Brandon Wallingford (left) gathered signatures to drop CFS ( Photo: Lasia Kretzel )
Since Sept. 14 volunteers have been patrolling campus gathering signatures for a petition to disaffiliate the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) from the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).
Fourth-year journalism student Dean Tester, the principal organizer of the petition, estimates he has about 600 – 700 signatures so far, nearly half of the roughly 2,000 necessary to trigger a referendum that would determine whether CUSA would leave the CFS.
“I spent an hour and a half petitioning today and I didn’t have a single student say no to me,” Tester said of the students he spoke with.
“We have around 20 people volunteering,” Tester said. “We expect to get around 3,000 – 4,000 signatures.”
Michael Monks, a fourth-year commerce student and former CUSA councillor, is helping collect signatures for the petition.
“We just want to give Carleton students the opportunity to evaluate membership in the organization,” Monks said. “I often have to explain what [the CFS] is before I get them to sign the petition.”
In a press release issued Sept. 9 petitioners accuse the CFS of having “made almost no gains as a lobby group in its 30 years of operation,” among other allegations.
CUSA president Erik Halliwell would not comment on the petition. But on Sept. 9, after the release was issued, Halliwell said Tester’s accusations “aren’t based on fact.”
Fellow CUSA executive Nick Bergamini, vice-president (student issues), said a referendum would be “healthy.”
“This is a way to hold the CFS accountable, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” said Bergamini.
Commenting on the allegations made by the petitioners, Bergamini said, “The CFS does sometimes seem more concerned with holding on to power and expanding its base rather than working on student issues -— it’s a cause for concern.”
But Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) president Kimalee Phillips said, “there is strength in numbers.”
“Of course no movement is perfect, but getting rid of it is problematic,” Phillips said.
In order for the referendum request to be considered valid by the CFS, two petitions must be submitted, one that is passed on to the Ontario branch of the CFS and one to the national branch.
“They go to the Registrar’s Office at which point we’ll have it notarized and delivered by a bailiff,” Tester said.
The CFS was founded in 1981 with the aim of lobbying national and provincial governments on behalf of student interests. It represents over 80 student associations from across the country and roughly 500,000 student members.
Representatives of the CFS could not be reached for comment.
Tester said CUSA members pay roughly $300,000 dollars — about $7 per semester per student — to the CFS. Although Halliwell said he could not confirm this amount, he said roughly $7 sounded right.
Brandon Wallingford, vice president (academic) of the Carleton Academic Student Government and a volunteer petitioner, said his efforts to convince interested students in signing the petition have been interrupted on two separate occasions by Carlos Chacón, former CUSA vice-president (internal) and current CUSA employee.
“Whenever [Chacón] would see me talking to students about the petition he would ask them what I was telling them and imply that I was lying to them,” Wallingford said.
“I was just curious about what he was telling people,” Chacón said. “As far as interrupting him I don’t know about that.”