The Central Student Association’s (CSA) annual general election takes place from Wednesday, Mar. 5 to Friday, Mar. 7. On those three days, students will head to the online polls to elect their Executive, their college representatives to the Board of Directors, and vote on a referendum question.
Results will be announced within one week of the ballot box closing.
CSA bylaws prohibit candidates from campaigning prior to the specified campaign week, and this year’s campaign week begins on Monday, Mar. 3. Only then can candidates begin classroom talks, publicizing their platform, putting up posters, sending emails, and shoring up votes. Candidates are allowed to continue campaigning until the last day of voting.
The Ontarion posed two questions to each candidate for the Executive positions, and their responses will be published in next week’s issue, to be released Mar. 6. For now, here is a full list of candidates:
For the Executive positions, the candidates are as follows:
Local Affairs Commissioner
Luna Shen
Brittany Skelton
Caitlin Drew Zeran
External Affairs Commissioner
Sonali Menezes
Maggie Robertson
Academic and University Affairs Commissioner
Peter Miller
Kimmi Snider
Communications and Corporate Affairs Commissioner
Matt Brown
Sonia Chwalek
River Roy
Human Resources and Operations Commissioner
David Alton
Colin Morris
For the Board of Directors, the candidates are as follows:
College of Social and Applied Human Sciences
Sarah Hafuth
Claire Segeren
College of Arts
Shalu Atwal
Brad Breedon
Brendan Campisi
College of Biological Science
Tulakshiga Selvarajah
On the online ballot, students will also have a chance vote on a single referendum question, which this year comes from the Student Space Initiative.
The Student Space Initiative is a relatively new organization that is seeking funds to make upgrades to student space around campus. Spearheaded by Katherine Lucas, President of Interhall Council, the group takes some inspiration from the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences Student Alliance, which last year invested capital to make improvements to MacKinnon building. The Initiative is asking to collect a $2 fee per semester from full-time students, which would then be matched by the University of Guelph.
The preamble to their referendum question, which can be made public prior to campaign week, reads as follows:
“The purpose of the Student Space Initiative is to update and modify student space on campus. This will be achieved by: updating furniture, installing new receptacles, improving lighting, and repurposing university space into student space. These modifications will be accessible to all students. A student space committee will be struck to allocate funds to priority locations on-campus, which will increase and improve student space. The committee will be comprised of both students and staff to ensure fair representation from both partners and will report to the Compulsory Fees Committee annually. In addition, the committee will create funding guidelines and allocation principals before distributing its funds. Student membership will have a 50% + 1 majority on the committee to provide students with the opportunity to have a majority vote. These fees will be broken into two separate budget lines and will be distributed at the discretion of the committee. 80% of the fees will be for projects chosen by the committee while the last 20% will be projects recommended by students directly. Students will have an opportunity to submit applications to the committee for consideration and projects that have the greatest impact will be chosen. The guidelines for these projects will be determined by the committee.”