Letter: Vote for Competence, Vote Act Together
I like politics. Since real politics are too depressing and scary nowadays (case in point: Donald Trump), I like to speculate on student politics at Concordia.
I expected the Concordia Student Union elections to be pretty contentious. Once I heard that Lucy Marshall-Kiparissis would be running for general coordinator, I was excited. She is possibly the most experienced and competent person to run for the position, and I could not have dreamed of better candidates for the rest of the Act Together team.
I thought another smart and competent individual was putting together another slate. That didn’t pan out, but there is another slate, composed of all but one person I didn’t know. I was interested to see what alternative perspective they would bring to the CSU, but at the first debate, they seemed to come out swinging.
Eddy, the Empower Concordia candidate for general coordinator seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, but not for the reasons one might expect. He didn’t disagree with the political activism the union has been involved in — in fact, he accused Act Together of being complacent and accepting of the status quo, of not doing enough activism.
Putting aside the fact that the Act Together candidates are exactly the wrong people you could accuse of not being “activist enough,” it turned out that Eddy wasn’t even sure what side of the barricade they should have been on.
During the second debate, as part of a speech about his plans to do more for students facing tribunals (even though the last tribunal just ended), Eddy mentioned that we have to support students who were fighting for austerity. And when everyone else in the room raised their eyebrows and his team members were rushing to correct him, he flip flopped between saying he actually meant anti-austerity and then digging his heels in further arguing with one student — who had faced a tribunal —that the demonstrations were for austerity, getting more and more flustered with every word. That’s just one example of this strange behaviour.
I expected lively debates between two capable and experienced teams, but what we have is _Empower Concordia_—a team who has to run every word or idea by their confused megalomaniacal leader—and _Act Together_—a group of passionate, competent, and fully prepared folks who each bring valuable experiences to work for students.
—Mariah Gillis
