Candidate Profile: CESA executive candidates committed to advocacy and boosting engagement

Team MAPS wants to bring back ConEd love and spirit

Image by: Herbert Wang
From left to right: Vice-President (Internal) candidate Maddyx Lindsay, Vice-President (External) candidate Sean Lee, and Presidential candidate Phoebe Rushton.

The uncontested Concurrent Education Students’ Association (CESA) executive team is promising dodgeball games and budget cut updates.

CESA Presidential candidate Phoebe Rushton, ConEd ’26, Vice-Presidential (Internal) candidate Maddyx Lindsay, ConEd ’26, and Vice-Presidential (External) candidate Sean Lee, ConEd ’26, also known as Team MAPS, are running on a platform of upholding integrity, encouraging unity, and providing ConEd students with resources.

Students are worried about the impact the University’s budget cuts will have on their teachable subject requirements, the team explained. To quell students’ fears, team MAPS promises to disseminate any information they receive about the budget cuts to ConEd students via social media.

With the suspension of the Fine Arts program last year, preventing students to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts, anxiety has only increased, said Lee, the former speaker and chief electoral officer of CESA.

“Our job in this situation is to act as a liaison with the University to give students as much information as we can [about the budget cuts],” Lee said in an interview with The Journal.

Building on her experience as CESA’s academic affairs commissioner, Rushton said she’ll be an effective liaison between the University and ConEd community. She pledges to advocate for students’ relevant needs during meetings with Peter Chin, associate dean of the teacher education program.

“I will not be scared to stand my ground on certain ideas,” Rushton said.

To understand what ConEd students’ needs are, Lindsay wants to send out feedback forms and surveys where students can share their ideas for events and other initiatives.

“Students can expect many surveys and feedback forms to ensure that a diverse array of perspectives shape events that we offer, like ConEd camp,” Lindsay said.

Using the feedback survey, Lindsay is looking forward to planning ConEd Camp, an event the current videography coordinator of CESA considered highly successful. For Lindsay, ConEd camp, which is hosted in first semester, is a time for students to bond and form new relationships through team building activities. This year, the event was hosted at Camp Iawah in Godfrey, Ontario in November.

Lee is looking forward to bringing back old events like ConEd week, a week of festivities for students hosted during the second week of the winter semester.

“I think having ConEd week would be a really great opportunity to bring back a lot of ConEd love and spirit into the community,” Lee added.

Lee wants to close ConEd week with a dodgeball tournament, an event already hosted by CESA. During the week, “low stakes” events lead up to the dodgeball finale. The variety of events means there’s something for everyone, Lee explained.

MAPS encourages students to check out their Instagram account @MAPSforcesa to receive updates about their campaign. Voting opens on Feb. 8 and closes Feb. 9.

Tags

CESA, CESA executive, elections 2024

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