The problem with university fees is that they are perpetual. Once you or your organization has got one, save for a referendum, your fee is pretty much safe for eternity.
We pay hundreds of dollars to a vast variety of organizations at Carleton. Some money is distributed through the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA), which itself collects two separate fees from students. Other money is collected by the administration, again for a variety of purposes.
All in all, we pay close to $1,000, for what are arguably pet projects in and around Carleton.
Sock ‘n’ Buskin, the theatre company claiming to have financing issues, collects 81 cents for every student, to a total of roughly $20,000. The Ontario Public Interest Research Group, known for (self-described) radical and political “activism,” collects roughly $7 per student, putting their budget in the six figures. CKCU (the campus radio station), this publication, both the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and CFS-Ontario, and even some charities collect fees from every student with or without their consent and, more often than not, without their knowledge.
Sure, you could argue that by attending this university, you have agreed to pay all fees the university has deemed necessary to pay. By that logic then, a referendum passed in 1977 — and a referendum that passed with just shy of three per cent of all students voting in favour — can force you to pay fees to an organization or cause. It is absurd that, with a turnout of less than four per cent, 100 per cent of students must pay. It is even more absurd that students who have not attended this university in more than two decades can bind today’s and tomorrow’s students to higher fees.
The university needs give its head a shake. Students are, by definition, impoverished. The vast majority of us are scraping by on what we can earn over the summer and over the school year in and around courses. Certainly, it is nice to have certain organizations, nice to have certain passes and plans, but is it necessary for us to have them? Mandatory fees are about the necessities, the “need to have” not the “nice to have.” Tuition pays for your courses, the primary reason you are at this university. It is a “need to have.”
No offense is meant towards many of these organizations, but what is so vital about Socks ‘n’ Buskin, CKCU, the Charlatan, or OPIRG that we should force every student to pay for them? When did voluntary donations and fundraising go out the window? What makes them a “need to have?”
Students are fundamentally poor. If they voluntarily choose to pay for these organizations or services, so be it. But by forcing students to pay for them, the university is disrespecting the difficult financial choices students have to make, forcing them to mortgage the operations of organizations that they do not need, do not use, do not know about, or fundamentally disagree with.
Fees like that are wrong, and they need to stop. No one deserves a single students’ dime without their individual consent first.
— Justin Campbell,
president, Carleton Love of Liberty Society
