Queer Concordia

CSU accused of neglecting trans students at AGM

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

Photo Nikolas Litzenberger

Maria Cholakova,
Local Journalism Initiative

High tensions, long hours and debating marked the meeting

On April 30, during a Concordia Student Union (CSU) annual general meeting (AGM), Queer Concordia senior coordinator Jessica Winton accused the CSU executives of neglecting Queer Concordia and trans students and failing to protect trans individuals. 

The meeting, nearly four hours long, happens every year as a way for the union to present its work and finances to the membership.

The meeting, which was originally set to start at 6:30 p.m., started close to 30 minutes late because quorum was not met in time. 

The AGM started with the union’s chief electoral officer, Ekamjot Kaur, who presented the union’s election results from the fall and winter elections. 

The meeting then moved on to the CSU’s executive team report. The 120-page document was presented by each executive member and outlined the team’s achievements throughout their mandate. 

The executive presentations took up over half of the meeting’s time. Afterwards came a question period, which, according to the chairperson during the AGM, was saved for after the presentation to avoid further delays in the meeting. 

Main takeaways from the report

According to CSU financial coordinator Souad El Ferjani, despite concerns over the CSU being in a deficit, the union projects to end the year with a near $300,000 surplus. 

El Ferjani explained that the reasons for the surplus were staff going on leave, external funding, delays in hiring, and the overestimation of expenses. 

El Ferjani also explained her work in the investment transparency committee, which met six times over the winter semester. The committee was formed with the help of the CSU and the Concordia University administration, after students expressed concerns with the university’s transparency regarding its investments. 

El Ferjani said that, despite the university disclosing its investments, there is still work to be done towards transparency.  

Additionally, sustainability coordinator Maria Chitoroaga presented her transitional housing project, a program to help unhoused students and community members transition into housing.

Chitoroaga said that the project has helped 22 people in need and that 18 of them have successfully graduated from the program and moved into permanent housing. 

Post-report Q&A

Following the presentation of the report, the floor was open for questions from the audience. The first question came from CSU councillor Drew Sylver, who questioned why the investment transparency committee wanted the university to divest from weapons manufacturing. 

El Ferjani clarified that the transparency committee was focused on disclosing investments, not divesting from them. She further clarified that students have called for divestment from weapons manufacturers, as they believe universities should not be invested in companies connected to war crimes. 

Afterwards, Winton accused the union of failing to provide better health coverage for trans students.

Winton claimed that the CSU did not reach out to the organization for consultations. 

CSU academic and advocacy coordinator Vanessa Massot acknowledged that the majority of Winton’s concerns boiled down to the union’s negligence. 

“It’s really disappointing that we weren’t able to negotiate better healthcare for trans students,” Massot said. 

Winton also called out executives for not issuing a public statement or acknowledging transphobic comments made during a regular council meeting at the start of the fall semester.

Winton also accused the union of failing to provide adequate help and support following a separate incident where Queer Concordia’s posters were getting torn down and defaced, including some around the CSU’s office.  

In the last 15 minutes of the meeting, Winton addressed four members of the executive team and asked them to denounce transphobic actions at the CSU and the university. 

“It seems like there is no desire to right the wrongs that were made by the CSU,” Winton said. 

Despite high tensions in the room, all four members who were called to denounce transphobia did so individually, on behalf of themselves and the union.

CSU accused of neglecting trans students at AGM Read More »

Is the CSU transparent?

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , , ,

Students report ongoing problems with the Concordia Student Union. Graphic Emily Wolak

Geneviève Sylvestre & Maria Cholakova,
Local Journalism Initiative

Lack of organization, communication issues and long meetings frustrate the student body

For Jessica Winton, senior coordinator of Queer Concordia, her relationship with the Concordia Student Union (CSU) is nonexistent. 

“Since we’re a fee levy [group], we’re independent, we try to do everything ourselves,” Winton said. “And, given that the CSU has been very reluctant to support us in basically any way aside from two executives, […] I just don’t even bother trying to deal with them at all.”

Winton has worked all year to create a gender-affirming care (GAC) loan program to help students access care without the pressure of waiting for reimbursement from insurance. 

Originally, she went to the CSU to present her motion and ask for a maximum of $100,000 to be allocated to the loan project at the first regular council meeting (RCM) of the fall semester. 

At the RCM, on top of sharing financial concerns, a councillor named another reason to oppose the motion. 

“It’s just contradicting many people’s beliefs and religious values,” the councillor said at the RCM. “I just have to speak in their voice, and I have to say that these students also represent a significant portion of the student population.”

However, according to the CSU Positions Book, the union’s official position since 2021 is that it “stands in solidarity with trans, nonbinary and gender-non-conforming folks.” 

“[The] CSU never publicly acknowledged this incident. They still haven’t published the minutes, as far as I’m aware, they never apologized to us either,” Winton said, adding that only one executive member apologized to her in private afterward. 

Council voted to send her motion to the finance committee, which has a budget of $20,000. Her project was then struck down due to a lack of funds.

After failing to receive support from the CSU, Winton launched the program at a reduced capacity of $20,000 through Queer Concordia. 

To try and get more funding for Queer Concordia and her GAC loan program, Winton sent her application to receive a fee levy increase during the 2025 CSU general elections. 

The CSU Policy on Fee Levy Applications states that existing fee levy groups looking to run for an increase need to provide “an audit or review engagement prepared by an external accountant for the previous fiscal year.” 

As Queer Concordia is the smallest fee levy group on campus—receiving $0.02 per undergraduate student, per credit—Winton said that an official audit could cost around half of the group’s operating budget.  

Queer Concordia sent in their application on Jan. 22, and additional documents on Jan. 23. They received no updates about their application after it was sent and acknowledged. 

On March 4, after reading The Link and The Concordian’s collective editorial, Winton realized Queer Concordia’s fee levy was not even added to the deliberation documents for council to look through. 

“So I reached out,” Winton said. “And apparently, our application was never even presented to the committee.”

According to Leen Al Hijjawi, one of the chairs of the fee levy committee, the Queer Concordia fee levy application was sent after the deadline without an audit. 

However, emails acquired by The Link showed that the application was sent before the last Monday of January—the deadline outlined in the policy. 

The fee levy committee and its lack of organization 

Queer Concordia isn’t the only group that has been having issues with the fee levy committee. 

During the winter semester, fee levy applicants had to send their application to the chairs of the fee levy committee by Jan. 27. 

As is procedure, after receiving the applications, the council needed to meet to deliberate on the packages presented to them. 

However, according to committee chair Moad Alhjooj, despite numerous attempts to convene during the nomination phase of the general elections, councillors were unresponsive. 

As such, the committee did not meet at all. 

By Feb. 25, the CSU held an urgent special council meeting (SCM) to ensure that the upcoming CSU elections would be held properly and according to the rules. The agenda included the approval of fee levy applications and referendum questions. 

The approval of the applications took place four days after the Feb. 21 deadline of the CSU election nomination phase. During the SCM, the CSU chairperson placed the fee levy committee in a breakout room and granted them 40 minutes to deliberate on the applications. 

Only one of the five applications was accepted. Afterwards, groups were not informed about the committee’s decisions for a few days. 

When asked why groups were not kept in the loop about their applications, Alhjooj said it was hard to communicate when there was no new news to share. 

“Sometimes it’s very difficult to deal with applicants when we ourselves don’t have the answers,” Alhjooj said. “When we can’t meet with our fee levy committee, we don’t have any more [information] from them. We don’t know where this is gonna lead or go.” 

A week later, the only group whose fee levy was accepted, ElectroCon, had its application revoked due to a lack of oversight from the committee meeting during the SCM.

The revocation came as a shock to the group. According to Husam Tannira, ElectroCon’s president, the CSU told the group to follow the application criteria on the CSU’s website instead of the fee levy application policy. 

This created an inconsistency in their application, as the website only called for 750 student signatures to create a new fee levy compared to the 3,000 needed, as outlined in the fee levy application policy. 

After the mishap, ElectroCon got in contact with the CSU. 

“They told us [the revocation was] just because there was some misunderstandings between the fee levy committee and the other fee levies. Which, to be honest, we were like, ‘OK, fair enough,’” Tannira said. “We don’t want to be approved on [the] price of other people getting refused for no reason.” 

ElectroCon has yet to meet with the committee and ask them what happened with the application. 

During the last CSU RCM, held on March 12, the council voted to hold a special fee levy referendum as soon as possible due to mistakes made by the fee levy committee during the approval process. 

“Once this is passed, hopefully we’ll call for another fee levy committee meeting where we can discuss all the applications, hopefully not with the time constraint, go over everything in detail and then hold the separate elections just for fee levies,” Alhjooj said during the RCM.

According to Winton, Al Hijjawi informed her that another meeting would be planned to discuss fee levies after the general elections. 

After the fee levy committee meeting, Hijjawi reached out to ask for Queer Concordia’s audit despite Winton explaining it was impossible in their previous correspondence. 

“It feels like everyone’s constantly being given the runaround,” Winton said. “And it feels like these bylaws are kind of redundant, at a point where it’s kind of impossible for little groups to get an increase or to even get instated.”

At the time of publication, the dates for the referendum have yet to be announced.

The Link reached out to the councillors on the fee levy committee but did not hear back by the time of publication. 

CSU’s issues with communication 

According to the CSU general coordinator Kareem Rahaman, it’s hard to define if the year was simply successful or not. He believes it is more complex than that.

“Maybe we strayed from the mandate a bit,” Rahaman said. “But it’s not that we strayed because we just didn’t want to do the mandate.”

Despite not following the general coordinator mandate word for word, Rahaman said that the CSU always made sure executives were present at major events at the university. 

“When things were happening on campus, when police were on campus, we put ourselves in those positions to talk to [police], to try to stop those things from happening,” Rahaman said. “Except [for] a handful of incidents, we tried our best to make sure that these things happening on campus were safe.”

Despite the presence of CSU executives at major events on campus, students like Winton have criticized the union for being unreachable and not answering emails on time or at all. 

“So that’s a problem that I wasn’t even aware of, for the most part. I wasn’t even aware that that was a thing happening,” Rahaman said. 

Rahaman added that if a student wants to reach him or another executive, they can go to the CSU’s office and talk to the receptionist, who will try to get in touch with them. 

“Going to The Link, hearing about [communication issues] for the first time in an interview is not the best way to hear about it, I would say,” Rahaman said. “I mean, the Instagram page is active. There’s a lot of ways to get in touch with [us].”

CSU’s lack of transparency or student lack of understanding? 

Apart from executives’ reachability, students have also been vocal about the union’s lack of transparency. 

During the CSU general elections on March 11 to March 13, slates and councillors ran on promises of transparency for students. 

Rahaman believes that transparency is always brought up during the elections in order to paint the CSU in a bad light. 

“When I first ran, I ran on transparency too. But you know, my definition of transparency [is] something you can see through,” he said. “But in order to see through that thing, you have to look at that thing. You can’t look the other way and then say, ‘Oh, well, that glass is not transparent,’ but you’re looking at the wall.” 

He added that mechanisms for transparency are already in place, as the RCMs are open to all students who would want to participate or present a motion. 

Rahaman did say that, although meetings are public, the CSU’s website has not yet been updated with the most recent information. For example, the most recent minutes from a CSU RCM on the union’s website date back to May 2024. 

Additionally, the latest available budget and audited financial statements on the website date back to 2021-22. Finance coordinator Souad El Ferjani said she believes that, like herself, previous executive members were probably not made aware of the need to update the website. 

“The policy does not specify what things you need to update or not,” El Ferjani said. “And the trainings that we get are not detailed. They do not explain to you the scope of your work.”

El Ferjani added that she will be sending her budget and presentations to the web developer at the end of her mandate.

Where is the Judicial Board? 

Since its last decision was made in 2022, the CSU’s highest governing body, the Judicial Board (JB), has been non-functioning. 

The CSU JB acts as the judiciary branch of the union. It serves to render impartial judgments on complaints and cases by using and interpreting the CSU By-Laws and Standing Regulations.

Despite attempts from the executive team to reinstate the JB at the Jan. 22 RCM, councillors only voted for one out of four candidates who applied for the position. For the board to be active, a minimum of three members are required. 

As councillors entered a closed session to vote on JB candidates, it was not clear why three out of the four candidates were rejected. 

According to Rahaman, the problems with the restoration of the JB began long before the RCM.

He explained that it took the union three separate JB call-outs to get four students to apply for the position. 

As for the vote, Rahaman is still in the dark on why the council rejected the candidates. 

“We don’t even know the reasoning as to why these people weren’t selected,” Rahaman said. “And their job is to keep council in check; it’s to keep these problems from happening. It’s insane to me.” 

Filibustering, long meetings and disagreements

Long council meetings have been a recurring problem for the union this year. 

The CSU council is made up of 30 students from different Concordia faculties. Their responsibilities include passing mandates, voting on motions and approving the budget. 

During the academic year, meetings have often run over four hours, with a number of the meetings being adjourned without completing the agenda. 

This has led to delays in the approval of crucial documents like the budget. El Ferjani said that, despite the budget being added to different RCM agendas since September, meetings were always adjourned before it was approved. 

“I just called [an SCM] just to get the budget approved, because at that point, it was unreasonable,” El Ferjani said.

Arguments and long speaking turns are partially to blame for the long runtimes. Most notably, on Jan. 10, council member Drew Sylver presented a motion that called for the resignation of five councillors and seven out of eight members of the executive team. 

The motion led to an hour-long debate of executives and councillors accusing Sylver of failing to provide proof of wrongdoing for the listed individuals.

“It would be really easy for me [to say that the] union should implement this training and this training […] for the following year,” Rahaman said. “But realistically, that is not going to solve anything, because they’re just going to argue better.” 

With files from Hannah Vogan

Is the CSU transparent? Read More »

Queer Concordia seeks to launch gender-affirming care pilot project

Local Journalism Initiative / / / ,

Banner from the Trans March for Our Liberation on Aug. 6, 2022. Photo Sophie Dufresne

Geneviève Sylvestre,
Local Journalism Initiative

The project would provide students with interest-free loans to access gender-affirming care

Queer Concordia is looking to create a short-term, interest-free loan pilot project to help students relieve the financial burden associated with paying for gender-affirming care (GAC) procedures. 

The group will present the plan to the Concordia Student Union’s (CSU) Council of Representatives on Sept. 18. Queer Concordia will ask the union to allocate $100,000 annually to the project, which students under the CSU’s insurance can access as an interest-free loan.  

The CSU’s insurance provider, Studentcare, currently only covers $5,000 per procedure and a $10,000 lifetime maximum for GAC surgeries and treatments not otherwise covered by the student’s provincial government coverage.

GAC procedures can often exceed $5,000—even $10,000—per treatment. The pilot project proposal outlines the cost of one student’s surgeries that added up to a total of $33,000. Queer Concordia senior coordinator Jessica Winton said that the project’s loans would allow students to access the care they are paying for. 

“When a surgery is $10,000 or more, […] sitting around for up to a month waiting to be reimbursed by insurance for $10,000 can leave a very large hole in your pocket and very easily put you into debt,” Winton said.

If the CSU approves Queer Concordia’s proposal, the $100,000 would cover about 10 students at maximum per year.

Studentcare also requires that students receive a letter from a legally qualified physician or nurse practitioner confirming a gender dysphoria diagnosis to be eligible for GAC coverage. 

This goes against the recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) which state that “the use of rigid assessment tools for ‘transition readiness’ may reduce access to care,” and that a gender incongruence diagnosis “may better capture the fullness of gender diversity experiences and related clinical gender need.”

Adam Philomena is the Centre for Gender Advocacy’s community engagement coordinator. He believes that the insurance providers should follow WPATH recommendations and that healthcare providers should trust that patients seeking GAC have the most knowledge of their own bodies and identities. 

“The requirement of a gender dysphoria diagnosis is a huge barrier for a lot of people because […] people express their transness in different ways and may not be necessarily looking for that to be medicalized in a specific way,” they said. 

According to the CSU website, there is currently no pay-direct coverage available for the GAC plan, meaning that students seeking care must pay for the procedure out-of-pocket before making a claim for reimbursement.

Winton believes the pilot project if implemented could help relieve financial pressure for trans and gender-diverse students. 

“This will actually help people use the insurance,” Winton said. “Many people are put off from trying to use it because of the current restrictions of the $5,000 limit and the fact that you usually have to pay out-of-pocket.” 

The CSU’s Health and Dental Plan expanded to include gender affirming care in 2023. Undergraduate students that are paying provincial or out-of-province tuition rates and are enrolled in three or more credits are automatically signed-up for the plan that costs $225 for full-year coverage.

CSU finance coordinator Souad El Ferjani, said that she would be open to the project, but that Queer Concordia is asking for a substantial amount of money.

“Me and my team would be sitting down trying to see how we can solve this, how we can accommodate everybody without putting our budget in a bad position,” El Ferjani said.

Philomena claimed that, despite fee-levy employees having the same CSU Health and Dental plan as undergraduate students, they do not receive the Studentcare GAC coverage as they do not have student identification numbers. The CSU failed to verify the claim despite The Link’s attempt for clarification.

Quebec residents insured with the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ) can qualify for certain GAC surgeries and treatments, such as phalloplasties, vaginoplasties and mastectomies, if a doctor determines they are necessary. Other treatments, such as breast augmentations and facial feminization surgeries, are not covered by RAMQ as the government deems them purely esthetic. 

Many universities across Canada, including McGill University, have the same GAC coverage as Concordia. Rachel Bainbridge-Sedivy, a member of the McGill Trans Patient Union, said that the coverage is currently inaccessible. 

“It’s healthcare. It’s a human right. It’s important for people to be able to access that,” Bainbridge-Sedivy said. “Gender affirming care is /not cosmetic, it is medically necessary.”

Winton will present the project to the CSU on Sept. 18. She encourages students to voice their support for the pilot project.

“We’re really hoping that we can mobilize together and get this through,” Winton said, “because it really will help so many people.”

This article originally appeared in Volume 45, Issue 2, published September 17, 2024.

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Queer Concordia officially launches gender-affirming care loan program

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

Queer Concordia has officially launched its interest-free gender affirming care loan program. Courtesy Queer Concordia

Geneviève Sylvestre,
Local Journalism Initiative

Students will be able to access interest-free loans of up to $2,000 to cover procedure costs

Queer Concordia officially launched its gender-affirming care (GAC) community fund program on March 6, after being refused funding from the Concordia Student Union (CSU) due to lack of funds.

The program has a $20,000 pool and will allow students to access interest-free loans of up to $2,000 to pay for GAC procedures up front.

Queer Concordia senior coordinator Jessica Winton said that, in part due to Queer Concordia receiving the smallest fee levy of any group ($0.02 per undergraduate student, per credit), it’s been challenging to set-up the program with no outside funding. 

“Just the lawyer costs alone are anticipated to be upwards of $3,000, so that’s already a significant amount of money,” Winton said. 

Winton has been trying to implement a loan program at Concordia University since the start of the Fall 2024 semester. She said she feels privileged her parents were able to help her pay for the upfront cost of the GAC procedure that saved her life and wants to help others access care. 

“I know a lot of people who go through putting themselves in lifelong debt simply to go through surgery without insurance, and the fact that we have insurance but so few people are actually able to use it is incredibly disappointing,” Winton said. 

The CSU Health and Dental Plan offers a lifetime maximum coverage of $10,000 with $5,000 maximum per procedure for GAC. This can create a large financial burden for students, especially since procedure costs often exceed $10,000. 

Additionally, according to the CSU website, there is currently no pay-direct coverage available for GAC, meaning students must pay out-of-pocket for their procedure and wait to be refunded. 

Only students registered for the GreenShield GAC insurance through the CSU Health and Dental Plan are eligible for the loan program. Additionally, students must provide Queer Concordia with several documents including government identification, a student ID and a pre-authorization form from GreenShield or their claims history. 

“That way, we can just make sure that you’re eligible, that you’re not going to use this money for something that’s outside of the scope of the fund, as well as just identification to make sure that we have the right person that we’re issuing the loan to so there [aren’t] any legal problems,” Winton said. 

Winton added that the copies of the student’s identification will be shredded after the loan is reimbursed. 

The loans will remain interest-free for two months. However, students suffering with involuntary delays can make their case to the Queer Concordia board of directors to pause interest. 

“Typically, most claims get processed within about three weeks at most, in my experience,” Winton said. “The two-month period is to allow for kind of a grace period where, if GreenShield misprocesses something [..] for, let’s say, a month, there’s still time.”

According to the Queer Concordia website, international students are eligible to access the loan program so long as they have opted into the CSU Health and Dental Plan. The website also encourages students to write to the CSU if they are not satisfied with the current coverage provided by the union. 

Students interested in the program can stop by the Queer Concordia office during Winton’s office hours from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Wednesday. 

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Queer Concordia pilot project struck down at CSU finance committee

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , , , ,

Queer Concordia’s pilot project was struck down by CSU finance committee. Photo Maria Cholakova

Geneviève Sylvestre,
Local Journalism Initiative

The committee points to lack of funds as the reason why the motion was denied

On Sept. 30, Queer Concordia senior coordinator Jessica Winton presented her gender-affirming care loan pilot project in front of the Concordia Student Union (CSU) finance committee, where councillors voted against moving forward with the project.

The project aimed to connect students seeking gender-affirming care with short-term and interest-free loans to help them relieve some of the financial burden associated with paying for gender-affirming care. 

The CSU’s Health and Dental Plan currently covers $5,000 per procedure and has a $10,000 lifetime maximum for gender-affirming care surgeries and treatments. This can make it hard for students to access care, as procedure costs can often exceed $10,000.  

Additionally, according to the CSU website, there is currently no pay-direct coverage available, meaning that students seeking care must first pay for their procedures out-of-pocket. 

Winton asked the committee for a maximum of $100,000. According to the finance committee minutes, councillors voted against the project as the CSU is currently faced with high expenses and dropping income due to low enrollment, making the project not “sustainable to the CSU.”

According to CSU finance coordinator Souad El Ferjani, the finance committee only has a total funding of $20,000. She added that, as finance coordinator, she does not chair all other committees and does not have the power to pull funds from other committees.

“We [had] plans for bursaries for businesses, we had plans for having financial literacy workshops for international students and for students in general, we had plans for a business fair,” El Ferjani said. “We had a lot of big plans for the whole year, so giving away the [whole] $20,000 did not make sense to the councillors.”

El Ferjani also added that it did not make sense for the councillors to allocate the few remaining funds to the Queer Concordia project.

“It’s very insulting if somebody comes and asks for $100,000 and I give them $2,000,” she said.

Additionally, El Ferjani told The Link that the finance committee did consider using funds from the operations budget to pay for the project. Ultimately, as the CSU is already in a deficit this year due in part to the tuition hikes, councillors decided that it would not be a financially sound decision. 

Winton added that she had also asked the financial committee to consider using the insurance surplus currently allocated to the Studentcare Legal Care Program to fund the pilot project.

“They said they would get back to me on that, but they did not,” Winton said, “and when I look at the minutes from the meeting that suggestion is not within the minutes at all either.”

Winton requested to present an amended version of the motion to council at the second CSU regular council meeting (RCM) on Oct. 9. The then-CSU chairperson Michelle Lam denied her request.

According to El Ferjani, Lam did not allow Winton to present her motion because the council had already decided to defer the project to the finance committee during the first RCM, and the finance committee had come to a decision. 

“This does not close the door for Queer Concordia to go to other committees, but to go back to council again does not make any sense because council has already taken the decision to send it to the finance committee,” El Ferjani said.

Winton said she believes that CSU members did not properly read her motion or take it seriously, citing that the motion only asked for a maximum of $100,000 and that councillors did not ask her questions during the finance committee meeting. 

“We’re just looking to essentially use money that the CSU has sitting around in their Student Space, Accessible Education, and Legal Contingency fund or other committees to always circulate it with the loan program for people to be able to access the gender-affirming care,” she said, “because you have to pay upfront for your procedures most of the time and that’s a very large financial barrier that most people face.”

El Ferjani said she believes councillors did not ask questions during the finance committee meeting because they had already read the motion and listened to Winton’s presentation during the first RCM.

“They were aware of the motion, they had the time to read the motion prior to the RCM, they listened to Jessica during the RCM, they [had] heard the questions during the RCM,” El Ferjani said, “so my thought process is that they already knew a lot of [this] information.”

Three of the committee’s four councillors were present for Winton’s presentation, with the fourth arriving later according to El Ferjani, and the student at large seat was and remains vacant. Winton requested to be appointed to fill the seat, but Lam denied the request.

Lam wrote in an email, which was sent to The Link, that procedure requires a student to first apply to the appointments committee and then have their appointment ratified by council before being able to sit on the committee. The former chairperson added that, even if Winton was appointed to fill the seat, she would not be able to vote on a Queer Concordia project as it would be deemed a conflict of interest. 

Winton expressed frustration over the lack of transparency, saying that the CSU website can be difficult to navigate and is not up to date, with the minutes from the first RCM where she had originally presented her motion having not yet been added to the website. 

According to Winston, more students should be aware of the CSU’s inner workings and how much money they possess.

“Student groups such as ours, […] it shouldn’t be our duty and our mandate to have to charge students more money by raising our fee levy to alleviate services the CSU is supposed to provide and to advocate for themselves,” she said. 

Looking forward, Winton said that Queer Concordia is able to dedicate around $20,000 of surplus to fund the project. She also said she is considering other avenues to fund her pilot project, such as applying to the Sustainability Action Fund and the Concordia Council on Student Life’s special project funding. 

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