CSU Readies New Councillors for Committees

NewsAndrew Brennan — Published December 3, 2013 | Updated December 3, 2013 at 7:58am

At last Wednesday’s council meeting, council was able to ratify its audit report and even discussed the possibility of reaching out to fine arts students in the hopes of getting them represented on council. But the major task of the evening was appointing new councillors to standing committees.

Council was decidedly tempered throughout the evening, but the creation of a new human resources committee saw council split with the CSU executive on its implementation.

The committee will seek to perform needs assessments for the CSU regarding its employees, but when it was first being tabled for discussion, it was immediately challenged by CSU President Melissa Kate Wheeler.

“I think that it treads a line that I’m not super comfortable with,” she told council, as the CSU’s collective agreement outlining that the CSU executives—and not council—are the legal employers of union employees and predominately responsible for their hiring.

Despite Wheeler’s concerns, council went forward with the creation of the HR committee, appointing John Molson School of Business representative Maylen Cytryn, new arts and science councillor Justin Caruso—the younger brother of CSU VP Student Life Katrina Caruso—and JMSB councillor Kabir Bindra to it along with CSU general manager Robert Henri.

Addressing the council members of the committee, all of whom are first-year CSU councillors, Wheeler asserted its task won’t be easy.

“Get ready for a lot of work because I will make sure it is at your fingertips,” said Wheeler.

From the executives, who made their own appointments, Wheeler, Caruso and VP Academic and Advocacy Gene Morrow were also selected to the HR committee.

The meeting also saw engineering and computer science councillor Kyle Arseneau appointed to the clubs and space committee, along with Cytryn. Cytryn’s fellow JMSB councillor Virginia Law was the only appointed addition to the appointments committee.

New councillor Charles Bourassa and fellow arts and science representative Nikos Pidiktakis will now sit on the external and campaigns committee.

Bourassa was also selected to sit on the CSU’s events committee along with councillor Caruso.

Caruso was also appointed to the Loyola committee, along with fellow new councillor Patricia Martone.

Gabriel Velasco, a member of the Concordia Food Coalition who campaigned for his council position on a platform of supporting sustainable food options at the university, was appointed to the CSU’s policy committee along with JMSB representative Michael Richardson. Bourassa and Bindra were elected to the CSU’s sustainability committee.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated councillors Kyle Arseneau and Maylen Cytryn had been appointed to the CSU appointments committee, when in fact they were the new additions to the clubs and space committee. The Link regrets the error.