A motion for a second FundQi referendum is expected to be voted on at the Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) Dec. 8 council meeting.
A $9.99 per-semester levy for FundQi, a service that matches students with scholarships and other funding, was collected by CUSA for the first time this semester. A referendum on the levy passed in January.
Cameron Davis, a CUSA councillor for the faculty of engineering and design, submitted the motion to hold a second referendum March 2-3, after CUSA’s executive elections.
Davis said the first FundQi referendum, held during executive elections, was surrounded by confusion. Students who opted out of CUSA fees could not originally vote in the elections, although the association later allowed all undergraduate students to vote.
“We’re putting forward this motion to ensure that students get a fair referendum,” Davis said. “We’re not specifically anti-FundQi. We just want students to decide and truly have their voices heard.”
Davis said he will also submit a motion to make the referendum vote a roll call vote, requiring a record of how councillors voted in the meeting minutes. He said this will help hold councillors accountable.
Greg Dance, a Carleton student and the organizer of a petition for CUSA to hold another FundQi referendum, said that making every student pay for FundQi, whether they use it or not, is unnecessary.
In the November CUSA meeting, FundQi founder Zuberi Attard said around 1,000 students signed up to use the service and roughly 1,000 students opted out.
Matt Gagné, president of the Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG), said in a Charlatan op-ed that mandating the $9.99 per-semester levy is unfair.
However, in a letter to the Charlatan, CUSA president Kathleen Weary said the association did not mandate the levy, as students voted on the original FundQi referendum. Weary also said she met with FundQi executives to push for more transparency in the opt-out process in the winter semester.
Weary added that the results of a second referendum—if held—would be respected.
“If a second FundQi referendum occurs, we will support whatever decision is made by the student body, as we have for any past referendum,” Weary wrote.
Read more of the Charlatan’s FundQi coverage here.
