Your Concordia back in

In a turn of events, Concordia’s Judicial Board has reversed the disqualification of Your Concordia from the CSU election. The team is now able to act as Concordia’s Student Union next year and is no longer banned from running for or holding office for two years, as prescribed in Chief Electoral Officer Oliver Cohen’s ruling. Action, however, was not so lucky. The board upheld their disqualification.

Both Action and Your Concordia appealed their disqualification Wednesday. Issues regarding postering and campaigning were discussed in both cases. Action was accused of campaigning during the polling period and Your Concordia was accused of fliering after the campaign period was over. For the most part, both teams used lack of evidence and unclear rules as their defence. Both teams also complained about lack of communication with Cohen, saying they were never informed of any of their violations during the action election. Cohen argued that both Khallil Haddad and Lex Gill, Presidential candidates, signed a form stating they knew the rules.

The two team’s election expenses became the focus of both hearings. In the end, neither team will have their election expenses reimbursed. There was some discrepancy over whether Action filed theirs in time. Cohen maintained he waited around all day and never heard from either team so he left his office around the time of the 5:00 deadline, but couldn’t be sure he was there until the last minute. Action President candidate Khalil Haddad said he was there before the deadline but Cohen wasn’t there. He says he slipped it under his office’s door, and that’s how it was found Monday morning. 

As for Your Concordia, Cohen cited multiple problems with their expenses. They did not submit them on the proper form, although Gill argued that it was not included in the election package. During his rebuttal, when Cohen reached the topic of Your Concordia’s election expenses, he began to get irate, even swearing at one point, saying candidates seem to think filing them is just a “mere formality” like, “Who cares about his regulations? We do what we want”. Cohen continued to accuse Your Concordia of filing false receipts, citing prices for printing that don’t match those of quotes he got, as well as incorrect taxes and accused the team of forging signatures because of apparently mismatching handwriting. Cohen also brought up the team’s “sophisticated” website and videos. Your Concordia did not make a claim for making these, as they said it was done for free. Cohen could not believe this and insisted they should have declared the costs. He called their expenses report the “worst [I’ve] ever seen in elections history”. 

Despite Cohen calling their behaviour “disgusting”, the elected Your Concordia candidates will take office as scheduled this summer. There will be a bi-election in the fall to fill the seats that Action candidates were elected to. These include all of the JMSB councillor seats, as well as a senate and ENCS seat. Action candidates will be allowed to run. It is possible that the current CSU will overturn the decision to disqualify Action at their next council meeting. A 4/5 majority vote is required. 

Although the hearings lasted well over eight hours, the proceedings run fairly smoothly. A petition asking the board to honour the results of the election was denied by the JB as they wanted to rule based on the facts, not the opinion of students. However, in a surprise twist, one of the board members, Yuri Kuczer, was forced to walk out after it was pointed out that he was no longer a student, since he did not register for any classes in the Spring semester. Members of the Judicial Board must be students.