petition to hold a referendum challenging the Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) membership in the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) has been making waves across campus for weeks.
Now, CUSA has officially waded into the murky dispute, as CUSA council passed a motion Sept. 29 to support continued CFS membership.
The circulating petition has sparked widespread confusion about CFS, and CUSA council was right to acknowledge this as a problem. Since students need to make an informed decision about CFS membership, CUSA has an obligation to educate them about both the benefits and drawbacks they derive from their national federation.
But rather than just providing students with the facts and allowing them to arrive at their own conclusions, CUSA is now actively endorsing a particular side, serving up the evidence with a heaping helping of its own bias.
As student representatives, CUSA councillors have a duty to represent their constituents. But council introduced this issue as a last-minute emergency motion without consulting students or exploring other options.
Only 17 of the 33 councillors voted in favour of the motion — a far cry from the consensus needed on such a decisive edict. Council’s decision also mandates CUSA executives to campaign in support of CFS membership, but the executive is by no means united on this issue; two of the six execs voted against the motion.
This falsely presents a unified front, ignoring the differing views within the CUSA executive. Even worse, it forces the two who do not wish to campaign in support of CFS membership to either defy the council’s decision or fall in line and betray their own conscience. If CUSA truly wants to represent its voters and inform students — that is, to do its job — it must do so without picking sides, without hasty judgments and without silencing dissent.