“They’re holding us back with more and more allegations,” says New College president
Melissa Sundardas
Staff Writer
New College’s October elections have been wrapped up for almost a month, yet accusations regarding corruption in the election are still alive and thriving.
Now in its third year of existence, New College is one of nine colleges at York. It represents about 4,000 students in administrative studies programs such as finance, marketing, accounting, and human resources.
According to former vp of finance and former interim president Hassan Imtiaz—who also ran for college president in the council election this school year—there were a number of discrepancies in this year’s New College elections process that contributed to them being unfair.
Imtiaz says the constitution was violated on the grounds that the elections were rushed and were not properly advertised as stated by the rules in the constitution.
According to the constitution, the nomination period for an election shall be “no shorter than 10 days,” and that “the campaign period for each election shall be at least seven days.”
“The fact that they didn’t advertise it properly limited the number of people who were coming and voting,” says Imtiaz. He says 200 people were invited to a Facebook page for election advertisements, but the rest of the student body was not made aware of the elections until only a few days before the nomination period began. He brought the concern forward to vp students Rob Tiffin, who then extended the campaign period for a week.
The extended campaign period itself lasted from October 9 to October 23.
Another concern raised by both Imtiaz and Nick Zarlenga—another student who ran alongside Imtiaz in the elections—was the unceremonious disqualification of candidate Larissa Gagliardi.
“Apparently […] my photocopied piece of paper with my York ID was not properly attached,” says Gagliardi. Despite the fact Gagliardi—who was running on Imitaz’s slate—had more than 50 qualified signatures in the package, she was unable to run in the elections after an unsuccessful appeal to the chief returning officer, Greg Langstaff.
Zarlenga adds that Tiffin’s extension of the campaign period still didn’t solve the problem with Gagliardi not being able to run, thus putting his slate at a standstill during the campaign period.
There were still no postings about elections, he says.
According to New College’s current council president Ryan D’Costa, the message of the elections was passed to the masses via online mediums in an effort to be environmentally friendly.
“I know we sent [a message about the elections] out on the listserv,” says D’Costa. “There wasn’t much postering done per se, but we put it on the listserv, trying to be green. It was also forwarded [to] the Master’s Office, if I’m not mistaken.”
In addition, Imtiaz says Afroze Mushtaree—elections committee member and a director of internal affairs for New College—promoted D’Costa’s slate campaign, though she is supposed to remain neutral.
However, Mushtaree says the elections were promoted mostly through Facebook, and that she had added people to the general elections page as well as all the other candidates’ pages so people knew who the candidates were, since “some of them postered, and some of them didn’t.”
She says none of the other candidates had a Facebook page she could refer to to promote them.
“I don’t think it made me biased in the sense that apart from the people who are running for elections, no one else really knew what my role was,” she says. “So even if I were to put my name out there, how does it make me look biased? I’m not too sure if people apart from the people who were ever on council know what the roles of the elections committee is.”
Mushatree maintains she was not campaigning on anyone’s behalf—only spreading the news about the election campaign.
“I would’ve actually promoted any other person that would’ve approached me regarding it, but there was no other active page online,” she says.
Imtiaz says he spoke with Natalia Toussaint, elections review officer at the Centre for Student Community & Leadership Development (SC&LD) who got back to him Friday morning—the elections were Monday and Tuesday, he says, noting the last-minute callback.
Toussaint says she has no comment about the matter, and that it was the duty of the SC&LD to remain unbiased in all election processes.
Imtiaz says the officer could not help him anymore. He emailed SC&LD, expressing that he wished to withdraw his slate from the elections.
“I told them that I don’t want to take part in it,” he says. “More or less, my whole slate withdrew.”
Despite Imtiaz’s efforts, the elections proceeded. The slate, he says, was not withdrawn on the ballots.
D’Costa believes the procedures went well with the short amount of time they were given.
“If you go to York’s administration they’re going to look at the overall situation, not just listen to one student,” he says. “[York admin] usually don’t pick sides. I feel like it was a normal procedure with elections. […] We were given an extra week on top of what our regular guidelines [outlined].”
Nancy Thandi, a former New College council member, says New College is not the first college to have issues with its council and is not pleased about the conflict.
“Council members are supposed to do things that they have been elected to do by their constituents, not to have an internal conflict,” she says. “I think it’s a really big waste of time to have internal conflicts such as these. […] It’s not efficient for any council, and it deteriorates the entire purpose of them being on a council.”
D’Costa feels these conflicts are holding back the college from performing to its fullest potential.
“They’re basically holding us back now with more and more allegations,” he says. “All we’re trying to do is support the students and give back to the students, which is what we’re supposed to be doing. More and more allegations are slowing us down from what we should be doing and taking us off track.”
