4.8 per cent of eligible Concordia students voted in CSU election

Largely unopposed election resulted in several landslide wins

NewsSheena Macmillan — Published March 21, 2021 | Updated April 16, 2021 at 2:02pm 3 minutes

This election introduced Brick by Brick, a new slate headed by outgoing student life coordinator Eduardo Malorni. The entire slate, which ran unopposed, has been elected to be the next CSU executive.

“The low voter turnout isn’t the biggest surprise,” said Malorni, referencing the 5.6 per cent turnout in last year’s end-of-year CSU election. He believes the lack of competitive campaigning given the election was largely uncontested led to low student involvement.

Being away from campus, many other student associations have experienced difficulty filling their teams—with the exception of the Arts and Science Federation of Associations. “This is not a CSU-specific problem,” he added. 

Looking forward to his mandate as General Coordinator, Malorni is anticipating helping students merge back to in-person learning. “We say we’re going to be back on campus, but realistically, it’s going to be back on campus with a pretty big asterisk,” he said.

The ballots also included a handful of referendum questions. The CSU had three questions related to increasing the fee-levies for the Advocacy Centre, the Legal Information Clinic, and the Off-Campus Housing and Job Resource Centre. With the exception of the Advocacy Centre, all of these passed, but only barely crossed the 50 per cent approval mark.

CEED Concordia posed a referendum question to modify its mission statement to allow it to expand operations in Uganda and into other developing countries. This question did not modify its existing fee levy. It passed with 64.8 per cent approval, or 634 votes.

The modification to the CSU’s By-Laws was also approved, meaning their code of conduct is now a part of their by-laws. This means members of the CSU can now be removed for violating the code of conduct, as opposed to navigating through the complicated impeachment process. The vote passed with 80.6 per cent approval, or 658 votes.

Several positions in the CSU’s Position Book have also been made permanent, so instead of voting on positions regarding LGBTQ2S+ and BIPOC rights every four years, they are permanent positions the CSU must uphold. The vote to reform the Positions Book passed with 62.3 per cent, or 657 votes.

Students also voted in favour of the CSU initiative to create a student centre, which received an 84.9 per cent approval, or 936 votes.

Results:

General Coordinator: Eduardo Malorni (941)  ELECTED

Loyola Coordinator: S Shivaane (1000) ELECTED

Academic & Advocacy Coordinator: Hannah Jamet-Lange (911) ELECTED

Sustainability Coordinator: Faye Sun (985) ELECTED

Internal Affairs Coordinator: Harrison Kirshner (955) ELECTED

External Affairs & Mobilization Coordinator: Camina Harrison-Chéry (1014) ELECTED

Finance Coordinator: Aria Khaksar (967) ELECTED

Student Life Coordinator: Malcolm Asselin (896) ELECTED

Correction: A previous version of this article stated the Advocacy Centre fee-levy increased passed, when it in fact did not. A previous version of this article also incorrectly summarized CEED's referendum question as related to a fee-levy increase. The CEED referendum question did not change the fee-levy amount, but instead modified its mission statement. The Link regrets these errors.