This past week the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) had its annual meeting to approve the budget for the 2015-16 school year. I was among a small number of those who chose to vote against the tabled budget.
In a year when the clubs and societies levy referendum question failed, and funds from the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) are no longer flowing, with all the revelations about CUSA’s deficit, you might expect to see restraint in their operating budget. We were told fiscal responsibility was the most important thing, and yet CUSA executives voted to increase their own pay for the second year in a row.
One budget line (refer to the section under VP Finance in the CUSA budget) aimed to increase the overall budget for the executive salaries by $7,298.44. That’s a raise of $1,216.40 per executive. For some perspective, their overall pay minus benefits was budgeted at $32,017.92 per executive member last year, and this year it has increased to $33,234.33. For an association struggling to maintain funding for clubs and societies, as well as vitally important
Service Centres, increasing executive pay is unacceptable.
This year’s executive spent $9,782 on transition pay on their predecessors to train this year’s incoming executive. In contrast, less than $1,500 was spent on executive transition pay last year.
This all comes after their pay was increased by $15,000 last year. The reasoning behind the increases in executive pay?
We were simply told it was necessary, that some committee last year had made the decisions, and that the current elected council didn’t really get a say on that expenditure at council. You heard right: the body elected to hold the executive to account and act as their oversight were told they couldn’t perform that role.
Vice-President of Student Life Sean Smith, the only executive elected from the Change CUSA slate, moved to amend the budget to remove this increase of executive salaries, including his own, and to put the remaining funds ($7298.44) back into clubs and societies.
The chair of council ruled Smith’s motion out of order, with an unfortunate misinterpretation of the bylaws. Council responded by citing article four of the CUSA constitution which states council shall “initiate, approve, or reject any of the association’s expenditures, and entrepreneurial activities.” It says council “shall be the sole body with the power to ratify the budget. Students’ council may amend the budget at any time.”
The constitution and bylaws make it clear. CUSA council has the authority to vote to amend any line of the budget. To stipulate otherwise in a governing document would mean having an executive which has no effective body of oversight.
So how are we to conclude, looking at all of these puzzle pieces together? The executive that ran on the “Your Carleton” slate decided to increase their own salaries and spent outrageous amounts of student money during the transition period. When challenged about these expenditures, they undemocratically ruled the amendment on salary increases out of order and prevented council from fulfilling its mandate, and with the support of some of council they voted down another amendment to decrease transition pay by $4,782 to reflect the amount that was budgeted last year.
It is not the first time they have blocked the mandate of council, and sadly, I doubt it will be the last. In this case, over $12,000 was kept out of clubs and societies funding, and instead put into padding the wallets of the executive.
I believe in democracy, accountability and in the vitality and strength of our diverse student clubs and societies. I believe a vote for the budget was a vote against those values. This is why I voted against the budget.
I honestly expected better from our executives.
