As part of their tuition fees each year, Carleton undergraduate students pay various levies that add up to a total of $715.30 to help support a wide variety of clubs at Carleton and different charitable organizations.
Twenty-two different groups receive money through the levies charged to each student, and work both on and off campus.
Fees are collected by the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) and distributed directly to organizations by CUSA.
Levy organizations do a variety of work and range from the health and dental plan to activist and charitable groups.
The World University Service of Canada’s Carleton chapter (WUSC) is an on-campus group that collects $2.38 from undergraduate students.
The group uses the money to help sponsor refugee students to live in Ottawa and study at Carleton, said Efrem Berhe, WUSC co-chair. The money goes towards paying the students’ tuition, rent, and living expenses.
After a successful referendum in 2014, WUSC’s levy was raised from $1, but Berhe said sponsoring an additional student this past September has put a strain on their finances.
“Carleton doesn’t provide us with any discounts on anything, so it’s a very, very tight budget to work on, especially given when [the students] first come they need a lot of things to settle,” Berhe said.
The Ontario Public Interest Research Group’s Carleton chapter (OPIRG) also receives funding from student levies. It gets $7.10 from each undergraduate student and $6.94 ($3.47 per semester) from each graduate student when they pay their tuition for the year.
Angela Mooney, finance and organizational development coordinator for OPIRG, said they started collecting the levy over 30 years ago—in 1981—and it is the source of the majority of their funding.
The money goes towards a range of initiatives OPIRG supports. One service they offer students is space and resources in their office for groups that started with OPIRG, she said.
OPIRG offers an opt-out process for students to get their money back if they don’t agree with OPIRG activities.
However, CUSA president Fahd Alhattab said groups are not required to offer an opt-out option for their levies.
“OPIRG offered an opt-out option after a lot of students came out to say that they do not support the political actions they are taking,” Alhattab said.
“Groups are not required to have an opt-out process, and they refund [the money] themselves,” he added.
Mooney said there are currently no discussions on raising the levy to increase their budget.
Alhattab said levy breakdown information is not confidential, and is given to students who request a breakdown, but is not currently publicly available on CUSA’s website.
The Carleton Food Collective (G-Spot) received $2.24 from each undergraduate student for the 2015-16 academic year. This, added together with the levy they receive from graduate students, amounts to over $58,000 in funding each year for the collective.
Other clubs such as Sock ’n’ Buskin and the Carleton University Debating Society also have an undergraduate levy. They get $0.84 and $1 respectively.
Another aspect of levies is paying for different benefits offered to Carleton students as part of their tuition.
These levies are larger than the ones that go to clubs and societies and include the U-Pass and CUSA medical insurance, which cost $389.66 and $158 per student.
Some levies also go to off-campus organizations and charities.
In 2012, a referendum was held to add $2.08 to tuition fees to support the World Food Programme. A statement on the organization’s website says this results in approximately $44,000 going to the charity each year.
The Millennium Villages is another charitable project Carleton students help fund through a levy. The $6 fee was approved in 2009 and pays for medicine, water management projects and building schools in a rural African village.
Interval House of Ottawa is a shelter for women and children to escape domestic violence and receives a $0.56 levy from undergraduate students.
Alhattab said CUSA is working to establish a levy review process to determine whether levies in place still serve the Carleton student community.
“Certain organizations still get a certain amount of money from us have been very inactive or not very open,” he said. “We need to develop proper methods, proper procedures, and proper terms of reference.”
Alhattab added that while a review process may not be popular, it is important to ensure transparency and will likely be completed by future CUSA executives.
Membership fees for the Canadian Federation of Students and the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario are also paid by undergrads through levies. They cost each student $8.72 and $7.27 respectively.
Engineering students pay an extra $2 fee to Carleton Engineers Without Borders.
