JB Issues Decision Regarding Electoral Infractions

VP Academic & Advocacy Position No Longer Up for Grabs

NewsMegan Dolski — Published November 27, 2012

Due to violations of proper procedure, the ballots provided to students at this week’s Concordia Student Union bylections, taking place from Nov. 27 to Nov. 29, will be missing one executive seat.

Despite the availability of the position being publically announced around campus, students will not be checking a box to fill the vacant VP Academic and Advocacy position.

This comes as the result of a provisional decision issued by the CSU’s judicial board, set to be solidified officially in writing by the end of this week.

Last week, CSU Council motioned to have two separate electoral infractions brought to the JB for ruling.
They first asked the board to determine whether or not sufficient notice was given to legally open the position of VP Academic and Advocacy for byelection, which was left vacant on Sept. 30 following the resignation of Lucia Gallardo.

The JB unanimously ruled that position was never legally open, as the council had no legal grounds, according to their standing regulations and bylaws, to open an executive position.

As a result, the power to appoint a new VP to fill the vacancy rests with CSU President Schubert Laforest.

“I will meet with my executive soon and we will be reassessing our portfolios and deciding how to move forward,” said Laforest. “I haven’t made a decision in terms of the appointment, but it will be brought up at the next council meeting. I want to get this done as soon as possible.”

The second infraction sent to JB was concerning the number of Arts and Science councillor spots officially open for byelection.

Three open spots were initially announced on Nov. 2, but due to several forced and voluntary resignations by councillors shortly thereafter, CSU Chief Electoral Officer Justin Holland attempted to open three more seats on Nov. 6.

In another unanimous decision, JB voted that this second set of vacancies was not legally opened, and therefore would not be on the ballot for the upcoming byelections.

The board noted, however, that it was within the CEO’s power to issue a supplemental directive that would open the spots.

Such a directive was issued later that day. As a result, six Arts and Science spots will be open in this week’s byelections.

In order to address both infractions, the JB held a public hearing last Friday. Despite the issue being highly contentious and debated at a CSU Council meeting earlier in the week, there was a noticeably low turnout of interested parties that came to speak to the matter by week’s end.

“It was unfortunate that the plaintiff, being council itself, couldn’t send a few people to comment on the case,” said Nick Cuillerier, newly appointed chair of the JB.

“The judicial board will be looking at adding to our code of procedures an additional section as to how to go ahead to cases that are referred to by council for an opinion, rather than a direct complaint by someone—to see if we can figure out a better format than we did Friday.”

Those who did attend were Holland, VP Loyola Stefan Faina, and Hajar El Jahidi—who would have been the sole candidate to run for the VP Academic and Advocacy position, had it remained open.

Each of the three speakers put forth similar sentiments—that while the CSU might have made a procedural error, it would be in the best interest of students to open byelections to as many candidates as possible.

“We have noticed there is a student apathy problem—not going through with [these elections] goes against the point and is self-defeating,” said Faina.

“This could harm the CSU. We don’t want to make this bigger than it is.”