Students at the University of Regina finally know they will remain members of the Canadian Federation of Students, after waiting nearly three months for the results of an Oct. 28 referendum.
The results were made available to students on March 11.
According to the Canadian University Press, 1,414 students voted to stay in CFS while 1,326 voted to leave.
The CFS released this result without permission of the University of Regina Student Union (URSU).
The reason behind the delay, explained Neil Petrich, URSU communications co-ordinator, was the URSU’s concern over the value of votes cast by the First Nation University of Canada (FNUC), a federated college within the University of Regina.
FNUC counted its students’ ballots as a part of URSU during last year’s referendum, although FNUC is represented by a separate CFS local, Petrich explained.
“The outcomes [of the referendum] would affect us, but it would not affect FNUC,” Petrich said.
According to an URSU press release in December, URSU proposed a court injunction against CFS in order to push them to solve this issue.
Both sides agreed out of court Dec. 17 that the FNUC ballots should be counted. However, URSU was still not willing to announce the result at that time.
Petrich explained that the result would be released “depend[ing] on the balance of the vote” between the University of Regina students and those from FNUC.
“We feel that there is a lack of representation from CFS here. There isn’t a University of Regina representative for CFS now,” Petrich said. “We haven’t seen any representatives from CFS with regards to their services since 2008.”
“We will make life better for students despite the fact that our students are under-represented by CFS,” said Petrich.
Desarae Eashappie, the CFS Saskatchewan representative, could not be reached for comment.