RSS

General elections for the Arts and Science Federation of Associations are upon us. This time around, teams are running as individuals in loosely joined affiliations. Charlie Brenchley and Caroline Bourbonnière lead their respective groups.

Students can trust that candidates Charlie Brenchley and Caroline Bourbonnière have experience with Concordia student politics and that they are committed to keeping school cheap.

Both are ready to strike against the upcoming Quebec-wide tuition hikes. If they are to mobilize the future ASFA executive, however, it may not be with the people they are running with.

In this year’s election, candidates are technically running alone, but have been granted the moral support of an affiliation. In fact, it is impossible for one affiliation to win in its entirety. Instead they will have to learn to work together with all of the candidates.

ASFA elections were not always this way. Last year, candidates ran unaffiliated, but it was one of the lowest voter turnouts in ASFA history.

While this is the first attempt at an affiliation system, both Bourbonnière and Brenchley have already deemed it ineffective and hinted at changing it back to teams next time around.

According to Brenchley, ASFA retreated from the team or slate route after the 2009 election, which saw so much controversy that two elected candidates were docked votes, effectively stripping them of their elected positions. Not being able to take it, the Chief Elector Officer of that year resigned.

Brenchley was a part of that election. He ran for president for the losing team. “I realized that jumping into it, running for president in my first year was a little premature,” said Brenchley.

Brenchley was accused of being an agent for the Canadian Federation of Students in that election, but has since turned around in opposition to the student union that is in a multi-million dollar legal battle with the CSU. “I support [the students’] move to get away from that organization because it doesn’t seem to be working in Quebec.”

Now, he wants to put that all behind him and give it another shot.

His opponent, Bourbonnière, is not unfamiliar with the scrappy grind of student politics herself. She ran for the Concordia Student Union four years ago on Team Fresh and last year for Team Action - losing in both instances. 

While both were unsuccessful in past elections on the faculty and student union levels, they have gained valuable student political experience on the Member Association level. Brenchley currently holds the positions of VP Community Outreach Coordinator and VP Finance for the School of Community and Public Affairs, while Bourbonnière is the VP Communications for Political Science.

She says that in years past ASFA has not communicated sufficiently with the CSU, MAs or the media. According to Bourbonnière, the petition filed last month by former CSU Councilor Tomer Shavit, ASFA President Alex Gordon and Commerce and Administration Students' Association President Marianna Luciano to impeach CSU President Lex Gill, which has since been retracted, was “a great example of the miscommunication between ASFA and the CSU.”

Brenchley said the petition was "a very adversarial way to go about it," and that "impeaching one person directly pulls the student movement apart." 

Despite this, as the representative for the SCPA and member of the Policy Review and Financial Committees on ASFA Council, Brenchley says that ASFA is on the right track: “ASFA has been doing great things in the past few years and I think they are going in a great direction.”

Brenchley maintains that the diversity of his affiliation, with members from all different MAs gives him and his affiliation the edge. Meanwhile, Bourbonnière has chosen to highlight her experience as an organizer to entice students with more educational ASFA events like panel discussions and workshops.

Bourbonnière and Brenchley end formal campaigning today.

ASFA students can vote in the Hall building or at Loyola February 15^th to 17^th

An Ontario judge struck down a mandatory minimum sentence foreshadowing trouble for the Conservative’s tough on crime bill.

According to the Huffington Post Leroy Smickle was sentenced to serve his community for one year rather than serve a three-year mandatory minimum jail sentence for possessing an illegal firearm.

Smickle was a first time offender using his cousin’s gun as a prop while taking Facebook photos of himself. Ontario Superior Court Judge Anne Molloy thought the minimum sentence would be cruel and unusual punishment in Smickle’s case.

The ruling signals the possibility of future judicial attacks on the Tory’s new crime bill on the basis of unconstitutionality. 

Bill C-19 is currently making its way through Senate and includes new minimum sentences for drug and sex offences.

Greece’s recent economic frugality has affected Greeks in Montreal, but according to CBC, that’s not what upsets them most.

The Greek community of 80,000 is reportedly more troubled by the riots occurring in their homeland. According to CBC, hundreds of rioters robbed stores and set fires in Athens this weekend after new laws were passed in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy.

While the consulate in Montreal has received budget cuts, Montreal’s Greek consul-general Thanos Kafopoulos told CBC that they’re trying “to maintain service” and “increase revenues.”

Flickr: Oyvind Solstad

I guess I was a fan of The Kills to a certain extent in high school; I recall ordering a 7" of theirs from HMV back in the day and, upon discovering it would cost me a whopping 12$ for two songs, paid for it without hesitation. So yeah, I guess that would qualify my 14-year-old self as being a fan of The Kills. However, my 14-year-old self also thought ska was bitchin' and that Rancid was probably one of the best working bands in 2004. That being said, I was not expecting to be particularly impressed by The Kills' live show last Sunday at l'Olympia. I was also skeptical about openers JEFF the Brotherhood; while I definitely enjoy their recorded material, I heard nothing but awful reviews of their last performance in the city during Pop Montreal.

The Kills and JEFF the Brotherhood were joined by another group, Hunters, who opened up the show. I took a quick listen to their Myspace page beforehand to get a feel for their sound and decided I was looking forward to seeing their set and learning more about them. Turns out, I absolutely hated it. First they introduce themselves: "We're Hunters and we're from New York…" then added emphatically "Brooklyn." Uh oh. This was the beginning of a decently executed but clearly thought out, off-putting, systematic set incorporating almost every trope of rock and roll stage performance. The music itself was reminiscent of one-time “It” group Pretty Girls Make Graves with a preoccupation with sounding "hard"; Hunters' sound was eclipsed by their lead singer emulating Karen O/Debbie Harry/Kathleen Hanna.

JEFF the Brotherhood were a pleasant surprise. They sounded incredibly tight, loud and fuzzed-out, almost exactly what one would expect from listening to their records. For a two-man band they filled the large venue with sound and were fun to watch. The band would have definitely benefited from a smaller venue; they didn't seem to know what to do with all the space they were allotted, which resulted in some awkward pacing back and forth as an attempt to capture the attention of their audience. They were joined by the Kills' Alison Mosshart (who I briefly convinced myself was Kate Moss) for their last song and they all looked like they were legitimately having fun, which seems to be a rare occurrence in bigger/higher stakes/more expensive shows.

I must say that the first few songs in The Kills' set kind of blew my mind. I had low expectations for their performance and was completely turned around the second they stepped out on stage and started playing. The sound was so explosive, loud and perfectly heavy that I didn't even have to consult my inner teenager to find it badass. The Kills are another instance of a simple set up that manages to sound enormous. Jamie Hince's guitar almost sounded like a pounding, heavily electronic bass, and when paired with the group's two drummers and Alison Mosshart's effortlessly cool growl resulted in raw power. That's really the only way I can describe their live performance. While their set floundered a little on occasion (especially on some of the more sparse sounding recent tracks and those incorporating too much prerecorded material), in general the band KILLED. Ha. They also covered Patsy Cline, which undoubtedly rules.

-Kelly K hosts Cut Your Hair and Get a Job every Tuesday from 1-2pm