Khaleed Juma was born in Toronto, grew up in London (England, not Ontario) and moved to Montreal in 2003. He is majoring in economics and is entering his fourth year at Concordia.

The Link: Who’s your team in the World Cup?

Khaleed Juma: England is gonna do it this year.

TL: What’s your number one priority as president this year?

KJ: I’d have to say the tuition freeze. Maintaining the tuition fees, and looking at other funding formulas. Quebec spends more administering financial aid than it would cost to publicly fund education. I’d like to start bringing different arguments to the table.

TL: What will be the biggest chalenge you will face this year?

KJ: Mobilizing students. Instead of us fighting for the tuition freeze, I want this university and all of its constituents, and every one involved at Concordia to be fighting for the tuition freeze—across the board. I want every single student to be at least educated as to why it’s important for them to be fighting for this.

TL: Skim milk, two per cent or 3.25 homogenized?

KJ: Two per cent all the way. That’s an easy one.

TL: How do you see your relationship with the university admin this year?

KJ: One big bargaining session. Its gonna be back and forth, making sure that they know what we want, taking what they want into consideration, and still telling them what we want, again and again and again and again until we get what we want.

TL: What is your favourite thing about Concordia?

KJ: The fact that I can walk through the building and hear nine different languages spoken before I walk into my office.

TL: What is your least favourite thing?

KJ: The fact that I don’t understand eight out of those nine languages.

TL: What is the one thing you would have done differently last year if you were president?

KJ: I think I would have spent more time promoting the CSU and its services. I don’t think it was done as intensively as it could have. I think that students really value the housing and job bank and the advocacy center, we haven’t taken it upon ourselves to really market and push these services to our students.

TL: What do you see as the most divisive issue within your executive this year?

KJ: The toughest thing might be the allocation of resources. In the sense when Justin Levy, (VP external affairs) is heading up a tuition campain he knows that he needs all eight of us working as hard as we can to make sure that it comes through.

I feel like the biggest thing that is dividing us right now is that we’re having to pick and choose off the bat already, just so we can make sure that everything gets done, as opposed to all of us dedicating ourselves to every task.

TL: What is the number one thing you want to do before you die?

KJ: I think I’d like to sail around the world.