With the winter term wrapping up, a new type of spring cleaning is on the rise at many post-secondary schools across the country. Six student unions have organized referendums over whether to toss their membership with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).
But the national student organization has said it will recognize results from only two of these referendum votes due to a new rule that the federation passed in November. Motion 6, introduced by the Carleton Graduate Students’ Association, says student governments wishing tohold referendums over CFS membership must submit petitions signed by at least 20 per cent of the students they represent (up from 10 per cent) and that only two student groups within the CFS may hold referendums within a three-month period.
But a number of student groups had already submitted petitions by the time Motion 6 passed and the CFS needs to respect their efforts.
Those who drafted the motion specifically explained it should not apply retroactively.
For the CFS to now turn around and say, “Sorry guys, you’re breaking the rules, we can’t recognize your votes” is simply not fair.
Those rules didn’t exist when these students submitted petitions calling for those votes in the first place. Many put hard work into organizing those petitions before Motion 6 was passed with no idea the rules were about to change. The CFS is supposed to be looking out for students and representing their interests. If students wanted referendums, it needs to respect their wishes.
Using a newly created set of technicalities to ignore their voices is not helping better relations between students and the federation. Who knows how many more legal battles the CFS can afford to fight, but there are sure to be more to come now that it’s using Motion 6 this way.