The Carleton University Students’ Association council voted at an emergency meeting Feb. 18 to postpone the referendum on changing the FundQi levy from an opt-out to opt-in service.
Council also voted down an amendment to the referendum that would increase the opt-in FundQi fee by $95, which was proposed by FundQi representatives.
The referendum on FundQi, a service that matches students with scholarships and other funding, was originally scheduled to take place March 2-3. Voting is now scheduled for March 8-9.
The referendum, if passed, would automatically opt students out of paying the $9.99 per-semester fee for the service. Students could then choose to pay for the service.
The voting period for the referendum was moved because the proposed amendment delayed the election planning process, CUSA chief electoral officer Alexa Camick said.
“We had to put a halt to all of the logistical organization for this referendum … to wait for this council meeting tonight,” Camick said. “[The current schedule] is not feasible for the elections team to oversee this referendum.”
Camick said the proposed amendment was brought to her attention on Feb. 15.
The referendum question, as passed by council: FundQi is a grant program currently in use by the Carleton University Student Association hereby referred to as CUSA. A successful referendum will make FundQi no longer a opt out ancillary fee and students will have to opt in to the fee and the service via the FundQi website before they can be charged or get the benefits of FundQi. The cost is $100 per year for a premium FundQi membership. Current students access FundQi premium for $9.99 (subject only to be increased to adjust for inflation) per academic term for a total of $20 per year but may opt out through the FundQi website should they choose to do so and should they be willing to give FundQi personal information for the reimbursement. Do you feel that FundQi should be an opt in only ancillary fee for Carleton students? A yes vote is to make FundQi an opt in only ancillary fee and a no vote is to keep FundQi as an opt out ancillary fee.
FundQi COO Scott Braddon, who attended the meeting, said FundQi would not survive if only a select number of students opt in to the service at a fee of $9.99 per semester.
“We had to push forward with this recommendation on what we, as a company, are able to fiscally offer,” Braddon said. “We just need to acknowledge it’s going to cost a bit more per student.”
The proposed $105 fee would go towards software maintenance and improvement, building the FundQi endowment fund, and expanding the company’s reach, according to Braddon.
Braddon said FundQi was only able to offer a $9.99 fee because all students were automatically paying for it.
Braddon told the Charlatan after the meeting that the company wanted to meet with CUSA executives before Feb. 18 to settle on a new fee that worked for both FundQi and students. That meeting never happened, he said.
“[$105 per semester] is just our best offer that we could make on an estimated guess that would satisfy our needs and CUSA’s needs,” Braddon said. “There was no discussion. It’s like they were scared to talk to us and I don’t know why.”
Braddon said during the meeting he would like to have a longer conversation about the increased fee.
“We’re actually here scrambling too,” Braddon said. “We have no support and no communication. It makes it really difficult … CUSA does need to take some accountability here too. They signed a contract with us.”
Others at the meeting said the $105 fee was an arbitrary number and not backed by FundQi’s financials.
“I don’t understand where these abstract numbers are coming from,” said Matt Gagné, president of the Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG) and president-elect of CUSA.
CUSA first collected the $9.99 per-semester levy for FundQi in the fall 2020 semester after a referendum for the levy passed in January 2020. Students can opt out of the levy at the beginning of each semester.
Council voted in a five-hour meeting on Dec. 10 to hold a second referendum on FundQi to give students another chance to decide whether they want to continue paying the fee.
The motion to hold the referendum passed unanimously after nearly two hours of discussion in December.
At the December meeting, Gagné raised concerns over whether FundQi could be sustained with a $9.99 levy if only a small portion of the student body opted in, the same rationale for the amendment at the February meeting.
FundQi founder Zuberi Attard would not commit at the December meeting to the $9.99 fee and suggested tabling the motion for the referendum then.
“We are unsure if we are able to offer the same level of quality of service [with only some students opting in],” Attard wrote in a public chat message during the Zoom meeting.
Instead, the motion was amended to clarify the fee could only be increased to adjust for inflation.
Campaigning for the FundQi referendum will take place March 1-7. Voting will take place March 8-9.
Read more of the Charlatan’s FundQi coverage here.
