When I posted about Richard Park, who was running for Victoria city council, I was stunned at the volume of comments that came about.
I only allowed some of them to be posted because many of them were vitriolic or libelous.
The core of the issue seems to be issues related to the Canadian Federation of Students and elections issues at UVic for the student society.
I was involved with student politics in the 1980s when I was at UVic. It still amazes me at how seriously we took it all. How much we thought what we did mattered to anyone or anything. How we were hard done by. The constant feeling or need to see everything in terms of factions.
Most of us seemed to become drunk on our first chance to wield any power and refused to accept that fairness mattered.
Seems student politics are the still same, though even more organized than before at UVic. And it seems CFS is the bigger and more organized form of it.
It amazes me how much money the students are paying to keep the UVSS and CFS afloat in return for what seems to be almost nothing concrete. We kidded ourselves in the 1980s that the mandatory fees students had to pay were justified by the services, but the reality is that the vast majority of students get nothing from the fees they have to pay.
Most of the students are at the university to get an education and are completely ignored by the UVSS. CFS is even more distant from the student needs. Is it really right to expect the students to pay for the UVSS and CFS when they have no choice in the matter? I remember going through a lot of doublethink to be able to live with the idea that the fees that were charged of the students were a reasonable thing.
The fees that have to be paid by fulltime students for the recreation services, the UVSS, the bus pass and I am not sure what else, is something in the order of $400 to $600 per year. I am not certain why more students are not complaining. Only the dental/medical coverage is something you can opt out of.
Recently several student societies in BC have chosen to leave CFS, among them Simon Fraser undergrads and UVic grad students. By all acounts, the campaigns very heated. I wonder if the same might come to UVic some time soon?
2 comments:
I really hope we can do so. I helped somewhat with a movement last year to get the UVSS to leave the CFS, but we weren't able to secure enough signature support, unfortunately.
The rules are also stacked against groups leaving the CFS - we have to follow by their own election rules, or they sue us (as they have, other student societies). Some such rules allow a heck of a lot of CFS advertising and outside help, while the 'Out' campaign is strictly limited.
Hopefully there will be more of a push, next year.
The reason that there has been a lack of outcry is the same reason that students are the least likely to vote; the majority of them feel that their voice doesn't matter, or that they won't be able to change anthinging.
It truly is a shame. The CFS is a drain on our hard earned money and its disappointing to see such undemocratic measures instituted to prevent people from leaving.
The real ironic part is that the very money that we give them for their so called 'services' ends up funding campaigns to keep us from leaving. Such hypocrisy.....
Post a Comment