Concordia Student Union: Apocalypse Now?

UVic Student Society elections may have their low points–most recently, last year's disqualification of two elected candidates and appointment of the losers–but it could be worse. We could be the Concordia Student Union.

For the past ten years, CSU politics has been a battleground between "left" and "right" slates. The corrupt and extremist left, which took over the student newspaper and attempted to ban the pro-Israel student club, was succeeded by a centre-right group which became equally corrupt and ruled for seven years before falling to a new centre-left coalition in 2009.

Interestingly, the "right" at Concordia was associated with the Canadian Federation of Students, usually aligned with left-leaning student union slates. Last year Concordia students voted to leave the CFS, but the national organization refused to recognize the result and the CFS is now going to court to try to get the referendum ratified.

Internal CSU politics are dominated by insiders–campaign managers, staffers and former student politicians with grudges to settle. Vast amounts of money are spent on election campaigns and postering begins at midnight, with teams of candidates competing frantically for poster space.

Now, as if all this wasn't bad enough, nearly everyone has been disqualified from the recent CSU election–both the Your Concordia slate, which won all the executive positions and most of the facutly rep positions, and the Action slate, which won six faculty reps for the School of Business. Chief Electoral Officer Oliver Cohen made his decision to disqualify both slates based on the allegedly false election expenses they submitted as well as a variety of other broken rules. Smear tactics had appeared during the campaign but were not linked to any candidates.

Members of both slates had already acknowledged serious problems with the electoral process. Post-election, victorious presidential candidate Lex Gill and her opponent, Khalil Haddad, vowed to work together to improve the system. Gill said she hoped to have a series of electoral reforms ready to present to Council in June, but now it looks like she may not have a chance. Your Concordia was given the harshest disqualification ruling, with their candidates forbidden to run in CSU elections for the next two years! One opinion piece in the Concordian argues that instead, "the CEO should be disqualified."

The disqualifications will now be appealed to the CSU Judicial Board for a final decision. If the CEO's ruling stands, it appears the current CSU council will continue to hold office until another election can be held in the fall, which given the controversy and scandals typical of their elections, few Concordia students would probably look forward to.