Those of you who follow Jane Gerster on Twitter (@thejanegerster) were treated to an unexpected release during the last Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) council meeting Jan. 15. Gerster tweeted out this year’s referendum questions. Every year, CUSA holds referenda where students can submit questions along with 1,000 signatures of support, and pending recommendations from the Constitution and Policy Committee (C&P), approval by CUSA council, will go out for students to vote on later this semester.
Of the four questions, one caught my eye—and not in a good way. “2) Do you want to eliminate the OPIRG, World Food Programme & Garden Spot fees and introduce $21/annual for student centre on campus?”
It’s not really a question, and these are not fees—they are democratically instituted levies. It is four questions all knitted together so anyone who wants to eliminate one of these levies will vote to eliminate all of them without even necessarily knowing what they are. So let’s take a look at what these groups actually do.
On Tuesday, February 5th, C&P met and made a number of recommendations, including the division of this question into four questions, and the elimination of one of these new question. The Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) runs no less than 12 different working groups, both at Carleton and in the community.
These groups deal in a variety of different issues, including First Nations solidarity, ecological justice, local food security, Palestinian solidarity, and education surrounding fair trade products, among others.
The Garden Spot is a vegan kitchen operating on a pay-what-you-can basis, started in 2001 to combat the rising cost of living for students and the lack of vegan options on campus. Due to volunteer turnover, and a lack of commitment from both the administration and from this year’s executive, the Garden Spot is currently not in operation, and its levy has been slated for elimination by the Board of Governors. C&P recommended that this be on the ballot to allow students to seek to retain the levy.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the food assistance branch of the United Nations. The levy is collected from student fees and given to the WFP in the form of a donation. The oddest thing about this levy being under fire is that it is literally brand new; it was voted on by Carleton students in last year’s referendum. C&P recommended this be on the ballot such that students might gain more information about the initiative.
Attempts to de-fund OPIRG are entirely politically motivated out of a desire to shut down critical discourse on campus. This is something that has been tried multiple times through the referendum, and has failed. C&P recognized these considerations, and has recommended that Council strike this question from the ballot.
This also seeks to declare war on food security; if we are on a campus where making sure people have something nutritious to eat is subject to partisanship, then I think we all need to reassess our priorities.
Let’s look at where the money has been targeted to go. The question suggests that these three fees be removed and instead replaced with a hefty $21 levy to go towards the construction of a new student centre. Now, I’m all for a student centre but the way this executive is going about it is, frankly, appalling.
The total value of OPIRG, the Garden Spot, and WFP levies together is about $11. That is well short of the $21 the question is proposing to add. This means that this is not even cost-neutral; in many ways, it is grandstanding in an act of utterly shameless self promotion and poor money management.
Yet the money that could have been used to pay for this levy is actually going out in the mail in the form of a check, attached to a letter from Alex Golovko featuring his smiling face. Now, I’m not a math major, but I went and asked one, and they told me that $20 is significantly closer to $21 than to $11. Interestingly, Michael De Luca said at C&P that he wants to introduce a “secret amendment” at council to fix this because he “doesn’t have the votes” at C&P. So much for democracy.
I’d love to get a student centre, but not at the expense of buying into this elaborate attempt to trick students into fulfilling an unrelated political agenda.
If this question ever sees a ballot, I’m urging you to vote it down. If we as students want to see an end to underhanded political shenanigans, we have to start by proving that they won’t work on us.
