Zoe JoyallThe residence forum originally scheduled for tonight at 6 p.m. has been rescheduled to next Tuesday, but there has been virtually no effort to inform students of that fact. Seven hours before the forum was scheduled to begin, neither social media nor the elections website reflected the change, and residents had not been notified that the forum was no longer taking place, despite the fact that candidates were made aware of the change a week earlier. The Gateway was never officially notified of the change until the day of the scheduled forum.
It was a good decision to move the forum to a date that does not conflict with the All-Star Lister dodgeball tournament, which would inevitably result in low turnout. But the failure to notify students about the date change is unacceptable.
When asked about the short notice, Students’ Union elections Chief Returning Officer Nadia Halabi responded, “It was short notice but we didn’t know until last minute either so we’re just doing our best to let people know, and we do apologize if it was short notice.” She said social media and the website will be updated later today, along with an email notification to residence mailing lists.
Halabi’s response, however, provides no explanation for the weeklong discrepancy between the information provided to candidates and information provided to students. A mediocre attempt to inform people was made by updating the wall calendar in SUB, which Halabi says happened last week, but it is baffling why that update was not accompanied by any other sort of notification for students.
This is about more than rescheduling a forum. This is about engaging with an apathetic campus, and giving students every reason to take SU elections seriously. The biggest threat to our campus democracy is the myth that elections are meaningless and the representatives we choose don’t matter, and such flippant disregard for the very few platforms students have to engage with candidates — the residence forum is one of only five forums held in total — does nothing but reinforce that idea.
Students already think that elections are a joke. Students already think that candidates are resume-builders who don’t actually care about the issues they discuss. It is already an uphill battle to convince them otherwise. A failure to provide students with crucial information about forums is just further proof that bureaucracy doesn’t serve them. Instead, it gives them less than seven hours of advance notice and tells them it’s their responsibility to figure it out.
