ASFA Apathy
The Arts and Science Federation of Associations elections have arrived and the time for Arts & Science students to choose their next executive has come.
Do you care? You should.
Before my involvement with the Concordia Student Union, I was on an Arts & Science member association for three years – under three different ASFA executives. This experience really taught me how important having a strong and dedicated team in office is.
A weak ASFA executive doesn’t just mean a few less ASFA initiatives throughout the year—all Arts and Science member associations rely on the executive to function properly. This means the responsibility the executives carry is huge; if they don’t do their jobs, member associations can’t do theirs either.
Now, it is important to keep in mind that we’re all students. No one is perfect, and yes, mistakes will happen. However, if you can get an honest and hard-working team whose true motivation is to help students, the rest will work itself out.
I’ve always found the best way to determine whether this is the case is through promises made during campaigning.
How feasible are their promises (really)? Have they looked into (not just thought about) how to achieve them? Have they looked to the organization’s past for insight? Does what they’re promising even make sense?
Unfeasible promises are lies. It’s that simple. It’s generally easy to tell which candidates are making flashy promises just to win votes, and that’s dishonest.
Something candidates often forget is that we’re not expecting miracles; we’re expecting representatives who will aim high, work their hardest, and deliver the results to the best of their abilities.
What candidates are promising also gives good insight into how well they know their school, how it operates and how to navigate the ever more complex bureaucracy behind the scenes.
At the end of the day, the less flashy promises that actually get achieved are worth more than the empty words that would’ve been really cool.
So, I implore every Arts and Science student to take the time and look into every promise being made to you. Give the posters more than a passing glance—take the time to think about what each promise means and why it’s being made.
Dishonest candidates bank on students being too apathetic to hold them accountable, and the only way to reverse that attitude is to prove them wrong.
—Melissa Fuller
CSU VP Loyola & Services
BA Communication Studies
