The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) is preparing their statement of defence in the lawsuit initiated by their undergraduate counterparts, the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA), over withheld payments for service centre use claimed by CUSA for more than $113,000.
Emails between the two parties show they attempted out-of-court mediation before CUSA’s claim was filed Jan. 17.
University ombudsperson Jim Kennelly said the GSA contacted him in December 2013 about using his services to resolve the disagreement between the two organizations.
An ombudsperson is a mediator who can help parties reach a decision. The ombudsperson’s recommendations are not binding. For CUSA and the GSA, the service would have been free.
Kennelly said the two parties were discussing which documents they would work from, but didn’t get any further.
CUSA vice-president (finance) Folarin Odunayo said CUSA sent an email Jan. 6, 2014 to the GSA about setting a mediation date.
The two parties were unable to reach a date.
CUSA had filed a statement of claim before this in July 2013.
Odunayo said it was necessary to file a claim then because of the statute of limitations for the case, which is the maximum time after an event has occurred that one party can file a lawsuit relating to that event.
Odunayo said CUSA is still open to mediation or reaching an out-of-court settlement.
In their statement of claim, CUSA claims the GSA owes them more than $113,000 in unpaid Unicentre fees.
Part of the fee is paid by the graduate association for graduate student use of CUSA service centres.
Following incidents where Canadian Federation of Students material was removed from service centres, and where at least one graduate student was prevented from reaching a certain executive position in a service centre, the GSA stopped paying the fee.
The case files are being sent to a court house in L’Orignal, Ont., about an hour east of Ottawa.
Odunayo said CUSA filed there on advice of their legal counsel.
