The Carleton University Students’ Association council voted Feb. 25 to change the FundQi referendum question after confusion over the price of the fee.
The question, which will be voted on by students on March 8-9, will now ask whether FundQi should be removed as an ancillary fee entirely. It originally asked whether students believe it should be an opt-in service instead of an opt-out service.
FundQi, a service that matches students with scholarships and other funding, is currently a $9.99 opt-out fee after students voted in a referendum last January.
As an opt-out fee, students automatically pay the $9.99 fee but can choose to receive a refund.
If the referendum had not been amended and passed as is, FundQi would have become an opt-in fee where students do not automatically pay for FundQi but could choose to enroll in the service.
“It has been stated by [FundQi] that the $9.99 fee as an opt-in fee is not sustainable,” said CUSA councillor Emily Sowa, who brought the referendum amendment to council.
“There’s no real and responsive answer coming from either side on what’s gonna happen if the referendum passes as is,” she added.
FundQi COO Scott Braddon had suggested at CUSA’s Feb. 18 meeting to increase FundQi’s per-semester opt-in fee to $105 if the referendum passed because the company would not survive if only some students were paying the $9.99 fee.
FundQi founder Zuberi Attard told the Charlatan after the Feb. 25 meeting that he thinks the updated amendment gives students a clearer version of what they are voting for.
“We’re definitely way more supportive of this, because now students know exactly what they’re voting for, and that’s all that matters,” Attard said.
The original referendum question, which would have made FundQi an opt-in service at $9.99 per semester, would have violated the service agreement between CUSA and FundQi.
The agreement stipulates that it can only be changed “by a written agreement duly executed by all parties.”
While FundQi representatives wanted to meet with CUSA executives before this month’s meetings to settle on a new fee that works for both FundQi and students who opt-in, Attard said the two sides have yet to meet.
Sowa said at the Feb. 25 council meeting that to protect CUSA from possible legal action and avoid violating the service agreement, the referendum question would have to be amended to terminate the contract between CUSA and FundQi entirely, instead of unilaterally changing its price.
Jacob Howell, CUSA vice-president (finance) said the service agreement is not legally binding, but rather a memorandum of understanding.
“What legally binds or releases CUSA to a service provider is the referendum results, period,” Howell said in an email to the Charlatan.
Attard said he was unsure about legal considerations, but that CUSA would still have broken the service agreement if the original referendum had passed.
“Regardless of what legal implications there may be … I think it would be really good for CUSA to honor their agreements,” Attard said, adding that FundQi is not planning on taking legal action at the moment.
“We were doing what they wanted us to do … and they should be doing the same,” Attard said.
Council appoints new chair
Nathaniel Black, undergraduate Board of Governors representative, won a vote for council chair to replace Ryan Boucher, who resigned the position last month due to personal reasons.
After criticism over how the vote to consider the removal chief electoral officer Alexa Camick was handled last month, council voted councillor Liam Lowe as acting chair to preside over the vote.
Another councillor observed the ballots, submitted on Google Forms, before they were destroyed, as is customary for CUSA meetings.
Executive reports
With only two-and-a-half months left in their term, executives said they were starting to prepare to transition to a new executive. The Ravens United slate, led by presidential candidate Matt Gagné, swept last month’s elections.
Jacob Howell, vice-president (finance), said CUSA has a surplus for this year and will look for ways to direct the extra money to students.
Howell said his project to introduce a legal plan for students as a part of StudentCare, the CUSA health and dental plan, is ready but was postponed to avoid holding an additional referendum alongside the FundQi referendum.
“We’ve done a survey, we do have statistical data, we do know that students are interested,” Howell said. “Given that there’s interest next year for that project to take flight, that can be done very easily.”
It’s unclear how the legal plan would differ from the Satellite Clinic of the University of Ottawa Community Legal Clinic located in the University Centre building, which serves Carleton students.
Tinu Akinwande, vice-president (student issues), shared her plans for Minwàdjiyà-n, an Indigenous celebration and awareness campaign for the month of March.
Akinwande said she consulted with a host of councillors and Indigenous groups on- and off-campus during the campaign’s creation.
“As soon as I was elected, I said we’re going to do this because I feel like as a campus and as a society, we really neglect the voices of Indigenous communities,” Akinwande said.
