Letter: An Open Letter To the CSU From the SASU Executive

LettersThe SASU Executive Team — Published February 27, 2019

On Wednesday, February 20, the CSU council voted against the voices of over 900 students calling for the inclusion of a referendum question on creating a solidarity economy incubator in the regular elections.

The referendum question was not only supported by hundreds of students in a petition, but followed a previous union referendum mandate which garnered over 80 per cent support, and a unanimous recommendation from the CSU’s own policy committee. SEIZE, the group putting the question to ballot, followed all CSU regulations on the matter.

Furthermore, the council used a secret ballot to vote on the issue, shrouding their accountability to their membership and mandates.

As executives of the Sociology and Anthropology Program Student Union, who have worked closely with and endorsed the SEIZE campaign, we consider this behavior by the CSU an outrageous silencing of student voices. This is a flagrantly undemocratic way to run the highest representative body for undergraduate students at Concordia. Students deserve the chance to vote on these matters directly, and not to have their own voices policed and managed in secret backed by unaccountable (and false) conjecture.

As executives of SASU, we reject the CSU adopting the role of gatekeeper for the voices of its students. We call on the CSU to immediately reverse their decision, to give students back their right to vote on the campaign, and to restore faith in the democratic processes of our union by calling a vote in the general elections.

In solidarity,

The SASU executive team.