undergraduate students and the university as a whole, which involves tradeoffs,” Alhattab said to council.
In response to the motion, Alhattab said in his next term as president he would work to fix ongoing tensions within council.
“We have accomplished a lot this year, but many councillors remain unhappy,” Alhattab said. “Next year, we’ll have to spend time focusing on how to fix this toxic environment.”
Alhattab and Hailekiros did not participate in the discussion at council, but many councillors spoke up to defend them.
Kendra Kading, a councillor for arts and social sciences, questioned the legitimacy of the motion and whether removing an executive member with little over a month left in their term was reasonable.
Public affairs councillor Brett Parnell defended Alhattab’s character and said while the political process involves division, the recent election proves many students wanted to see their president-incumbent return.
Other councillors supported the motion, including former members of the council and vice-president (student life) Sean Smith.
Smith gave a negative review of his fellow council members Hailekiros and Alhattab, highlighting the dissent within the executive team and the issues he felt went unchecked.
“Decisions are being made behind closed doors, the staff are all Your Carleton supporters, there have been many inappropriate friend-hires and [Alhattab] has misled all of us—this council—in many important issues,” Smith said.
Carroll said while the motion failed, it still sends a message to students.
“While this is a strong message to our president and to our students association that we are not comfortable with our president, I still think we need to fight,” Carroll said. “We need to keep this movement going, we need to see justice for Carleton.”
