In a controversial move, the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union board of directors has recently hired and ratified Zuhair Syed as interim president until September 30. During SCSU elections earlier this year, the election committee disqualified Syed from the presidency after he received three strikes for election violations, and recommended Jenna Hossack be ratified as president. However the board chose to ratify only the committee’s recommendations for directors, leaving the presidential position temporarily vacant until the next by-election in the fall.
Or at least that was the plan.
Earlier this summer the SCSU board decided to hire an interim president rather than have the VP academics temporarily fulfill those duties. After a brief interview and hiring period, Syed was ratified as interim SCSU president and CEO at a board of directors meeting on June 20. Under the contract, Syed will be president for the rest of the summer until September 30.
In a telephone interview Syed expressed this as a correction of a faulty process. “It seems that by the actions of the election committee that they were definitely incompetent in terms of the presidential election.” He holds that he was unfairly disqualified by the elections committee, and the board recognized this.
Responding to the accusations of bias and unfair disqualification, Elections Committee chief recruiting officer Dawn Cattapan said that the entire committees for elections, hiring and elections’ appeals would also have to be biased for that argument to be valid. “I don’t think we’re biased and quite frankly during the director elections there were way too many [candidates]. We didn’t know anybody’s name. Until counting night we didn’t know half the candidates’ names.”
Cattapan admits that her favourite candidate was neither Syed nor Hossack. “I was actually hoping that Edward would win. He had some really cool ideas and really went in there and got to know people. He only got like 50 votes though.”
Cattapan thinks that aside from the results, the election went pretty smoothly. “I didn’t expect it to be thrown out – it was a great election that we ran. I would hope that future elections would be run very similar where they would have that sort of luck where things would stay so organized but without the controversy,” she said, pausing for a second on the phone. “But it’s student politics, controversy always seems to ensue.”
One thing is for sure, debate and controversy definitely have not deterred Syed’s aspirations in student politics. The well-known management student has already announced plans to run for president again during the SCSU’s October by-election.
