Ever since Michael De Luca and other councillors initiated a wasteful lawsuit after vacating their seats on the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) council by inexplicably refusing to participate in council meetings, the defendant councillors and executive members have focused every effort on resolving the matter.
Nearly $200,000 of students’ money and six months of council’s time could have been saved had De Luca and company simply attended, amended — if they felt so inclined — and voted on a budget instead of playing what I see as petty politics with your membership fees.
We have always tried to resolve this issue with students’ best interest in mind. To that end, we have proposed the striking of a governance reform committee to review and renew CUSA’s bylaws. The committee will solicit input from students as to how they would like to see CUSA governed and its final recommendation will be decided by a referendum of the CUSA membership.
Passing a budget continues to be our first priority for when council gets back to work. We proposed the settlement back in October, but it took two months of what I would call stalling tactics to get the settlement signed.
Just when we thought that business could resume and we could attempt to salvage the rest of the year for students, De Luca and councillor Justin Campbell are now trying to move the budget from CUSA council to a CUSA corporate meeting.
While on the surface this may seem like an insignificant change, if they’re successful, it will take away your right to participate, debate, and amend how fees are spent. We are fighting to ensure an open forum for students at [the Jan. 10] council meeting so that all students can participate. I encourage you to attend to ensure that the budget reflects your priorities, whether it be a great end-of-year concert, the campaign against higher tuition fees, programming like Study Snacks, or more resources for clubs and societies.
Throughout this process, the defendants have been the ones proposing solutions and were met with silence or what I could only interpret to be outright rejection from the plaintiff group. We feared that the plaintiffs would stall the court case to undermine the democratic will of students. As such, we proposed a firm election schedule and a neutral elector board.
Thankfully, our proposed reforms to the electoral process have finally been accepted and students can be sure that the hiring and appeals processes will be free of the political posturing and undemocratic delays that we saw this past summer. Regardless of whether CUSA council is able to work together, CUSA elections will not be affected and your voice will be heard.
I would love to be able to share all of the details with students so you know exactly what happened throughout the past three months of attempting to settle this frivolous dispute. I would love to be able to print the entire agreement in the Charlatan so that students know what happened with their membership fees — what we were able to accomplish and what compromises we had to make.
Unfortunately, in order to put this behind us, we were forced to sign a confidentiality agreement around the terms of the settlement, something I fought against. There is something very wrong with individuals calling for more accountability and transparency in their elections and then turning around and trying to hide details from students about how much was spent on legal bills and where that money came from in the first place. If it were up to me, students would have full access.
We are excited to finish off the year without any further restriction over the functioning of CUSA services. Students can expect to begin receiving aid from the conference and discretionary fund, the accessibility fund committee, and many other much-needed services. We are looking forward to restoring a strong, united students’ association.
— Ariel Norman
fourth-year business
See councillor Michael De Luca’s side of the story here.
