“Fuck CUSA!” Those aren’t my words, but the words of many people whom I spoke to over the course of the campaign.

There are many reasons why people have this attitude toward their student union and its effect can be seen in the low turnout in elections.

The elections themselves, however, are a major cause of the disconnect between students and Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA).

Take note: engineers hate paying CUSA fees with a passion because they get zero benefit from it.

The entire system is broken and needs to be fixed.

This year, the election started out unusually civil.

On the night of putting up posters, there were no fights, and the dozen or so extra workers hired just for that night to ensure civility weren’t needed in the end.

This had more to do with neither “Students First” and “A Voice for Students” not having their posters ready than any sort of attempt at playing nice.

Why would I say that? Because as the campaign progressed, things returned to normal and became nasty.

The first thing I would like to speak about was the blatant homophobic attacks on Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Councillor-Elect Dustin Hutton-Alcorn.

For reasons yet unknown, and by yet to be discovered perpetrators, his posters were defaced, and filled with homophobic slurs. This was completely unacceptable, and it shows that more work needs to be done to root out hatred on campus.

Next problem with the elections is the lack of clear accountability.

There is no way of ensuring who is officially helping a campaign and who’s just acting on their own accord because of a previous grievance with a candidate.

Case and point is the decision by the chief electoral officer, which was upheld by the Electoral Board, to give “Students First” a violation for the parody website voiceforstudents.ca, solely on the fact that Nick Osborne once worked for Obed in an election.

That’s like saying the Liberals are responsible for a parody site (should I create one) that mocks the Conservatives because I once worked for them. It just makes no sense.

A smart electoral code would have something like what is in the University of the West Indies’ Cave Hill Guild’s code.

You have to declare all workers at the start of the campaign, so everybody knows right away who is working for whom in that year.

Mr. Osborne was not involved in the campaign at any point of the election.

The closest he came to being involved was to stop by and see how we were doing.

Last time I checked, saying “Hi” was neither a crime, nor an indication of support because then I can be called a supporter of “A Voice for Students.”

Another major problem with the elections is the arbitrary powers of the CEO. They are given the power to make rulings as they see fit.

Take, for instance, changes to the rules last year that made it OK for executive candidates to explicitly support councillor candidates.

After complaints about current President Alex Sirois being the creator of the Facebook group for council candidate Erik Halliwell, it was then decided that doing that was OK even after we were told we couldn’t.

Then this year, in a ruling that nobody seemed to hear, about a question I asked myself, twice, we were told that the rule was different from what it was understood to be.


During the all-candidates meeting, it was asked what will be allowed on polling day.

Class talks were not part of those things listed.

For clarification, while we were preparing class talk schedules for the final days of the campaign, I went and asked again for clarification and was told that class talks were not permitted on the day of polling.

However, on the first day of polls, it was reported that “A Voice for Students” candidates were doing class talks, after which we were informed it was always that way.

Here’s the problem: this is not my first election.

I’ve been doing this for three years. I have never seen a class talk on a polling day, and I have never done one on a polling day. Yet, I was told that it was always the practice.

If I give them the benefit of the doubt, then there just haven’t been any in my classes but have been in others. But after asking others if they saw this happen, I could not find another person who had seen a class talk on a polling day.

This election was different from the others, or at least it seemed that way.

But in the end, it’s clear that a broken system can produce nothing but a broken result and the entire system needs to be scrapped and refreshed so that students’ interests can actually come to the forefront of CUSA as it should be.

The problems of the electoral system are too vast for one post.

As such, I will continue with a part two soon.

This will explain what is wrong with the system, and how I plan to work to change it when I take office on May 1.