‘A Unified Concordia’ slate skips CSU debate in protest
One slate and one councillor were present for the annual CSU election debate
The slate A Unified Concordia chose not to attend the first Concordia Student Union (CSU) annual general election public debate in protest, minutes after the debate was set to start.
The slate posted an announcement on their Instagram, claiming that they were skipping the event as a response to the union’s lack of communication with the slate regarding the elections as a whole.
Instead, they wrote in the post that they would “spend the time connecting with and finding out the needs of students on and around campus.”
According to Guillermo Sebastian Chavín Anderson-Diaz, the Unified Concordia candidate running for general coordinator, the decision was also made in protest of recurring problems he said the union had.
“This represents a long-standing problem at Concordia—specifically with clubs that we've spoken to across our campaign—that the email response rate is just so abysmally low that people don't know what they have at their disposal in order to give services or club opportunities to students on campus,” Anderson-Diaz said.
In spite of the protest, the debate happened as scheduled with slate All In in attendance, presenting their campaigning promises to students in attendance.
Danna Ballantyne, current CSU external coordinator and All In candidate for external coordinator, explained that she hopes to increase the union’s transparency.
“My biggest concern [...] is a lack of transparency, and an inaccessibility of resources to the regular everyday student,” Ballantyne said. “And so my primary goal would be not only to demystify the politics of the union—what it is that we actually do, what we have available—but also to mobilize students to then become engaged in these systems.”
In addition to the All In slate, Nathanael McCooeye, an engineering student running for council, also attended the debate. McCooeye’s campaign promises include prioritizing education over politics, improving engineering and computer science lab equipment, and strengthening Co-op opportunities and clubs.
“The perspective that I'm hearing echoed a lot through the engineering students is that we just want to be left alone,” McCooeye said. “But we want to make sure that we have all the resources we need to be able to complete our degree and find that the engineering students have a lot to offer in their political perspectives.”
The debate ran from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
A second debate was scheduled to be held at the Loyola campus on March 6 at 6 p.m. An hour before the debate, the CSU sent out an email rescheduling the debate due to the union “being unable to ensure timely access to all participants,” the CSU Chief Electoral Officer wrote in an email to students. The debate has been rescheduled to March 7 at 6 p.m.
