The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) and the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) have reached an agreement settling the ongoing lawsuit over unpaid University Centre fees.
Statements released Sept. 10 by the GSA and CUSA said both parties are satisfied with the new agreement going forward. This settlement resolves a three-year dispute between the two associations regarding the payment of the Unicentre fee by the GSA to CUSA.
The GSA previously paid a substantial levy to CUSA for graduate student use of CUSA-run service centres. The GSA began withholding the Unicentre fee under claims of financial mismanagement and refusal of service to graduate students, which prompted CUSA to sue the GSA in January 2013 over the unpaid fees.
The new agreement states the GSA must pay $60,000 per year to CUSA in addition to 50 per cent of the Ombudsman fee, according to CUSA president Fahd Alhattab.
The GSA is able to choose which service centres will benefit from the fee. However, Alhattab said that within their allocation, they must fund a minimum of nine service centres in addition to between $500-$10,000 towards administrative costs of the service centres.
The amount of money paid by the GSA to CUSA under this settlement is less than the annual amount paid prior to the legal dispute, according to GSA president Michael Bueckert.
Bueckert said the GSA must also distribute an additional $30,000 annually directly to service centres, clubs, and programming for all Carleton students, both undergraduate and graduate.
In addition, the agreement allows full graduate student access to service centres “on the same terms and conditions that undergraduate students have,” Bueckert said. This means graduate students are eligible to apply and be elected as executives or hired as coordinators in CUSA-run service centres.
Bueckert said the GSA originally withheld the fees from CUSA because of issues regarding financial transparency, including a missed audit by previous CUSA executives. The new agreement is expected to solve these issues, he said.
“The problem before was that the money was just dumped into CUSA’s operating budget and then they did whatever they want with it,” Bueckert said.
Alhattab said CUSA’s financial transparency has improved in recent years.
“We haven’t missed an audit for the past four years. Our audits are always clean and always come out very well,” Alhattab said.
Bueckert said the new agreement gives the GSA more discretion as to where the money paid to CUSA by the association goes.
“Now we allocate the money specifically for a number of service centres. We get to choose how much money we want to give them within certain parametres,” he said.
Alhattab said the settlement is effective for the 2015-16 academic year and is valid for a five-year term. When the agreement expires, it must be renegotiated by CUSA, the GSA, and the university administration.
The university administration is happy about the settlement, according to Carleton’s general council Steve Levitt. He said the agreement was reached after numerous meetings between the three parties to resolve the issue.
“Everyone’s happy and it is all settled to the satisfaction of all parties,” he said. “The reached agreement is key because it preserves student access to the various service centres on the Carleton campus. Now everyone is able to access everything with no students being limited.”
Levitt did not comment on the university’s views with regards to the GSA referendum question posed in 2014, in which the university considered their referendum questions invalid, but said that all three parties are pleased with the settlement.
“We’re happy that for the next five years we have guaranteed funding year after year from the GSA paid directly to us for our service centres,” Alhattab said.
Bueckert said that although the agreement does not satisfy all of the GSA’s requests, it resolves the ongoing dispute between the two associations.
“It’s not exactly everything that we wanted, but it resolves a number of different conflicts that we have ongoing and I think it meets some of the basic standards that we are looking for,” he said.
Graduate students voted for the cancellation of the Unicentre levy and to transfer the money to the GSA’s operating budget in Sept. 2014, but Bueckert said he believes the spirit of the referendum remains intact under the new agreement.
Alhattab said the settlement will include payment for Unicentre fees owed by the GSA in the last three years. Alhattab and Bueckert both said the amount could not be disclosed for legal reasons.
