Money matters can make any person’s head spin. When it comes to understanding the financial management of the Concordia Student Union, it’s a challenge to figure out what goes where and why. For this reason we decided to go into detail about the ins and outs of this year’s 2012 budget. As boring as that may sound, here are five reasons why you, the average student, should bother to read it over.
1. To gain some context. If you aren’t aware of your finances, there will come a day when you end up in line at the grocery store and your card will be declined. It happens. If you’re wondering where all the CSU money goes and why there isn’t more for the things you care about, now is the time to find out.
2. Just because there’s a lot of it, doesn’t mean every penny doesn’t count. When the CSU spends thousands of dollars on this and that, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Reading a budget might feel like pulling teeth, but it is highly informative, so keep it all in perspective.
3. Follow the money. Want to know how much CSU executives get paid? Want to know how much money we have stowed away for that distant student centre dream? Want to know what counts as ‘miscellaneous’ spending? Numbers don’t lie.
4. We broke it down for you. It’s painless. No digging through archives, no fretting over dusty documents, no calls to your friend in economics for help. Take advantage of the explanation and learn something about the way your student union manages its money.
5. It’s your money. You have entrusted it to the CSU so that they can spend it on services that will benefit you. If they are using that money in a way that you don’t agree with, say something. Write in. Cause a fuss. Without your cooperation, there can be no CSU.
The thought of having a Concordia Student Union executive without the organizational skills to effectively plan a party, albeit for thousands of students, is cause enough for concern as any.
The upcoming back-to-school orientation is right about the corner but it seems little has been done in order to get the word out. Where are the posters on campus advertising orientation events? Why is the website so impossible to navigate? The CSU orientation page is non-existent, as far as we know, seeing as the link redirects to the 2011 orientation schedule.
Dealing with executives who are often hard to contact and watching them scramble to pull together a series of events they had all summer to plan shows a definite lack of time management.
We don’t want to assume the worst, but is it possible that the so-called “secret concert,” which is set to take place Sept. 14, is in fact undisclosed because there is no confirmed headliner? Like we said, there’s no need to imagine the worst case scenario, but it begs the question: How is the student body supposed to trust this team when they haven’t proven to be reliable?
It may very well be that the current CSU is only starting out and, much like a toddler, and has not yet learned to stand on their own two feet. As they mature with time, they have the potential to grow up and become competent leaders but, for the time being, we worry about their ability to lead now.
This, of course, is not the entire executive team’s fault; however, they should be working together to do everything in their power to pick up the slack. And there is slack. Whether or not the CSU is willing to admit it, their first challenge out of the gate was handled in a sloppy manner and without due care.
Posters for the two weeks worth of events and activities were only posted online on Labour Day, and with elections on Tuesday and the first day of classes looming, the timing could not have been worse. Unless of course, there was no information posted at all, which for a while, seemed like a real possibility.
Although the activities planned will be enjoyable for the drunk masses, there’s no question that the lineup could be a lot more impressive and enticing, not to mention well-promoted, if everyone had done their jobs properly.
There has been a lot of talk recently about fresh starts in the coming academic year. Now that Concordia has an actual new beginning on its hands, we have to wonder if this time it will be for real.
With the start of a brand new school year, it’s the perfect time for this university to shake the dust from its heels, wipe away the grime of the old scandals and move on. Timing couldn’t be better with a new president coming in, fresh-faced and ready to take on the responsibilities that come alongside the glad-handing and posing for pictures. More than ever, students want someone who is willing to listen to what they have to say, and we can only hope that Alan Shepard is up to the challenge.
At the same time, a new Concordia Student Union comes into power, one who ran on a campaign overflowing with promises to make the academic and social lives of students better. A Better Concordia, remember? This executive who promised us more events, more sustainable projects, more love for Loyola, more transparency, more honesty; now is the time for them to put their words into action.
So what happens next? Is Concordia doomed to repeat history over and over? We hope not. It may sound like a fool’s hope, but this could be as Shepard puts it, “Concordia’s time.” This is a school that has a lot going for it and though some things never change, the gross mismanagement of funds, resources and people’s patience can.
CSU President Schubert Laforest may not have a lot of experience sitting at the big kids table, but maybe that is a good thing. Maybe students are tired of the ‘behind closed doors’ attitude and want someone to shake things up. Perhaps this is overly optimistic, but perhaps that may be exactly what this school needs. If we took a moment now and then to stop criticizing her and help her instead, Concordia could actually have a reputation we could be proud of.
There are people at this school — teachers, staff, administrators, and student leaders — who genuinely care about the Concordia experience and want to make it all that it can be. There are also people who don’t seem to care about students at all, and they are allowed to let their desire to turn public education into a corporation run rampant. To them, who make the rest of the people who give a damn look like helpless bystanders or worse, greedy accomplices, we say this: step aside.
Concordia deserves a fresh start and a clean slate after a long road of missteps. But that’s not going to happen if we let the bullies rule the playground for another year and only talk of change, instead of enacting it.
[singlepic id=195 w=320 h=240 float=right]To the students of Concordia University,
So, the team here at The Concordian was hoping you could buy us a new means of transportation for the office. We’re not asking for much. A top of the line car maybe? It seems unfair now, but later when we’re cruising from Loyola to SGW while you wait for the shuttle bus in the rain, it will seem even more unfair. Let us explain.
Earlier this week, the Journal de Montreal reported that Concordia University is footing the bill for senior Vice-President Bram Freedman’s rental of a Lexus RX 350. As the VP Institutional Relations and Secretary General, Freedman is entitled to his new ride as per his contract.
The article stated that the six senior VPs at the university have access to $900 a month for rental and maintenance of a vehicle of their choice.
University’s spokesperson, Cléa Desjardins, confirmed that the majority of vice-presidents choose to receive this monthly allowance and while some “arrange their lease or car ownership themselves, some choose to have the university lease a vehicle directly.”
So why all the fuss? Well according to Le Journal, the rental contract between the university and the Montreal Lexus dealer rings in at $37,155.22. Once again, the problem lies in the continuing trend of institutional disregard for money management.
Concordia was fined by former Education Minister Line Beauchamp just this spring to the tune of two million dollars for handing out hefty severance packages like they were monogrammed pens. All the while, students protesting against tuition fee increases say they can’t afford to pay a dollar more, let alone another couple hundred dollars.
When is Concordia going to learn its lesson?
This is not a personal criticism of VP Freedman. He is simply taking advantage of the subsidies program available to him. Granted, he took it as far as he could carry it: a Lexus RX 350 rings in at a starting price of $44,950.
Freedman’s expense reports for 2011 also indicate that he charged the university $1,500 for maintenance on his car and another $788.10 in June of that year for insurance on said vehicle.
Why shouldn’t senior administrators be given perks for executing the difficult job of shaking hands and sitting on committees? All teasing aside, there’s nothing wrong with receiving some benefits, but not when they’re used to explain away unnecessarily costly purchases coming from students’ pockets.
Approximately 94 million dollars of Concordia’s overall operating budget in 2011 comes from student tuition fees, with another 272 million from federal and provincial subsidies. Nearly 80 per cent of the university’s revenue comes from public sources, giving them a responsibility to the students and taxpayers who finance them to spend that money prudently. This is a university, not a privately funded for-profit company and that is a fact the Concordia administration needs to wake up to.
As far as we are concerned, any student who pays fees at this educational institution owns a piece of that car, and that is why people should be outraged. If Bram Freedman isn’t giving us a ride to school each morning, why then should we have to pay for his?
The Concordia Student Union has taken a lot of heat recently, and rightly so. They failed to properly promote two general assemblies to vote on a strike and their recent elections were an utter disaster with a seriously low voter turnout.
Nonetheless, it’s important to give credit where credit is due. The CSU proved to be a fine leader last Thursday during the massive protest against tuition hikes, when over 200,000 people, many of them students, took to the streets to tell the Charest government to take their planned increases and shove it.
Early Thursday morning, hundreds crowded around the Hall building, where they designed protest signs and discussed their strategies for the day. By noon, over 500 students were heading down to the march’s main meeting point, being lead by CSU President Lex Gill and vice-president external Chad Walcott.
Considering the controversy that has surrounded the CSU in recent weeks and the criticism the executive has faced with regards to a lack of organization, it was pleasing to see the CSU hype up the crowds and lead the massive march for the better part of the three-hour event.
The fact that it was the CSU, the student union of an English Quebec university, playing such a pivotal role in the demonstration sent a strong message, one that said that anglophone students in this province — at least a large part of them — have no intention of being left out of this fierce battle against tuition hikes. While francophone student associations continue to receive most of the praise for their efforts in mobilizing students and keeping the movement alive, the CSU showed us last Thursday that anglophone post-secondary institutions can be just as feisty in this fight with the Charest Liberals.
The demonstration as a whole was a huge success. While it may not have succeeded in swaying the government’s position on tuition, it proved how serious students and their supporters are when it comes to accessible education. The fact that so many people poured into the streets to take part in one of the largest demonstrations in Quebec’s history is very telling of the public mood in this province.
Education Minister Line Beauchamp may do her best to sleep at night by telling herself that the march was simply comprised of “the usual players,” but what the minister has failed to realize — among other things — is that it wasn’t just students or big unions out in the streets on March 22; there were countless parents, grandparents and students from other provinces (Ontario, notably) marching that day as well.
Solidarity between people of different generations and of different backgrounds has not been this evident in Quebec for many years. So it’s important to not let the power of solidarity diminish. The CSU may have taken another hit this past Monday with its failed general assembly — only about 300 students showed up — but this in no way means that the student movement at Concordia is slowly fading away.
The CSU must harness the frustration and anger Concordia students are expressing with regards to tuition increases and the administration’s mismanagement of public funds. Mobilizing students on a large scale is still very much a possibility. The CSU proved to be a powerful leader last Thursday; there’s no reason to believe they can’t do it again.
Last election saw a huge blurring of the no-campaigning-during-polling-dates rule. From surfaces like t-shirts to blackboards, the slates got imaginative, to the point of potentially receiving a backlash from students.
You’re probably one of the people that was put off by the sight of Action candidates fielding students and bringing them to polling booths, all the while wearing their familiar blue t-shirts. Naturally, campaigning is verboten during the polling periods for CSU elections and referendums. After two weeks of poster plastering, classroom visits and other bombardment, students get a pause to go back to quieter times and and make their voting decision without being assaulted every time they get to the elevators.
This year, both slates came clad in t-shirt uniforms. Fortunately for Action, in a sense, they chose the colour blue to identify themselves (and potentially separate themselves from their past purple-hued slates). Your Concordia went for a more colourful option, not sticking with one colour. Instead, they branded themselves with a strong font and a palette of Easter pastels.
But this rainbow option means that your candidates are less identifiable as a group, from a distance.
So, while both teams engaged in persuading voters to step up to vote (for whomever they want, we presume), directing them to polling booths and handing them copies of campus newspapers, Action stood out from day one with their electric blue accoutrements. They turned their shirts inside out, so that their logos were only lightly visible backwards. Using the shirts as a running tally of voter apathy, they marked them with Sharpies each time someone refused to vote.
A creative ploy to demonstrate just how exhausted or how turned off Concordia students are, but still an intimidating act to pull in front of a student leisurely or hurriedly going to class.
This is one of the few grey areas that cropped up during the campaign this week – is taking your branded t-shirt and turning inside out a safe way to go about persuading voters to vote while subtly telegraphing your party allegiances? Chief electoral officer Oliver Cohen decided that this constituted a violation, and midway through the polling dates, he issued a short new slew of directives to candidates through their presidential hopefuls. Included was the new rule banning the wearing of campaign shirts, inside out or otherwise. The distance candidates were to keep from polling stations was 20 metres, up from a measly 10 metres. And, no saying or writing on blackboards anything but “go vote.”
Disappointingly, this did not stop Action from chucking their marked-up t-shirts and starting fresh. Instead, they picked up new, blank blue t-shirts and blue sweaters and headed back out to the polls the next day. You have to admire political candidates who profess to care so much about voter apathy that they’ll take time to push voters to the polls themselves. But in this case, Action candidates were motivated purely by self-interest. Concordia students aren’t stupid; clearly, someone wearing a blue t-shirt is running for the blue team. Greeting students with blue t-shirts is clearly campaigning; you’ve identified yourself, extended a hand and made a new contact.
Cohen should have emphasized that campaign colours were not to be worn – no t-shirts, no bandannas, no matching eye shadow. Of course, with dozens of candidates over two slates, and one without a clear colour code, the challenge of enforcing this rule would be almost insurmountable. Nevermind the fact that Cohen’s polling employees were largely unawares of the new directives issued by the last day of polling. Issuing new rules is one thing, assuring that they can be enforced competently is another, and this was not done effectively.
The other solution is to forgo the no-campaigning rule whatsoever. If policing people who are old enough to know better is too difficult, why don’t we just do it like they do in the big leagues, and allow campaigning. To be sure, candidates are exhausted by the time polling comes around, and some might have limited resources that keep them from continued campaigning.
But in order to keep things fair, you might as well open the flood gates, and allow campaigning up until the polls close for good.
While the voter turnout was impressive compared to previous years, we can’t be totally sure of what ultimately brought out students to the polls in stronger numbers this year. Did Action’s proactive blue measures hurt them in the end because students saw through their tactics? Or did Your Concordia just run a more responsive, intellectual campaign?
We’d like to think that it was students are realizing that we’re in trouble, and we need strong leadership. Effectively, Concordia students are in a certain measure of crisis – our Board of Governors is laden with members who are passed their term, the student centre will be a building students dislike, their is disagreement over tuition, and so on. Day-to-day, you’d find little evidence that the union is under tremendous pressure, but you can be assured that how the student union handles itself in the next year will have long-term impacts on how students carry on their academic careers.
Two weeks of campaigning have gone by, and we’ve watched YouTubes videos, had a few classroom lectures, read some flyers and watched a paltry dance-off between the two main slates. So, what have we learned from the people vying for the chance to control your money, plan your parties and represent your rights and interests?
Action and Your Concordia’s slates are eerily similar, suggesting either a close listening to students’ concerns or little innovation. Their laundry list of ideas is a roundup of issues that Concordia students want to hear about: fighting tuition increases, banning bottled water, and of course, demanding more transparency when it comes to both university and union governance.
But if we go beyond the issues and look at the candidates and what brought them together as a slate, we can note some clear differences. With Action, there are remnants of the current CSU executive, 2010’s winning Fusion slate, with two current CSU VPs running for senate and the Board of Governors. This is the same executive that came under fire on a regular basis this year for failing to act on the very issues both slates champion.
Aside from adopting a slightly different hue, Action is clearly by association a successor to the ‘ion’ dynasty – the Fusion and Vision slates, which first swept to power to oppose the long-ruling, CFS-backed Change dynasty in 2009. With little to differentiate themselves from the previous slates, and the snafu with the club endorsements, Action has paled in comparison to the Your Concordia slate with its vacuous videos and posters.
While Action appears lacking in a strong, guiding vision, Your Concordia has on its side an appearance of colourful, fresh energy and ideas. But is all this buzz merely the effort of a clever graphic designer and videographer?
For all the claims of bringing a fresh perspective to the seventh floor of the Hall building, Your Concordia also has a team that has as much experience in power as Action: Lex Gill is well-known as a vocal opposition and fixture on the CSU council, and Morgan Pudwell is a former VP sustainability and promotions. Their candidates are almost, if not as active, as Action candidates.
But it’s important remember that Your Concordia is comprised of key organizers of some of this year’s major protests against tuition increases, including the WHALE. But while the ideals are there, does Your Concordia have what it takes to, pardon the pun, put them into action?
While protests and more wintry-hot love-ins send a strong message, they unfortunately don’t always manage to persuade the sexagenarians that dominate the Board of Governors and the Quebec government to decide in the students’ favour, as we saw with the recent tuition increases in the provincial budget. Your Concordia needs to keep in mind the frustrating reality that the call for change happens as much indoors as it does out on the streets.
Action would no doubt do a fine job managing the CSU, their track record suggests it. But will students be wary of them and opt for the fresher choice? Whichever slate Concordia students entrust the keys to the offices of H-711 to, either one will have a formidable challenge: dealing with an unwieldly Board in crisis, rising tuition costs, a university in disrepute, a student centre contract with no student centre, and a very jaded student body. Let’s hope they’re up for the challenge.
The CSU elections undeniably present a heavy work load for their main organizer, chief electoral officer Oliver Cohen. With two large slates, four referendum committees and a team of election volunteers to take care of, it’s understandable that Cohen may not always be in his office, or quick to respond to phone calls and emails. Cohen has not been very accommodating to campus media, often getting back to requests for an interview at the last minute, if at all. While we’re not pleased with the situation, this year’s elections highlight a much more serious issue with the CEO: a lack of availability to election candidates and referendum committees. Members of both slates running in this year’s election have expressed their frustrations about being unable to reach Cohen, even on issues like sanctions which could seriously affect their campaigning. Members of CJLO, campaigning in favour of an increased fee levy for their organization, also struggled to reach Cohen for days with serious questions about their own campaign. There is no reason why either of those parties should ever have to wait for days at a time for answers that could ultimately affect their victory or loss in this spring’s elections. The problem may lie in the fact that the CEO, as a neutral party, is not accountable to anybody. When a councillor asked about the CEO’s behaviour at a recent meeting, the executives threw up their hands, saying “We don’t control him.” With certain executives running in the current elections, this makes sense. But Cohen and future CEOs should have someone keeping them in check. Maybe the CEOs of FASA, CASA and ASFA could step up to the plate? Regardless of the solution, we need a CEO who is completely dedicated to the process. ASFA’s CEO Nick Cuillerier provides a fantastic model, dedicating himself full-on to the job, responding to emails and calls within hours in most situations. This is the type of individual we need on the job, so that the elections come down to the votes of the students, and not the confusion of the candidates. And while we’re at it, more media availability would be nice too.
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If you were thinking that the all-mighty, all-male external governance review committee was too good to be true, well, you were right. Turns out fixing Concordia’s governance faults comes with a price tag: a cool $60,000.
The members who will be doing the work on this will be billing the university a few dollars; to be exact, they will each log $1,000 a day for up to 20 days of work. We thought only celebrities made that kind of money.
Concordia and the other Quebec universities got what they wanted last week – namely, large increases to tuition mandated by Finance Minister Raymond Bachand in the provincal budget. They’ve long asked for the money to close their looming debts, replace old infrastructure and refurbish and update programs to remain competitive. But while McGill and Laval, for example, might get new facilities or a small deficit with their windfall of cash, we can’t help but get the sinking feeling that our dollars are going towards paying to fix a school we didn’t break, and that should have never been broken in the first place.
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A big round of applause goes out to the councillors at Wednesday’s Concordia Student Union’s council meeting, or as we like to call it, March council meeting – take two. It was refreshing to hear councillors legitimately calling out the CSU with big financial questions, even if their efforts were a little misguided.
One councillor asked to know whether the CSU was audited annually. What a laughable question. If you are a member of the board of directors (which is effectively what council is – it’s like the board of a company or the Board of Governors for Concordia) and are supposed to hold the leadership accountable, how do you do a good job if you do not know what the organization’s basic checks and balances are? Great question, Councillor: the answer is yes, the CSU is audited annually.
Now, if you knew that, and saw that the CSU was forgoing the audit one year, or was having trouble with their auditor or documents, then you have to ask questions. Another councillor asked whether there were quarterly statements, like the ones companies issue – great suggestion! Keep up the proactive work.
With one council meeting left on the books in April, it’s great that some councillors are now stepping up to the plate and finally asking some productive questions. It’s nice to see that they’re catching on to what their job entails.
On Wednesday night, the worst Concordia Student Union council meeting in recent memory went down in a hail of insults, yelling and an utter failure of transparency. Don’t take our word for it – there were about 100 people there who can tell you about it. Four video cameras filmed it, with three of them streaming live on the CUTV website.
Appropriately, since the CSU feels like a sinking ship, the words ‘travesty’ and ‘mutiny’ were bandied about. In the end, we all went home with more than half the agenda untouched, and a crummy feeling inside.
Who’s guilty for the way things unfolded at Wednesday’s council meeting? Well, each side is laying the blame on the other. When the CSU executive motioned to go into closed session to discuss former VP Morgan Pudwell, her supporters, and most of the room, refused to leave, as required by closed session rules. What resulted was an impasse where half the room – councillors, students, members of the student media – was screaming at each other in a childish display of screwed-up doggedness.
Most student representatives seem to want to fault the students who showed up: ‘They bullied us, they shouted us down, they didn’t follow the rules.’
How wrong they are. These students are attempting to send a clear message to their elected representatives. Some councillors argued that the presence of the students was unnecessary, because as elected officials, they were there to represent students’ interests.
Well, just because a slim minority of Concordia’s undergraduates elected you to a position last April doesn’t mean the electorate doesn’t have the right to tell you how they feel. Just because we vote in 308 members of parliament every national election, does that mean Canadians stop caring about what happens in Ottawa for another fours years or so? We don’t stop calling and writing our MPs, we don’t stop reading the newspapers and watching the nightly news, and we don’t quit organizing protests, marches and sit-ins.
We have a representative system at Concordia, but students should still be empowered to participate and make their voices heard. We get the feeling that certain councillors just wanted students to shut up, go home and not interfere in and inconvenience their otherwise cosy little meetings. Where some councillors have the luxury to come and leave early, and a small minority of councillors actually bothers to voice opposition to the executive, as they should.
The CSU executive misstepped in calling for closed session. While the procedure is called for when discussing employee problems, Pudwell is not some random undergraduate hired to staff the CSU reception.
She ran with a slate and was elected as a VP on a public platform with a mandate; if she did not fulfill her duties, we should know why. Pudwell herself stated open session could carry through. Her supporters feared she would be attacked unnecessarily; to that, we say Pudwell is a smart, grown woman who fully understood the consequences when she quit her office, and could handle herself in closed session. On the other hand, councillors said that the measure was needed to avoid potentially embarrassing Pudwell.
Why this sudden concern for Pudwell’s reputation, when a group of councillors signed their name to a letter released to the meeting whining about how she supposedly bungled the women’s caucus?
Either way, we fail to understand why the CSU felt the need to stick to the rules and not adapt themselves to the situation at hand. In digging in their heels, they created an adversarial relationship with the students who elected them – and who won’t hesitate to virulently oppose them in the near future.
To top it off, how can we trust the CSU executive, after they openly lied to the Concordian about calling security on students in an interview shortly thereafter? This betrayal of trust casts doubt on everything they say; how do we know all that would be discussed at council would be limited to Pudwell’s employment record?
Some students who refused to leave did a disservice to themselves and to everyone else by starting the yelling that led to the downward spiral that led to the meeting’s early end. By all means, a sit-in is fine, but yelling is best reserved for an outdoors protest, not an indoor conference room.
Bring on the students and the cameras, we need big, open CSU council meetings; they should not be a private, cosy affair. But while we’re at it, we need a CSU executive and council that does not oppose students, and we need student observers who don’t treat council meetings like a rally.
Today is the 100th International Women’s Day. In casting around for a suitable angle for this week’s editorial on the subject, the topic of politics came up. If you want to follow Gandhi’s saying to be the change you want to see in the world, getting elected is one way to make waves on issues you care about. And that’s why it’s important to have more women elected to office in Canada.
Women have made significant strides in the political realm in Canada in the last century – including earning the right to vote federally in 1918, and the first female prime minister Kim Campbell taking power in 1993 (albeit for a short time). Steady growth has brought the percentage of women members of parliament from just under 10 per cent in the 1980s to 21 per cent today. But, that’s just 1 out of 5 women filling the seats in Parliament. The Senate has a higher percentage, around 30 per cent, but those seats are appointed. It’s not impossible to have an even representation of both genders – this is happening in Rwanda (56.3 per cent), Sweden (46.4 per cent) and South Africa (44.5 per cent).
A review of the politicians who represent the interests of this corner of Montreal reveals a near-unique occurrence. Concordia’s Loyola campus is one of a handful of spots in Canada that has a women representing them at all levels of government – federal, provincial and municipal. (A quick, but not exhaustive, overview of the 68 ridings which have female members of parliament reveals at least two communities west of Montreal represented by women at all three levels.)
The three women in the trifecta of political representation include Marlene Jennings, who’s been a Liberal member of parliament for the NDG-Lachine riding since 1997. Kathleen Weil, a lawyer by profession, was a political newcomer when she first ran for the Liberals. She is now Quebec’s Minister for Immigration and Cultural Communities. Susan Clarke was elected in 2008 with the Union Montreal party as the councillor for the Loyola district.
Jennings spoke with the Concordian about her thoughts on how three women came to represent NDG; she believes the area has a “certain level of maturity that helps women get elected.” (Weil was not available for comment before press time, and Clarke is away on vacation.)
Right off the bat, Jennings unequivocally believes that Canada, a progressive, Western democracy, is faltering when it comes to women’s involvement in politics. “Somehow, we’ve hit – I don’t even call it the glass ceiling, I think it’s now a steel ceiling. And I really do believe that government, and the House of Commons, and political parties at the federal level, have to take really proactive measures in order to not just encourage more women to run for political office at the federal office, but to ensure that more are actually elected.”
Jennings, a longtime backbencher, has introduced a private members’ bill to persuade parties to run more women in riding elections. Political parties, since 2004, receive $1.95 in funding per vote each year until the next election as a method to curb party donations. Jennings proposes that if a party fails to obtain women filling at least 40 per cent of its representation, the party would lose part of its $1.95 subsidy.
Studies show, according to Jennings, that when at least 40 per cent of representatives are women, it creates a ‘substantive change’ in the way government operates. “The way in which decisions are made becomes much more collegial across party lines. There’s a lot less partisanship, jumping on minor errors to try and gain some one-upmanship and blacken the reputation of your opponents […] There’s much more interest in investing public moneys into policies that have proven over the medium and long term to actually affect a healthy change for population.” Sounds like something Canada could use.
But, as her proposal is a private member’s bill that will wait another year or so before it is introduced, with a potential election looming, it might take a long while before her bill comes up for a vote. But if the federal budget fails at the end of the month, Jennings affirms she is ready to run again for her seat.
There has been a backlash among younger women against the perceived aggressivness of the term ‘feminist.’ The F Word, an excellent CBC documentary that aired last week, explored this topic in depth. Jennings, however, thinks that the term is not outdated, and that young women should consider themselves feminists. “I believe that any individual, male or female, who believes in equal rights, is a feminist. Because I think that that is the core of feminism.”
After much assigning of blame and hemming and hawing as to how to go about fixing the problems that plague Concordia’s administration, a minor solution was presented two weeks ago in order to try and stem the flow of problems.
By now, you can probably run off the laundry list of issues at Concordia in your sleep: major VPs have jumped ship for better jobs or ‘personal reasons,’ the president evaporated in a mysterious cloud of controversy right before the winter holidays and students, profs, staff and alumni are largely up in arms against the Board of Governors and its chair, Peter Kruyt.
Woodsworth’s interim replacement, Frederick Lowy, stepping into his old job, promised to listen to the complaints and grievances shared by students, staff and faculty. And listen he did, at senate meetings and likely several backroom, steering and casual meetings. But it’s clear he’s reached the end of his rope: at the last Board of Governors meeting, Lowy said a culture of victimization seems to be perpetuating itself at every level at the university. The time has come, he said, to talk of other things and stop blaming Peter Kruyt for all the problems at school.
So, last week, shortly before students went off on spring break (ahem, we mean reading week) Lowy proposed the creation of a committee based on a January Senate motion to create an external revenue committee. After some debate, the Board of Governors voted to approve such a committee, whose job will be to evaluate the university’s governance.
While we agree with some senators, including graduate representative Robert Sonin, that we won’t be able to fully move on until we know all the details about Woodsworth’s dismissal and what contrived to bring her down, we’re in support of a motion that can finally start to put this business to rest.
This committee’s powers and parametres are not yet fully sketched out; they will be decided at an upcoming steering committee meeting. The deadline for their evaluation and eventual report and whether their recommendations be binding have yet to be decided.
The number of members is but a handful; we’re looking for three people. Ideally, the members, according to Lowy, will include the following: someone with experience working in university administration, an expert in the not-for-profit sector and an outside faculty member. Just where he’ll find his ideal candidates, we’re not too sure. We hope he’ll also add to the qualifications list an ability to hear both sides of the story, co-operative teamwork.
While the prospect of having people with zero connection to Concordia coming in, observing and evaluating the governance scheme seems like a dicey proposition, this kind of arm’s length for observers should prove the best method to fixing Concordia’s long-running problems. The Board of Governors itself has many external members from the larger community; the goal is to ensure that they will provide an outside, independent voice and reasoning to the insular workings of the university. But, as evidenced by the members who have spent years over their terms on the BoG, these good intentions have likely been warped as members became entrenched in school politics and have not budged from their spots. And so, perhaps some fresh outside voices will provide some much-needed perspective to the stodgy BoG.
We hope that the search process goes smoothly; let Lowy know if you think you’ve found someone who might make a perfect fit for the committee. Do you have a friend who’s working for a non-profit? Someone who knows universities inside and out? A professor from your last school? Send Lowy an email with your suggestions at president@concordia.ca. After all, this is the group that will supposedly be going through your university with a fine tooth comb.
But one clear problem that needs fixing remains: the continued presence of Peter Kruyt as chair of the Board of Governors. If it’s true, as Lowy and BoG part-time faculty observer Jean Freed commented at the Feb. 17 meeting, that people are just throwing the blame at Kruyt’s feet, then instead of asking people to stop doing so, why not just have him leave? The chair should be independent from the whims of university structures, but it’s clear that at this point, not many people seem to want him there and that’s not helping anyone.
While his Board appears to be in crisis, Kruyt himself was not even present at the last BoG meeting. If you’re going to be the chair of a Board that controls a huge educational institution, you’d think you could clear your calendar for a monthly meeting. The fact that he was not present at this meeting shows that he is either reluctant to appear in front of his BoG, or that he does not care enough about the university to show up.
Nobody really expected for today’s Special General Meeting to pull in the necessary number of students to make the meeting’s agenda valid. Mainstream media most likely doubted students would make it, as well. Even we doubted it was possible.
And yet, despite the rain, slush and overall cold greyness of the day, students rallied to bring in numbers that crept just a tad above the required quorum of around 795 students. The total, measured at 897 as this goes to print, is no clear victory, but it did the trick.
All in all, the day was a success. We’re sure that someone high up in the university administration and the government took notice; whether they’ll let this event influence their decisions any further remains to be seen.
But beyond the almost 900 students who showed up is another glaring figure: what happened to the almost 29,000 to 30,000 or so students who were eligible for the CSU’s SGM but did not make it out? If you were not there, what happened to you?
Students are angry, annoyed, anxious and pissed off about a lot of things: homework, unfair teachers, not getting a date on Valentine’s Day. But what ranks highly in many Concordia students’ minds are the following two issues: how does a mysterious Board of Governors run the university and allow high-ranking administrators to walk away with huge sums of money, while the government continues to threaten to raise the price of tuition with the agreement of university leaders?
You can bet these questions have been percolating in nearly everyone’s minds over the last few weeks and months. But how many people actually got up and did something about it? While a small group of students rallied with their banner down Guy Street in the cold after the successful SGM came to a close, students inside the warm glass confines on the MB building looked down on them. One student muttered to another over their books on the third floor, “Don’t these people have midterms to write?”
Yeah, those kids in the streets definitely do have midterms to write. They’re students just like you are, but they’re taking time out of their busy schedules to actually do something. If you were that student in the MB building, or in the Hall building, or whatever building, why didn’t you drop what you were doing to join in?
Now, who will actually act on these hangups remains to be seen. But hopefully, with this rally setting a good example and tone for the half of the winter semester remaining, more students will be tempted to throw in their hats and rally. This is not the end of the student movement for the semester. Students will be out at the upcoming BoG meeting, the upcoming senate meeting and the eventual rally as the provincial budget is announced in March. There are Open to Question sessions you can head to if you care about the university’s academic plan. And there are always opportunities like CSU council meetings where you can come out and make your voice heard.
No matter the outcome of the tuition hikes, or the Board of Governors’ ongoing drama, go out and try to do something. Because almost nothing will look worse to the tyrannical BoG and the relentless government than seeing a minority of students parade down a cold street while the majority sit tight indoors with their books.
Last week, the Concordian published an opinions piece by writer Kelsey Pudloski that criticized students campaigning for office on the Arts and Sciences Federation of Associations executive. The story was picked up by websites Jezebel, Yahoo, Gawker and even a weekly student newspaper at Yale. We’re not proud to say, though, that the attention to the story was overwhelmingly negative. You hear that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but readers and commenters were largely against Pudloski’s story. The main criticism was that, because Pudlowski criticized two female candidates and not any male ones, the story was sexist and biased.
At this paper, we strive to publish opinions with which not everyone may agree. That’s why we run pro and con columns that present both sides of the debate on prostitution and allowing bottled water. It’s partly why we advocated for tuition increases for programs like MBAs. Earlier this month, an opinions piece supported Wal-Mart supercentres. But rarely do we hear from people on topics as vehemently as the voices we heard last week.
While the vast majority of the editorial staff disagreed with Pudloski’s opinion piece, we respect her argument that candidates sometimes do not do enough beyond putting up posters to grab uninterested voters’ interest. But the story was flawed; the terms of her argument were not appropriate, and we did not do our job as editors by not vetoing references to “sparkly crowns and sashes” and “beauty pageants” which obviously unfairly target the female candidates in the ASFA race. For this, we apologize to our readers and the candidates.
