Get a Room

OpinionsJulia Wolfe — Published October 16, 2012

After the roller coaster ride that was the Concordia Student Union’s September, it almost feels mean to point out that they can’t even seem to pick a decent-sized room for their council meetings.

Every meeting this year (and there have been a lot) has been held in a room about the size of what I imagine a studio apartment for a funds-deprived kitten might look like. And I’m being generous.

It’s the sort of thing that annoys you at first, and then steadily eats away at your resolve until you want to get up in the middle of a CSU meeting and dropkick the nearest councillor so you can climb up onto their comfy chair and gnaw on their personal pizza.

While there have been rumblings that the ideal room is booked solid, it’s hard to imagine that the only option leaves all observers pressed up against the wall, especially when a perfectly sized room is usually open and empty right next door.

Non-councillor participants know the space quite well; it’s where we enjoy those 1,700-hour-long closed sessions that the CSU seems to love so much.

Is that space really off-limits to council? Honest question.

When the Board of Governors switched to a room with no accommodation for audience, it felt like yet another cagey move from a BoG with a lot to hide.

The CSU, for it’s part, doesn’t appear to have malicious intentions, and probably isn’t trying to keep an audience away.

But it’s small oversights like this that continue to separate the current union from their constituents. When it’s this difficult for students-at-large (or the student press, for that matter) to observe a meeting, it sends a message that these meetings aren’t for them.

When last year’s CSU was locked out of their first-choice room, they occasionally opted for meetings in the Hall Building’s seventh floor lobby. While the noise of the hallway isn’t optimal, the space allowed for easy audience viewing and even occasional participation.

This situation is made all the more dire by the ridiculous amount of hours that politically involved students at Concordia have spent in council meetings this month. If there are going to be weekly special council meetings, as the current trend seems to be, it would be nice if more than just councillors were able to see, tweet, and talk.

To the new CSU chair, the executives and councillors: Please find a better space. Otherwise your next interview with The Link will be in a broom closet.