New CSU president wants to kill that ivory tower syndrome

Jason Gondziola

For CSU president Brent Farrington, things are a lot easier the second time around. The Urban Studies and Art History major is beginning his second term as a CSU executive and feels that his previous experience in student government has prepared him well for the year ahead.

“Last year, when we came in, it was basically a clean slate where you had to fill it up and figure out who’s who - where you go for money, where you go for resources,” said Farrington, who comes from Sydney, Maine. “This year, when we walked in, we already knew all that. That empowered the team to move forward at all angles. We had virtually no transition lag.”

Although he has been criticized for the size of his government, which has eight executives, Farrington sees the size as strength, not weakness. “Having eight executives allows us to be more transparent and more accessible.” He said all seven of his colleagues have demonstrated themselves to be hard workers.

Now he hopes to get the word out about student government. Farrington says students don’t know about their elected officials. He recently conducted a survey that showed 30 per cent of the student body didn’t know what the CSU was.

“Last year, I’m not afraid to say, we lacked that engaging aspect of the Union. We’re here to serve students, and to do that, students have to know that you exist.”

Accordingly, the coming year will see a big effort on the part of CSU executives to get their faces out there through classroom visits and frequent tabling on the mezzanine. In the meantime, Farrington invites fellow students to attend council meetings and get active.

His plan is to involve students in social, political and academic activities. With Canada’s largest orientation party already in the works at the school and renovations to the Hive at Loyola planned for completion in the fall, the social aspect appears well underway.

Farrington and his government hope to engage students politically and intellectually through the use of celebrity guest speakers with their World Speaker Series.

Included in the series is David Suzuki, who will speak on Nov. 10 about global warming, and former US president Bill Clinton, who will speak on AIDS in Africa in early February.

The latter event is hoped to generate $300,000, most of which will go towards AIDS orphanages in Africa. A $50,000 portion of the money will go into a trust, which will be used to send five students a year to volunteer at orphanages in Africa.

The new CSU also hopes to engage students academically, both by advocating for their rights and by informing them about the various services available to them on campus.

“We’re trying to do an academic code of conduct, which is what the university has,” he said. “We want to counter it with the student bill of rights, so students know what their academic rights are.” He and his government are also working with Bill Curran, Concordia’s Director of Libraries, to educate students on academic integrity and on the proper and effective use of the libraries.