Concordia's dirty laundry

>> Charges of impropriety and favouritism are making CSU presidential election juicy

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Following the summer and beginning of term brouhaha at Concordia, and Concordia Student Union (CSU) president Sabrina Stea's surprise resignation on October 15, students are again heading to the polls to vote for a union executive. And just like in real politics, the election has the potential to get ugly. Charges of administrative favouritism and dirty tricks are being levelled, and the notoriously rowdy and activist executive is wondering what will happen if a more quiescent one is elected.

Tom Keefer, one of two students summarily expelled over the summer for allegedly spraypainting anti-Israeli slogans on university property and presidential candidate for the radical Left Opposition slate, is wary of a more conservative, less activist CSU. "We'll only know in the long term what will happen if students elect a right-wing executive," he says. But what he fears is a union that won't fight what he calls "corporate capitalism and their excesses as relates to university privatization and corporatization of programs."

But if you believe Keefer, the administration already has a candidate they want at the CSU helm. That would be Chris Schulz, of the Representative Union slate. Keefer points out that the administration gave Schulz an after-hours pass to poster the university, but not others.

Jessica Lajambe, the non-partisan chief electoral officer, also thinks that is a clear case of meddling. "I was told by the Dean of Students' office that the only way to get an overnight pass is if you're a member of a student group setting up [an exhibit or stand] in the mezzanine," she says. Security is responsible for handing out passes, but Lajambe found no written policy. The passes, she says, appear to be granted "on a subjective basis and it would seem that that's what occurred." Schulz was not available for comment by presstime.

The posters have indeed been a source of anger. The more moderate left slate, An Umbrella Party, complained that their posters were torn down by the administration, ostensibly because they posed a fire hazard. Ridiculous, says Lajambe. "The whole idea that posters pose a fire hazard is a little blown out of proportion," she says. "Why don't they pull all the books out of the library or close down copy centres?"

The election recall process was a long and involved one. When the Concordia student handbook--entitled Uprising--was published late last summer, filled with hopping mad lefty diatribes and dogmatic fist-pounding, it raised the usual hackles, especially at the B'nai Brith. Then came September 11. The B'nai Brith jumped all over the CSU, making the claim that the handbook was the tool of America's newest demon and the CSU executives were a gang of terror symps (a press release later said that the claim was meant to be ironic). Former CSU prez Stea blames the B'nai Brith's campaign of deliberate "misinformation" and the mainstream media's toeing of the Jewish group's line for the popular outrage against the union.

"Students who heard of the CSU through the mainstream media were probably not likely to be sympathetic," says Stea. "They were getting a biased, one-sided opinion." She says she resigned in order to call new elections that would both clear the air about the CSU and blow wide open the extent of the university administration's meddling in the affairs of the autonomous union. :