The Carleton Students’ Engineering Society (CSES) failed to pass both their referendum questions on March 1-2.
The first question, which asked if students supported a one-time student fees increase of $8 for full-time students and a $1.60 increase for part-time students per credit, saw 619 students voting no, 326 voting yes, and 103 abstaining.
The second question asked if students supported basing the CSES’s membership fee on the Consumer Price Index. There were a greater number of abstentions for this question, with 277, while 433 students voted no, and 338 students voted yes.
Voter turnout was 26.9%, with 1,048 out of 3,893 eligible voters casting ballots.
Jasmine Shaw, CSES president who also sits on the Carleton University Students’ Association council, said one of the motivations behind the referendum was to increase services and funding opportunities, particularly for student group programs.
“This year it’s $30,000 that goes towards student groups, and really because the demand is so high every year when we accept proposals we get almost $100,000 just in requests, and obviously we can’t accommodate that, we totally give out however much we have, so one of the big things we wanted to do was increase the student groups funding opportunities to $45,000,” she said.
Shaw also said all the services will still run, but it will be harder to grow them without additional revenue, which will likely lead to higher ticket prices for events.
The last time fees were raised for engineering students was in 2007.
