The 2015 Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) referendum asked students to vote and decide whether to increase their school fees to support three different, but important things.
Two questions failed, one did not.
The CUSA bursary fund will now be partially supported by a student levy of $2 per year.
The fund pays the tuition of a group students in financial need every year until they graduate. The Awards Office dishes out the bursary. It is partly funded by CUSA executive salaries and community donations. All of this adds up to around $240,000. The extra $46,000 per year from this levy will help a handful of students each year.
An increase to the Clubs and Societies levy is on the ballot annually and every year it loses. CUSA then has to do some creative accounting in its budget and find the money to support the ever-growing number of clubs and societies.
This levy increase would have helped hundreds of students who are a part of a club or society which receives CUSA funding.
The reason it lost, however, and a bursary fund benefiting only a few students won, is because students are both apathetic to what CUSA does on campus and frugal.
An increase of $1 per semester is seen as an inconsequential amount, but all it does is help out a small handful of students. Passing the increase to the clubs and societies levy instead of some small exclusive bursary levy would have actually benefited students and done some real good on campus.
