What Is ASFA?
And why you should probably care about these elections
ASFA: What is it? Who’s in it? Why does it matter?
If you are one of nearly 17,000 students at Concordia studying in Arts and Science, your departmental government is likely one of 27 constituent members of the Arts and Science Federation of Associations, or ASFA.
Strange acronym aside, ASFA is the largest faculty association on campus. Acting as a veritable student-life cocktail of government, academia, social events and services, ASFA has the stated mandate of “representing and fighting for students’ rights, as well as enriching their university experience.”
You should care about ASFA because there is more to university than grades, because our administration seems to be increasingly giving students things to fight for, and because you’re paying a over a dollar and change to the organization every year—giving these student politicos over $300,000 of your money to play with.
This year, only three executive positions are being contested: VP Internal, VP Finance and VP Academic. No candidate is running for VP Communications and the remaining three positions, including ASFA President, are uncontested. The Link will not be covering any of the uncontested VP slots this week.
Your student government is here to serve you, and your interests—but you have to elect and demand them to.
So figure out what you want out of ASFA, get involved, get informed, get to the ballot box and make a choice.
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 22, published February 8, 2011.
