Meet CSU slate ‘All In’

A new slate is set to run for the CSU elections in March

NewsMaria Cholakova — Published March 4, 2025 8 minutes

This is part of a series. Look out for our coverage of the upcoming slates and the CSU elections.

They seek to provide services that will benefit students, ranging from financial and food sustainability, French aid, accessible food options and opportunities for students to express their needs to the union. 

Vanessa Massot (they/them), general coordinator

Massot is the current CSU academic and advocacy coordinator. They believe a union should have a strong general coordinator, who is ready to help their team and students. 

“I have kind of naturally stepped into that leadership role,” they said.

As one of its many roles, the general coordinator has a seat on Concordia University’s board of directors. 

Massot believes they are ready to advocate for student needs. 

“Two things that have prepared me for that this year are being a student senator and sitting on the Academic Senate this year, and [that] I’ve been having meetings with Anne Whitelaw and Graham Carr,” they said.

Massot believes that often, student seats in high-power places are just a facade, with the administration “already coming in with this attitude of not really respecting the student voice.”  

“I think [that] me this year, kind of making an impact has kind of shown the administration ‘No, actually, these aren't just a bunch of kids that are just here to put something on their resume. These are people that are intelligent and that actually care and are trying to push forward,’” they explained. 

Danna Ballantyne (she/her), external affairs and mobilization coordinator

Ballantyne is the current CSU external affairs and mobilization coordinator and is running for reelection. 

“I want to make sure that the work continues in educating students about the processes that are available to them, whether it be through services, whether it be through the democratic process,” she said. “[What] I want to do is going to come down to making sure they know how to use these systems.”

Ballanyne said she is also looking forward to continuing some projects from her current mandate. 

“As an external, I'm really, really excited to continue on a project that was started this year, which is a French networking group between the universities in Montreal,” she said. “We're looking to make sure that students have access to professional French skills that are going to help them get jobs and that are going to help them succeed professionally.” 

When it comes to advocating for students when communicating with Concordia’s administration, Ballantyine said she is ready for the challenge. 

“My role is to be a representative of the students and to represent their rights in the face of the admin who often are lacking a lot of important information on what it is to be a student and what the students want and need,” she explained. 

Isabella Providenti (she/they), academic and advocacy coordinator

Providenti is the current general coordinator of the Fine Arts Student Association, but said she is ready to smoothly transition to the CSU. She believes that the CSU should be run like a political union, not a business one. 

“I started with grassroots organizing with the tuition hikes red square movement and, in that, I met a group of people [and] we decided to run on a slate with each other,” she said. “It just really showed me how important it is to have a group of people with cohesive politics that are people working together.” 

Providenti believes that the academic and advocacy coordinator should be there to help students and advocate for them. 

“I'm also really interested in making sure that the money that the students are putting into the CSU is being returned to them in tangible, usable, material ways,” she said. “So I'd love to get a subsidized OPUS card for students. We've also been talking a lot about setting up harm reduction and mental health services.”

Ryan Assaker (he/him), financial coordinator

Assaker is the current financial coordinator of the Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA) and said he is excited to run for the CSU. 

He believes that transparency and logical financial decisions that benefit the student interest are a must.

“I'd like for students to be able to follow a trail when it comes to money,” he said. “Right when I hear that thousands of dollars have been spent on an AI [chatbot] or on random stuff, I'd like to know where that money is coming from and where it's going.” 

Assaker said he is prepared to face the financial challenges related to tuition hike cuts. He believes the most optimal way to organize the union's finances is to create a well-thought-out budget.  

“We rode the wave and we've been very successful at ASFA and hopefully [we] can reproduce that with CSU as well,” Assaker said. 

Leo Litke (he/him), internal coordinator

Disclaimer: Leo Litke is a contributor to The Link. He has had no editorial involvement with this article.

Litke said his main goal as internal coordinator would be to set clubs up for success. As the president of the COMS Guild (Communication Studies Undergraduate Student Association) and a member of ASFA, Litke believes that clubs are vital for student life. 

Litke wants to ensure that clubs have a space to share their concerns, troubleshoot problems and get payments on time. 

“[What] I'm hoping to do is just to consolidate and provide a lot more resources for clubs to make their mandates easier,” he said. “One thing that I've seen that's worked really, really well at ASFA is just scheduling check-ins, saying ‘Hey, what's up? What do you need? How can I help you?’ That's been really, really valuable.” 

Litke also believes that payments for clubs need to come in on time so they can be successful from the jump. 

“I think that not having those resources financially means that it's really, really hard for those clubs to function,” he said.

Litke added that he believes that clubs’ financial troubles this academic year can be attributed to late payments sent to clubs by the current CSU. 

“By the time that they got it, [it was too late] for them to plan any sort of events that kind of put them on campus and got them attention in the beginning of the semester, when students were like ‘I'm like having a fresh start and ready to kind of get involved,’” he said.

Aya Kidaei (she/her), Loyola coordinator 

Kidaei’s main goal as Loyola coordinator would be to make Loyola more welcoming and accessible to students. 

“I would really like to be involved in mobilization and get more people involved. I think there's a lot of people at Loyola that want to do things, but they just don't really know where to start,” she said. 

Kidaei also wants to help students who are struggling with the reduction of shuttle bus hours.

“It's a struggle in the mornings because the shuttle just isn't running,” she said. 

She believes that with the help of a general assembly or town hall, students will be able to express their frustrations, which will allow the union to collect data and present it to the administration. 

“Rev” Arevig Nahabedian (they/them), student life coordinator

Nahabedian said they are hoping to expand students’ knowledge on the amount of services the union and the university provide.  

“This is a student union, I think it needs to give students the opportunity to raise funds for their clubs and groups,” they said. “Student life is so important to so many people.” 

Nahabedian also believes that the union needs to increase its transparency and communication with other groups and services on campus. 

“There needs to be more meeting and communication between fee levy groups, faculty and different student associations,” they said. “The CSU is operating on its own little island and there is so much that can be done if everyone touches base.”

Nahabedian further explained that they think the union needs to increase its transparency to optimize communication. They believe one way to do that is through weekly or bi-weekly newsletters, which they used to rely on. 

“[It will allow] for students to get to know the inner workings of the CSU, because it is so confusing on all levels,” they said.

Mia Kennedy (she/her), sustainability coordinator 

Kennedy’s passion for sustainability started while she was at Dawson College, and she wishes to explore it further as CSU sustainability coordinator. As a student at Concordia, she became involved with Concordia’s Food Coalition and most recently with FedUp, an organization that advocates the removal of Aramark from campus. 

“I'm just very clearly passionate about sustainability, particularly with food,” she said. “But also in my work, I've touched on a lot of different other issues, whether it be environmental sustainability standards at Dawson or at Concordia, or houselessness, where I did that volunteering work at Dawson. And I'm interested in exploring that at Concordia now.”

When it comes to her goals for the position, she would like to focus on food sustainability. 

“I'm really hoping [...] to try to start a sort of night service version of The People's Potato,” she said. “It's likely not going to be every single night, because it's going to depend on funding and stuff, but I'm dreaming big.”

Kennedy said she feels it’s important to look at the student struggle throughout history to understand the need for specific types of organizing. 

“Historically, in the ‘60s, when student organizing began at Concordia, food was a really big issue,” she explained. “I'm seeing us turn back to those fundamental points again, whether it be food, housing or the right to express your political opinions. Palestine, obviously.” 

She continued to explain that she and the slate's goal is to create a “student union together that is here to serve the students, and in this really pivotal, crucial moment where we're seeing students be abandoned and left behind.”

Students will be able to vote for the next executive team during the CSU election from March 11 to March 13. 

This article originally appeared in Volume 45, Issue 10, published March 4, 2025.