Carleton’s Love of Liberty Society launched a campaign Jan. 14 encouraging students to opt out of a $6.84 levy that goes to the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) chapter on campus.
The Love of Liberty Society is a group “dedicated to the cause of liberty” at Carleton that promotes a free market and free speech, according to the group’s Facebook page.
Included in students’ tuition fees are several compulsory levies that support a variety of student services, including Foot Patrol, the Charlatan, and CKCU. Students can choose to opt out and get a refund for some of the levies, like OPIRG-Carleton.
OPIRG-Carleton has received funding from the levy for over 30 years, and collects a $6.84 fee from full-time undergraduates and $3.34 from full-time grad students. According to outreach and programming co-ordinator Yafa Jarrar, this money goes toward working group programming, three $500 student scholarships, and the resources in the office’s “alternative library.”
Students do have the option of getting their money back for the week-long opt-out period if they do not agree with OPIRG’s stance on political issues.
OPIRG’s annual budget is not released to the public, but according to Jarrar, it is available to any member.
This year, 68 full-time and five part-time undergraduates opted out of the OPIRG-Carleton levy. No graduate students opted out, according to finance co-ordinator Andy Crosby.
“We offer the opt-out voluntarily, because we feel that if people don’t agree with the environmental and the social justice work that we do then they should opt out. That’s totally within their right,” said Emma Slaney Gose, an OPIRG-Carleton board member.
OPIRG advertised the opt-out in the Charlatan and postered around campus, but president of the Love of Liberty society Justin Campbell said it wasn’t enough, and said office personnel were “actively discouraging students from opting out.”
Campbell launched his campaign, “Get a Beer on OPIRG” before the opt-out week. The campaign’s Facebook event, which invites students to spend their $6.84 on a drink or school supplies, had just under a 100 attendees confirmed.
“We’re trying to simply let students know that they can get their money back,” Campbell said. “But if they don’t get that money back, they should know where that money is going.”
Jarrar said she welcomes interest in the research group around the opt-out period.
“It’s an important time for outreach,” she said. “OPIRG has done so much for the history of this campus and for this community. OPIRG has been a vital group for anti-apartheid [campaigning] during the South African apartheid period, anti-racism work, and indigenous solidarity work.”
The working groups are comprised of students, and operate on anti-oppression and consensus—based frameworks. There are 12 working groups this year, including anti-racism groups, environmental groups, and Students Against Israeli Apartheid, according to Jarrar.
Past events have included “DisOrientation Week” and “On Turtle Island: Dialogue Between Black and First Nations Womyn.”
While Jarrar described OPIRG as non-partisan, Campbell said they are politically motivated.
“They’ve run campaigns all over the country, they are paying for stickers that have ‘stop Harper’s crimes’ written all over them, which, whether or not you agree with the current policies of the current government, you have to admit that it’s a little inappropriate to ask every student at Carleton to pay for those stickers,” said Campbell.
“I think OPIRG’s a political organization and I think it’s inappropriate for a political organization to ask 100 per cent of students to fund the political beliefs of one per cent of students. It’s siphoning money off of students that they’re going to mortgage and to pay for, some of them for the rest of their lives,” he said.
