For Students...Or for Re-election?

This week's edition of The Charlatan, Carleton University's student newspaper, an interesting announcement took place. On the first page of news, it announced that CUSA, our lovable Student Government/Student Union/Political Organization, has finalized the deal to buy Haven Books, and the transfer will take place on January 31st, 2008. While this deal seems incredibly great for students, to me this just sounds like one big coincidence. Let me give you guys the back story and then explain why.

In last year's CUSA elections, the "Student's First" slate, headed by Shelley Melanson, promised to purchase Haven Books, the lower cost textbook store on Sunnyside. This was a sure winner as electoral promises go, one which your opponents cannot argue against. Arguing against this would be like arguing against lowering tuition fees, political suicide. The "Students First" slate ultimately won the elections for all six executive positions, and therefore the negotiations would begin. They stated that they would buy Haven Books using money Coca-Cola has been paying CUSA for the last five years to stock only Coke products in their stores. No student had any idea that an exclusivity deal even existed between CUSA and Coke, so this came a rude surprise to many, including myself. However, no-one would argue with lower textbook costs, so there were no real complaints about using this money.

I too won election in last February, as a Councillor for Public Affairs, and for the last eight months I have heard the updates on the negotiations during our monthly CUSA council meetings. The announcement that the deal had been finalized came during the January 15th, 2008 CUSA council meeting, and we all applauded the CUSA executive for the successful negotiations. After Shelley's announcement, my mind began to realize that the date for the finalizing of the deal coincided with another date announced at the January meeting.

Before Shelley's announcement, we had a presentation from the Chief Electoral Officer of CUSA, Kimalee Phillip, who stated that the CUSA election nominations would begin on January 28th, finish on February 1st, and then the election campaigning would begin February 2nd. Now, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but January 31st and February 2nd are very close together, and the conclusion of a major business deal so near to an election makes me think that something else is going on.

From what I can see, the purchase of Haven Books was intentionally delayed by the CUSA executive so to coincide with the upcoming election campaign and ease their re-election. Over the final two months of the Fall term, the reports were very blurred and short, each simply saying that “the deal is coming along and almost finished”, unlike the previous reports which had given quite a lot of detail into the purchase process. A deal being “almost finished” for nearly three months makes me think that it was being delayed for the best possible electoral angle, to all the sale to deflect away from negative aspects of this executive’s term in office.

From an executive who campaigned on the motto of “Putting Students First”, this certainly appears to be a case of “Putting my Job First”, and students should think about this during the upcoming CUSA election period.

Salute to Samlal

Well, my Virgin Blog has been broken. As my buddy Justin would say, it just lost its V-Card.

That is it.