The Faubourg Question

After the student centre by-election failed by a large margin last semester, the CSU executive responded to the results by stating on their website that they “are listening” to students.

The CSU invited “those who opposed the increase (…) back to the drawing board” with them to address concerns.

Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, such consultation never took place. Quite the opposite—the student centre became an issue rarely mentioned by the executive for the months following the referendum.

Their silence was broken with last week’s articles in the student newspapers regarding the Faubourg, which showed the CSU executives (namely Heather Lucas and Adrien Severyns), hand-in-hand with the administration, stepping up to the plate to take yet another swing at a project that has failed twice in the past year—in apparent ignorance of the 70 per cent of students who voted against the proposal last semester.

It has become clear that the only consultation the CSU executive has conducted over the past few months is with the administration.

All that this establishes is that, without a doubt, the CSU executive’s intentions of consultation were little more than a façade put in place to subdue those with legitimate questions and concerns regarding the contract.

The student centre has failed before, and regardless of how many campaign rules are broken, it will fail again.

That, to borrow from Mr. Côté’s quote in one article, is something this year’s executives, and the administration, “will have to accept” and move forward with as well.

—Gonzalo Nieto,
Psychology

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 25, published March 8, 2011.