Carleton University student politics are in a serious state of disarray. After running and becoming unofficially elected this past election season, I’ve realized how toxic our school politics can be to the candidates and student body.
At Carleton, we generally have two slates that battle it out every year for political supremacy. For the past three elections, the slate ABC has prevailed to be the almighty winner, giving their candidates three years of well-paying jobs.
For plenty of these candidates, it seems their sincere goal is to make student life at Carleton better. After observing last year and campaigning this year, I’ve come to a realization that Carleton politics are a graveyard of students who want to help make a difference but are consistently blocked by the machine we call ABC.
I’ve heard a whole lot of students talk about how they don’t like our state of student politics. How it’s a popularity contest. How if you don’t align with a slate you won’t succeed. Heck, I’ve said these things.
Municipal, provincial, and federal politics in Canada are generally about what you can do to get elected, and what you can do to stay elected. Sometimes, that means making promises that just don’t make sense.
So, here we are. At Carleton in Ottawa, Ont. Our city is the epicentre of federal politics in Canada and many of us are using the playbook of our federal politicians who are a short 15-minute bus ride away.
My concern with student politics at our university is that I experienced, to a certain degree, intimidation and harassment to keep hush-hush about particular issues. Those issues were ones I thought were important and needed to be discussed during the election.
That’s when I realized that our federal style of make promises, worry later, is an integral part of Carleton’s style of politics. For those of us dreaming of a political career later in life, we are being trained and set up very well within the institution which we give a significant portion of our tuition to each year.
We have the potential to invoke change in our electoral process and follow a respectful and honest route of politics. Instead, we have chosen the route that includes the following: barraging students with handouts, hyper-sensitization of electoral violations, intimidating and harassing others to follow our wishes, and falling back on promises we’ve made by barely meeting them or forgetting about them altogether.
We have the opportunity to practice honest conduct throughout our electoral process at such a young age, and grow older to potentially change how our political system works.
The problem is we are falling into their trap and getting prepared for what can, might, and will, for some of us, end up being one of the best paying, yet most frustrating careers of our lives.
At Carleton, we need to start practicing honest election tactics and techniques. When those who deserve election succeed, they can carry out a proper mandate instead of “fulfilling” promises shortly before an election. This will prove to the student body that we are serious about changing how we conduct our politics at Carleton. It will take time, but students will begin to recognize this effort and become interested again in the organization we pay fees to each year.
To the candidates who won in election this January, I urge you all to make CUSA more transparent and accountable to the student body. Hiding under a veil of “this is what politics is like” will no longer work.
The vast majority of us decided to run for noble reasons, one of which includes changing our student politics for the better. Let’s put the focus back on this and have a year—or more—of transparency and accountability.
