A group of Carleton students are circulating a petition pledging support for Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) continued membership in the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). The campaign is in response to a disaffiliation petition launched Sept. 14 that, if successful, would lead to a referendum over whether CUSA remains a member of CFS.

According to the new petition, which volunteers began circulating on Sept. 22, signatories agree that they do not want their names counted toward any petition that would put in question membership in either the national or Ontario branch of the CFS.

“I’m in favour of it,” said CUSA president Erik Halliwell of the pro-CFS petition. “I think there’s a lot of students that benefit from membership [in the CFS] and they’re reacting.”

“To be quite frank I think some of the things [anti-CFS petitioners] are saying about [the CFS] have been inaccurate,” Halliwell said. “That we’ve never done anything to fight tuition fees is patently false.”

“It is certainly my feeling that all those accusations are patently false,” said CFS national treasurer Dave Molenhuis. “We are very democratic.”

“To be honest I think that it’s ridiculous that instead of staying in the office our student union [is] trying to crush a grassroots campaign,” anti-CFS petition organizer Dean Tester responded.

“We now have 1,500 signatures,” Tester said, out of the roughly 2,000 necessary for the petition to be considered valid.

Brandon Wallingford, vice-president (academic) of the Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG) and a volunteer anti-CFS petitioner, alleged that a clipboard with 60-80 signatures was stolen after having been distributed in a human rights class in the Bell Theatre of the Minto Centre. 

“Four students saw another student take the clipboard and leave the class with it,” Wallingford said. “We reported the incident to campus safety and they said they would look into it.”

Campus safety confirmed they received a report about a stolen clipboard on Sept. 22.

According to the McGill Daily, a total of 13 university campuses across the nation have petitioners gathering signatures to disaffiliate their student unions from the CFS.

The CFS represents more than 80 student unions across Canada and has roughly 500,000 members.