UVSS Uncovered

Reflections on UVSS changes in 2010-2011

2011-04-02T13:37:00.010-07:00

On October 24, 2008 (the day the SUB strike ended) I had a conversation with Dylan Hardie, then an Independent Director at Large. During this conversation I outlined three changes I felt would fix the systemic problems affecting the UVSS. As a result of these changes I felt the UVSS would become more accountable, transparent and meet the needs of UVic students better. These changes were:

Move away from Greenshield as the UVSS health and dental plan provider.
Part ways with SUB General Manager Marne Jensen.
End UVic's membership in the Canadian Federation of Students

At the time, achieving all three looked like wishful thinking. Hardie concluded that maybe one of these could be accomplished in the foreseeable future, two was really pushing it. At this point in 2008 Team FAST, very much a Pro CFS slate, controlled 11 of the 15 elected seats on the UVSS board and generally had the support of most of the constituency group representatives.

Two and a half years later, all three of these objectives have been accomplished.

The UVSS switched from Greenshield to StudentCare as its health and dental plan provider last Summer.
Marne Jensen and the UVSS parted ways last August resulting in Dale Robertson as the General Manager of the SUB.
Yesterday, 70% of UVSS members students voted to end UVSS membership in the Canadian Federation of Students.

Two and half years ago, achieving all three seemed highly unlikely. I have spent the last year almost in disbelief as one by one the pieces of this puzzle began to fall into place.

There actually was a fourth systemic change that I had not considered back in 2008 but believe will have a very positive outcome for the UVSS. In November 2010, students approved a dedicated fee for Events. In January of 2011, the UVSS constitution was modified resulting in the Director of Events position being created.

Over the past year I have come to understand the large amount of workload that comes with the current Director of Services position. As a result of this workload, planning events tends to receive secondary importance. With the new Director of Events position and corresponding fee, I believe UVic will finally see a significant improvement in the number of events put on by the UVSS throughout the year.

To end this reflection I shall finish with a quote by Shamus Reid at Tuesday's CFS debate:
"Each and every step is a tough fight to get...and if we let off the gas, then we're screwed."

The UVSS has come a long way in the last year, but can always be improved.

UVic votes to end CFS membership

2011-04-01T13:39:00.003-07:00

Word began to spread late this morning that the 'No' side had won by a significant margin in the CFS membership referendum. Being April 1, it seemed just a little too good to be true.

It can now be confirmed however that the 'No' side did in fact prevail, receiving 70% of the votes cast in this referendum.

Full results as posted by Engineers Against the CFS:

Total votes cast: 4 665 (30.9% voter turnout)

“Yes CFS” votes: 1 361 (29%)
“No CFS” votes: 3 255 (70%)

(1% of the ballots were spoiled)

Breakdown by polling station (% of 'No' vote in each polling station):
Library - 75%
Clearihue - 64%
SUB - 64%
Maclaurin - 65%
SSM - 70%
ELW - 95%
Wright - 73%

Analysis:
The first and most obvious observation is the margin that the 'No' side won by. Considering the relentless amount of campaigning done be the 'Yes' side, virtually everyone expected a much closer result.

Also notable is the turnout in this referendum: over 30%. Considering the referendum was held during the last two weeks of classes when students much more academic things to focus on, this turnout is huge. The only other time the UVSS experinced a turnout that was this high was during the U-Pass referendum in 1999.

Of course, it should be noted that this is only one more step in the journey towards leavng the CFS. This organization has a history of not willingly acknowledging referendum results. It is only once the CFS recognizes the results of the referendum at General Meeting that the result of this referendum becomes official.

For every student that took the time to get informed and vote in this referendum despite the late semester timing, thank you.

Gongshow: The CFS membership referendum

2011-03-30T22:04:00.004-07:00

When I heard the UVSS had won the right to a referendum on CFS membership back in February, I knew it would be a gongshow. I knew the CFS would bombard UVic campus with aggressive campaigners from across the country. I knew the CFS would use every dirty campaign tactic it could think of. I knew it would be a frustrating experience.

Yet despite this, the level of gongshow that the CFS membership referendum has brought to campus has managed to far exceed my expectations. In comparison, UVSS elections look like very tame and civil experiences.

There are two root causes of the chaos that is a CFS membership referendum:

The CFS fee is worth $240 000/year to the organization. It has a very real incentive to do everything it can to continue receiving this money
The Referendum Oversight Committee system is a terrible way to run a referendum.

At times in this referendum there has a been a feeling that this is a wild wild west situation with no rules to keep referendum sides in line. Unapproved and unstamped materials have been given out and posted constantly. There has been flagrant disregard for the rules and policies of the University of Victoria. There has been nothing to regulate the actions of campaigners towards UVic students.

In short, for much of the campaign, it has been shown that the Referendum Oversight Committee has little ability to have real "oversight" of the referendum.

Then today, the penalties finally came. Engineers against the CFS does a good job outlining the situation.

On Monday morning an orange poster against the CFS was posted around campus. This poster contained language that had been deemed not allowable for this campaign. This poster was discovered by the Referendum Oversight Committee early that morning. Noone campaigning for the 'No' side had been aware that such posters existed, let alone had anything to do with their creation or posting. It should be noted that no 'No' side campaign material in this campaign has been orange. All but one poster have been red in colour. I would not be surprised if this was a case of 'Yes' side supporters planting these materials.

Effectively, the Referendum Oversight Committee has ruled that all material supporting a given referendum side will be treated as if it was created and distributed by that side. As a result of this decision, the 'No' side received a strong penalty early today. Seventy-five posters and an official Facebook event have been forced to come down. The 'No' side will also not be able to table on Thursday until noon.

Meanwhile, the 'Yes' campaign has committed an equal number, if not more infractions during this campaign. Posters and the 'Yes' website have been posted without approval. Campaign materials have used unapproved language. Materials have been unstamped. The 'Yes' side has also solicited on campus, violating University rules. For all this, the 'Yes' side has received a few minor penalties.

I have argued previously that the Referendum Oversight Committee system is an ineffective system for administering referendums like this. It is only continuing to reinforce this point.

Thursday is the last day of the CFS referendum campaign. I can only imagine the drama this day will bring.

CFS referendum Voting and Debate

2011-03-29T00:17:00.004-07:00

Sixteen months after the effort to obtain a CFS membership referendum began, the UVSS is now entering the home stretch of the referendum process. Beginning at 9AM on Tuesday morning, polls for the referendum will be open around campus. The polling schedule for the referendum is as follows:

Clearihue 9AM-8PM (Tuesday-Thursday)
Library 9AM-8PM (Tuesday-Thursday)
MacLaurin 9AM-7PM (Tuesday-Thursday)
SSM 9AM-7PM (Tuesday-Thursday)
SUB 9AM-7PM (Tuesday-Thursday)

Engineering Buildings 2PM-7PM (Tuesday/Thursday)
Engineering Buildings 9AM-2PM (Wednesday)
Wright Centre 9AM-2PM (Tuesday/Thursday)
Wright Centre 2PM-7PM (Wednesday)

As you will notice, while there are fewer polling stations than during a regular UVSS election, yet many polls will be open several hours longer than usual. You will also note that polling ends on Thursday in this referendum rather than a Friday.

If you've made up your mind in this referendum, I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes and vote.

If you are still undecided, former Chairperson candidate Ryan Levis will be hosting a debate between the 'Yes' and the 'No' side on Tuesday afternoon. It is scheduled to take place in the SUB Upper Lounge from 4-6PM. Here is the facebook event for this debate: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=210184602341861

The debate will feature eight representatives from the 'Yes' side and eight representatives from the 'No' side.
As the 'No' side has emphasized all referendum, there will be little representation of UVic students on the 'Yes' side:

'Yes' side:
1. Shamus Reid - Former UVic student
2. Jeremy Salter - Never a UVic student
3. Dave Molenhuis - Never a UVic student
4. Veronica Harrison - Current UVic student
5. Roxanne Dubois - Never a UVic student
6. Zach Crispin - Never a UVic student
7. Michael Olson - Never a UVic student
8. Nimmi Takkar - Never a UVic student

'No' side:
1. Karina Sangha - Current UVic student
2. Jose Barrios - Current UVic student
3. Taylor Entz - Current UVic student
4. Paul Donaldson - Current UVic student
5. Kelsey Hannan - Current UVic student
6. David Foster - Current UVic student
7. Chris Bordeleau - Current UVic student
8. Angela Lorenz - Current UVic student

For those that cannot attend the debate, there will likely be a recording made of it. I will also be in attendance to create a post of the event afterward.

"The CFS is broken": A follow up (part 4)

2011-03-26T16:35:00.009-07:00

This is the final installment of the series of follow ups to "The CFS is broken and can’t be fixed." In reality though, this particular follow up is not directly related to information found in this article, but fits with the theme of the CFS being broken.

This post focuses on questionable financial dealings involving the CFS.

Here are the others:

"The CFS is broken and can't be fixed"
Influencing internal politics (follow up post part 1)
Undemocratic structure (follow up post part 2)
General Meeting Experience (follow up post part 3)

CFS's Finances

The infographic created by the CFS claims that the CFS is both democratic and has spends student money appropriately. I have already addressed the undemocratic structure of the CFS in follow ups part 2 and part 3. The CFS is correct that it has passed every audit but all an audit means is that the financial statements of the CFS are accurate, not that the money is going towards the right causes.

The most recent financial statements I can find online are the CFS-national statements from 2008.

When looking at the CFS's expenses from 2008, you will note that only $400 000 of $2.8 million in expenses actually make it towards campaigning, which is supposedly the primary purpose of the Canadian Federation of Students. This works out to 14.3% of the organizations expenses.

Meanwhile, the two four day General Meetings each year cost the CFS a whopping $236 000, Office rent and buildings cost $211 000, Office and Administration cost $190 000, National Executive salaries cost $138 000 and National Executive meetings cost $43 000. These huge overhead expenses that keep the CFS running come to $818 000, more than double the amount of money that actually makes it to the CFS's campaigns. It seems clear that the CFS structure is bloated and flawed when such little money actually gets used on campaigns.

You will also notice the line item "Professional fees." The majority of this $240 000 expense is likely used towards lawyers. The CFS has a history of getting into litigation with its member student societies. Just to have this referendum on CFS membership the UVSS and the CFS met in court twice.

Questionable CFS Finances

The official finances of the CFS are only half the story. The other half is its less than official dealings involving money. One of the most well known of these examples occurred at Douglas College in the mid 2000s. Global BC News did a three part series on this however all three of these have been recently removed Daily Motion. Fortunately one of them was uploaded by someone else: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfdr4u_cfs-corruption_news. (Update: Someone who has the three videos saved to their computer has offered to upload them again...stay tuned)

Two key facts to know about this case:

CFS-Services loaned 416 000 dollars to the Douglas College Student Union to cover a shortfall in the health and dental insurance premium due to the Student Union purchase of the building they couldn’t afford. This loan was unsecured and without the approval of the CFS National Executive
CFS-BC loaned another 200 000 dollars to the Douglas College Student Union, also unsecured (until a year later) and without Executive authorization, despite Douglas College being in violation of the College and Institution Act

Think this sort of dealing was a one time event? Something similar occurred at UVic as well. In 2009 it was discovered that the UVSS received what was effectively a secret loan involving the CFS's health plan back in the early 2000s. This information became public in 2010. David Foster outlined what occurred in a series of three posts:

Search around the internet for other instances of questionable financial actions taken by this organization. You may be surprised by what you find.

"The CFS is broken": A follow up (part 3)

2011-03-26T15:56:00.023-07:00

This is the third follow up post to "The CFS is broken and can't be fixed." It will focus on the experience of delegates who are critical of the CFS that are chosen to attend CFS General Meetings.

Here are the others:

"The CFS is broken and can't be fixed"
Influencing internal politics (follow up post part 1)
Undemocratic structure (follow up post part 2)
CFS's questionable finances (follow up post part 4)

General Meeting Experience

“Each of us has been asked by CFS staff to spy on delegates with known or suspected anti-CFS views. We have been asked to report back about who the suspect person was talking to and what they were saying. New delegates are often roomed with CFS loyalists in order to control their sphere of inﬂuence. We have been those roommates.”

You may read Gunn, McArthy and Irani’s description of CFS General Meetings and be skeptical but the experience of actual delegates confirms this.

The best example of this is the experience of Kelsey Hannan as a delegate in May 2010. Hannan was selected to attend the CFS 2010 Summer General Meeting as a delegate who was clearly critical of the organization. Hannan had participated in collecting signatures as part of the deferedation petition in October 2009.

Hannan’s experience played out quite similar to the description in Gunn, McArthy and Irani’s article. The only exception was he was able to be roomed with James Coccola since Coccola had attended an AGM before. Hannan describes how CFS loyalists and staffers were always nearby during the entire weekend. They would walk up to him whenever he attempted have a private conversation with another delegate and strike up a conversation with him. In Hannan ’s view, these were clear attempts to keep an eye on what he was up to and limit his ability to interact with other delegates.

While at the General Meeting, Hannan distributed a report by Titus Gregory titled “Solidarity for their own good.” This report is a thorough evaluation of the CFS as an organization and is quite critical in its conclusion. After giving out a few copies, Hannan was approached by CFS staff member Lucy Watson (the same Lucy Watson sitting on UVic's Referendum Oversight Committee) who gave Hannan a cease and desist order to stop giving out this report as well as instructing him to collect any copies he had already given out.

In short, this organization not a fan of those with critical voices. They undertake various tactics like these to ensure critical views do not spread amongst delegates.

"The CFS is broken": A follow up (part 2)

2011-03-26T15:29:00.002-07:00

This is the second follow up post to "The CFS is broken and can't be fixed." It will focus of the undemocratic structure of the CFS which serves to limit the ability of crtical members to make meaningful changes to the organization.

Here are the others:

"The CFS is broken and can't be fixed"
Influencing internal politics (follow up post part 1)
General Meeting experience (follow up post part 3)
CFS's questionable finances (follow up post part 4)

Undemocratic structure

On Friday UVic Underground posted a rather deceptive infographic attempting to show that the CFS has a very democratic structure for its general meetings. The reality is that this graphic barely scratches the surface regarding the flaws and undemocratic nature of the CFS. Some in favour of CFS membership suggest that if the CFS is flawed, it can be fixed. Student unions have made very strong attempts to reform the CFS the past few years but the flawed structure prevents this from happening. The CFS is structured in such a way to weed out any dissessting or critical voices, as you will see.

First let’s look at how you get a motion on a CFS general meeting agenda. You as a UVic student and individual member of the CFS cannot submit a motion to the CFS. To get a motion on the CFS agenda, you must convince the UVSS board that it is a good idea and have them submit it on your behalf. This is the first way critical voices may be silenced.

Perhaps you have a receptive and critical UVSS board as this year’s is and they submit a motion to a CFS General meeting on your behalf. Maybe you also desire to attend the general meeting. The UVSS generally only sends about five or six delegates to CFS general meetings. One of these is a staff member and one is a recommendation of NSU. It is rare for non board members to be selected to attend AGMs as delegates. It is also uncommon for a delegate to be selected who is known to be critical of the CFS. As a result the majority of a delegation sent to an AGM will not be critical of the organization.

Maybe you wanted to just simply attend a General Meeting as an observer. This shouldn't be an issue since you are a member of the CFS, right? Wrong. David Foster has twice requested to attend CFS-BC General Meetings as an observer, but has been denied this right both times.

It is important to note that no matter how many delegates a student society sends to a CFS General Meeting, it only receives one vote on any given motion. As critical voices aren’t generally sent to AGMs in the first place, this vote will likely be to maintain the status quo. It is also notable to mention that regardless of whether a student society has 4000 or 40 000 members, they still only get one vote at a general meeting. In this manner, a handful of small student societies can have far more influence than a larger student society like the UVSS.

During the opening plenary of CFS meetings, it is determined which committees will address each motion. It is in these committees that motions are debated and then recommendations about these motions are made for the closing plenary.

Before committee meetings begin, delegates meet in a series of caucuses (such as BC caucus, Women’s caucus etc) to select delegates from the caucus to sit on committees. If a delegate is not voted onto a committee, they may not speak at it. Not surprisingly, delegates with critical views of the CFS are not elected to committees.

In some recent General Meetings, delegates from the UVSS have been blocked from selection to committees. Thus our delegates have not been allowed to speak in committees even when motions submitted by the UVSS are being debated. In this manner, the voices critical of the CFS are silenced in these committees and at General Meetings.

As Gunn, McArthy and Irani state: “The national and provincial General Meetings are tightly controlled. During debates many of the strongest speakers in support of motions are CFS-loyal staff – and not the elected representatives.”

The structure of the CFS is such that any effort to reform the organization requires students to jump through a number of hoops to achieve this. Along the way there are a number of roadblocks that can prevent this reform from happening whether at the level of their own student society or while attending a General Meeting.

By my count, there are at least five major roadblocks that an average member critical of the CFS must pass through in order to have their voice heard and achieve change at a CFS General Meeting.

Become a UVSS board member
Be selected as a delegate to a CFS AGM
Be selected by a caucus to represent that caucus in the applicable CFS committee
Convince the CFS committee that your idea would be a positive change for the CFS and have it recommend the motion for adoption by the committee.
Have the motion pass at the closing plenary of the General Meeting.

For most students with critical voices, merely succeeding at step one is a significant challenge. The UVSS board only has 16 elected positions. As you pass through the steps, the instances of succeeding become rarer and rarer. The CFS’s infographic brags that 93 motions were debated at General Meetings in 2010. A question to ask though is how many motions attempting meaningful reform of the organization actually pass? Next to none.

The CFS can claim that it is a democratic organization, however it is a very controlled form of democracy that uses a number of mechanisms to ensure critical voices are not heard. It is highly resistant to change resulting in the failure of a number of motions attempting to reform the organization failing in recent years.

As Gunn, McArthy and Irani assert: The CFS is broken and can’t be fixed.

"The CFS is broken": A follow up (part 1)

2011-03-26T15:07:00.003-07:00

The article written by three former CFS insiders emphasizes a side of the argument for leaving the CFS that has received only a small amount of attention during the first week of this CFS membership referendum. I however feel it is time for this side of the story to receive the attention it deserves.

In the first week of the CFS membership referendum, much of the campaigning from both sides has focus on the fee paid to the CFS and the lobbying and services students receive/don’t receive in return (depending on who you talk to.) Little has been said about the structural flaws and the influence that the CFS has on member student societies, yet this is my view is an even stronger reason for defederation.

This first follow up post shall focus on the CFS's influence on the internal politics of student societies.

Here are the others:

"The CFS is broken and can't be fixed"
Undemocratic structure (follow up post part 2)
General Meeting experience (follow up post part 3)
CFS's questionable finances (follow up post part 4)

Influencing UVSS politics

To make the claim that the CFS influences or interferes with the internal politics of its member student societies, such as the UVSS, is often something that is difficult to prove. Those helping candidates or receiving the help of the CFS are careful not to let this information get out.

As the Gunn, McAthy and Irani article declares, "The CFS BC provincial ofﬁce staff have participated in, directed and provided resources for students to get elected to their Boards...On CFS BC computers we have seen election campaign materials from many student unions (including UVic and UBC) dating back several years."

From my own personal experience, I have little doubt that the CFS has influenced UVSS elections in recent years. I can point to a handful of clues that when combined with the statements in the Gunn, McAthy and Irani article lead me to this conclusion"

Student politicians from CFS member schools that just so happen to transfer to UVic at opportune times

An opposing slate has a full set of professional looking banners ready to for the start of an election despite having not been seen on campus working on them in the week before the election.

Candidate posters that just seem to look a little too good

CFS campaigns and speakers that just so happen to come to campus during an election period

The incredible amount of foot dragging that occurred when it comes to fixing serious flaws in the UVSS electoral structure

Then in the past week, I began to receive a series of leaked emails that confirmed to me that CFS-BC does influence UVic politics:

From: Brodie Metcalfe
Date: Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 6:07 PM
Subject: BoD Platform final draft
To: Heather McKenzie

Hey Bears,

Here is your final draft of your platform. Have a look at it and let me know if all is cool. thanks

brodie.

From: Heather McKenzie
Date: Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 7:11 PM
Subject: Re: BoD Platform final draft
To: Brodie Metcalfe

Looks wonderful! You guys did some great work. Did Shamus help out as well?
I am cool with going ahead with this version.

bears. love.

hmac.
*****

This exchange between former Director of Services Heather McKenzie and former Director at Large Brodie Metcalfe indicates that “Shamus” was assisting in the writing of platforms in 2010. Shamus in this case is Shamus Reid who was Chairperson of CFS-BC at the time. Shamus has been on campus all week campaigning for the ‘Yes’ side in this referendum, as have Metcalfe and McKenzie.

Speaking of Shamus Reid..

From: gmanager@uvss.uvic.ca
To: shamusreid@hotmail.com
Subject:
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:13:11 -0800

The UVSS Operations Fund has not seen an increase since 1993. In that time, inflation has increased 33%. Other services that the UVSS relies upon have increased at an even more substantial rate. To provide just one specific example, in 1993 annual janitorial costs for the Student Union Building were $47,885. Last year, they were $134,390—nearly a 300% increase!
***This email continues for several more paragraphs. It is the draft wording of a 'Yes' side for a 2010 election referendum question.***

In this peculiar email, Marne Jensen, former General Manager of the SUB, is sending Shamus Reid the wording of the 'Yes' side for one of the referendum questions that occurred in 2010. It seems very strange for the General Manager of the SUB to be sending this to the Chairperson of CFS-BC, presumably for editing. That is, until you read the Gunn, McAthy and Irani article and know the clear consensus that Jensen was a staff member loyal to the CFS.

As more information on this topic comes forward, I will update this post.

Republication: "The CFS is broken and can’t be fixed"

2011-03-26T00:20:00.004-07:00

The following was first published in the March 17, 2008 edition of the SFU's student paper "The Peak." It is available online as part of a forty-eight page pdf, but I felt republishing it as its own text article would make it more accessible. This was written by three former CFS insiders who felt it was time to speak out about their experiences within the CFS. I have added my own emphasis in several sections.

I have also written four follow up posts based on this article:

Influencing internal politics (follow up post part 1)
Undemocratic structure (follow up post part 2)
General Meeting experience (follow up post part 3)
CFS's questionable finances (follow up post part 4)

The CFS is broken and can’t be fixed
by Jan Gunn, Karen McAthy, and Yasmin Irani, former CFS insiders who have chosen to speak out, years after their involvement.

The CFS is broken – badly - and it cannot be changed from the inside.

“Bad people don’t make a bad organization.” — that’s what we believed for a long time about the Canadian Federation of Students. The idea of a national student organization is a sound one. Of course we should coordinate a national lobbying strategy. Of course we should work in concert with students from all parts of Canada. The CFS, contrary to the opinions of some, cannot be reformed – it is too late.

What evidence do we have to make this claim? We are three women, now in our thirties, who are still (or once again) students. All of us have been, at one time or another, elected directors at the Simon Fraser Student Society, all of us have been involved in at least one other CFS afﬁliated college student association, and all of us have been members of the CFS BC executive committee. Our combined experience goes back to 1995. Simply put, we have been “CFS insiders.”

We don’t write this letter with clean hands either. We knowingly participated in manipulative, underhanded, and yes, sometimes corrupt dealings on behalf of the CFS within our own and other student unions. Our only excuse is youth and, at the time, a genuine belief in the purported goals of the CFS.

It is difficult to describe how profoundly bad the CFS can be without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. There is, however, a deﬁnite conspiracy within the CFS, and the fundamental problem begins with the long-serving staff. In fact, when we say CFS we mean mostly the staffers – certainly not the membership, or even most of the elected officers. The real objective of the CFS is to perpetuate security of employment for those staff. This is accomplished through maniacal and paranoid control over individual student unions (locals). The tool is progressive rhetoric combined with idealistic, itinerant activists. Young students who really want to make a change (ourselves included) are targeted and groomed for leadership positions within their Locals. Most are gone long before they begin to really feel the wrongness inherent in the CFS. Or they walk away in disgust.

The CFS doesn’t trust students to elect directors who will work constantly and at all times in the best interests of the CFS, so they regularly engage in campaigning for preferred candidates in internal student union elections. The CFS BC provincial ofﬁce staff have participated in, directed and provided resources for students to get elected to their Boards. We were there. We saw it happen. We participated in those campaigns. CFS staff designed campaign posters, used CFS photocopiers, and utilized paid staff time to ensure preferred candidates were elected. As strong CFS supporters we were given unrestricted access to the BC office. On CFS BC computers we have seen election campaign materials from many student unions (including UVic and UBC) dating back several years.

Support for candidates in elections ensures loyalty, which is then exploited in a number of ways. The most heinous of these are in staff hirings. Jobs at student union are used as a reward for loyalty to the CFS. Again, we know this because we participated in such hirings. We have taken orders from CFS headquarters (clarify – national or provincial) about who to hire or not to hire. Very recently a CFS staffer mistakenly released a conﬁdential document containing CFS plans for hirings at Douglas and other student unions (The Peak, issue 18, vol. 34, February 18, 2008). We were at CFS Provincial Ofﬁce when one soon-to-be SFSS staffer was having her resume padded. The resume had to be padded because the candidate did not have the necessary skills or experience for the job. However, for the CFS, competence/experience is secondary to unfailing loyalty.

CFS-loyal staff at student unions (especially colleges where students come and go quickly) regularly use their positions to manipulate the elected directors into enacting a pro-CFS agenda. At the Douglas Students’ Union, for example, a CFS-loyal staffer managed to embed language relating to the CFS into their Collective Agreement – a legally binding contract - the effect of which is to force the student union into sending staffers to national and provincial CFS general meetings. CFS-loyal staff are then able to control the votes of their student union local. These are considered “safe” locals by the CFS. And for the record, the SFSS is NOT a “safe” local within the CFS and no staff with a primary loyalty to the CFS are on the SFSS payroll.

The national and provincial General Meetings are tightly controlled. During debates many of the strongest speakers in support of motions are CFS-loyal staff – and not the elected representatives. This lack of trust and paranoid desire to control goes much deeper, though. Each of us has been asked by CFS staff to spy on delegates with known or suspected anti-CFS views. We have been asked to report back about who the suspect person was talking to and what they were saying. New delegates are often roomed with CFS loyalists in order to control their sphere of inﬂuence. We have been those roommates.

Elections for national and provincial at-large CFS ofﬁcers are precisely coordinated affairs at the General Meetings. The resumes of “chosen” candidates are often prepared by CFS staff. Candidates are assisted with their candidacy statements and prepped for debates by CFS staff. In our collective history (over 25 GMs between us) we have never seen a candidate elected who wasn’t the predetermined choice of the CFS. These newly elected national and provincial ofﬁcers are in the best position to effect changes from the inside – they are after all, now the employer. However, they are also now making upwards of $30,000.00 a year, more money than they’ve probably ever made. And they owe it all to the CFS staff who got them elected in the ﬁrst place. How can we then expect these people to effectively manage CFS staff?

We have chosen not to name individual staff or directors because the CFS is a very litigious organization. They regularly threaten lawsuits against student newspapers (as The Peak well knows) and vocal opponents (or a loyal follower does it by proxy). The SFSS is currently in receipt of a vaguely threatening letter from CFS lawyers relating to the upcoming defederation referendum. The CFS has almost inexplicably sought a court injunction to postpone the Kwantlen Students’ Association defederation referendum.

The CFS does not have a monopoly on solidarity. It is possible to work with other non-CFS student unions on uniﬁed campaigns and lobbying. There are many, many people who have worked with the CFS and left the organization because of its toxic culture. Bad people are making the organization bad. We encourage the current young supporters of the CFS to look up former CFS chairs, past SFSS directors, or people in progressive politics (not just the Young New Democrats) and have private conversations with them about the CFS. Our experience says you will discover a different, and rather negative take on how the CFS does business.

CFS alternative: The BC Lobby Group

2011-03-24T01:12:00.025-07:00

One of the main arguments 'Yes' side supporters have made during this CFS membership referendum is that the UVSS needs to remain a member of the CFS in order to keep the "student movement" strong. They argue that the voice of UVic students cannot be heard during lobbying and campaigns without membership in the CFS. The reality is that this is far from true.

If students feel that it is essential that the UVSS be part of a national student organization, there is an alternative called CASA (Canadian Alliance of Student Associations). While some people seem to like the idea of joining CASA as an alternative to the CFS, my view is that while an improvement over the CFS but still has some of the same flaws.

What is a interesting, exciting and soon to be viable alternative to the CFS provincially is an upstart BC Lobby Group which appears to not yet have a formal name other than "BC Lobby Group." One of the driving forces behind making this group a reality is UBC's VP External Jeremy McElroy. In the past month, BCIT voted to join this group. According to BCIT minutes from February 7, UBC, BCIT, Kwantlen and UFV will likely be the founding members of this group. These four schools alone represent 86 000 students in British Columbia. The addition of UVic to this group would boost this number above 100 000 students.

The BC Lobby Group certainly has potential to become a powerful lobbying effort for Post-Secondary Education in British Colbumia.While a handful of formalities must occur before this potential is reached, a lot of solid groundwork for the initiative has already been laid such as draft bylaws and endorsements for student unions to become members.

When discussing lobbying on educational issues it is important to note that education is a Provincial jurisdiction under the Canadian constitution. The majority of decisions that are made that affect post-secondary students are made by Provincial governments, not in Ottawa. For this reason, it only makes sense that we give stronger focus to provincial lobbying like that the BC Lobby Group would bring. Leaving the CFS does not mean an end to working together with other schools on educational issues, it means doing so in a more grassroots manner with student money better spent.

Ryan Levis offered job as campaigner in CFS referendum

2011-03-23T21:37:00.002-07:00

Although it has been known through word of mouth for a couple days, it can now be confirmed that former UVSS Chairperson candidate Ryan Levis was approached to become a paid campaigner for the 'Yes' side in the CFS membership referendum.

It is unclear who specifically approached Levis to campaign for the 'Yes' side or where exactly this money would come from.

Ryan Levis has also revealed that he offered to book the 'Yes' side tables in the SUB through his UVSS club, the Big Ideas club. Doing this violates the UVSS clubs booking policy and resulted in the enforcement of the policy to the dismay of the 'Yes' side. Levis was unaware of this policy when he booked the tables.

Levis described the job offer to campaign for the 'Yes' side as a "wafie offer." He suggested that the offer was intended to determine how interested he was in campaigning for the 'Yes' side before specific details would be worked out. Levis stated that the wage he was offered was between $10-11 an hour, which he felt was a pretty small wage. Levis speculated, "they were all thinking that I was very enthusiastic for the job."

Alas, Ryan Levis has had enough campaigning for one semester and declined the offer to be a paid campaigner for the 'Yes' side.

This raises the obvious question of how many other UVic students have been approached to become paid campaigners for the 'Yes' side in this referendum. This is in addition to dozens of off campus campaigners that are campaigning for the 'Yes' side. A number of these are executives from student unions outside of British Columbia.

The absurdity of the Referendum Oversight Committee system

2011-03-22T21:30:00.002-07:00

The referendum on CFS membership has many fundamental differences from other referendums and elections at UVic. The most important difference being that the entire process is overseen by the Referendum Oversight Committee (ROC), as required under CFS bylaws. There is no Chief Electoral Officer or similar entities in this referendum. Thus, all decisions regarding the referendum are made through the ROC.

Who is the ROC? It consists of two members representing the UVSS and two members representing the CFS. James Coccola and Rajpreet Sall are the UVSS representatives while CFS staffers Lucy Watson and Brent Farrington are representing the CFS. With a two versus two format, it is easy for the committee to become deadlocked in decision making.

One important aspect of the committee format is that everything that is posted officially by either side of the referendum must have its exact wording approved by the ROC. If any fault can be found with a statement, it will be rejected by the committee. Even seemingly simple and straightforward claims have been rejected by the ROC for a variety of reasons.

One commenter in the 'No' side event suggested "I think posting WHY we should vote No actually on this event would be a good idea." The 'No' side has every intention of doing this once enough claims and phrases have been approved by the ROC. Roughly 75% of phrases and sentences submitted for approval have been rejected thus far.

Enjoy a sampling of rejected phrases and claims (several of these rulings refer to a referendum protocol which can be downloaded here):
Note: All caps represents the response from the ROC

*Note: I have been strongly encouraged to remove the list of phrases rejected or put on hold by the Referendum Oversight Committee out of fears this could jeopardize the validity of the referendum. Unfortunately you will have to take my word for it that the ROC has rejected or put on hold a number of seemingly straightforward claims based on technicalities.*

As most reasonable people can see, the use of a Referendum Oversight Committee with this structure is an absurd way to run a referendum. This system, required under CFS bylaws, makes it extremely difficult for campaigns to spread information and ensure students are informed about the issues.

While it is important to ensure that both sides are spreading factual information, the ROC system takes this to an extreme. It rejects claims based on technicalities and semantics or asks for documentation before a claim can be made. After two days of campaigning only a dozen relatively uninformative phrases have been approved. This is not conducive to having students make an informed decision come polling time.

Clubs booking policy: Be careful what you wish for

2011-03-22T18:42:00.006-07:00

In early January 2011 the unrecognized DKE fraternity chapter at UVic held a bottle drive to raise money for baby Molly Campbell. The bottle drive occurred in front of the SUB as this location was booked by a campus club who's purpose was unrelated to the fraternity chapter.

A number of students questioned why this was allowable and thus a proposed change to clubs policy was brought to the board. This policy would prevent outside organizations from booking tables and spaces and would also prevent clubs from booking events that did not have anything to do with the purpose of their club. This new policy passed without much issue.

Fast forward to the present and CFS Yes side representative Katy Carr has discovered the implications of this policy. It was also reposted by UVic Underground.Carr accuses the UVSS of being "evil, despicable and oppressive" for not allowing the CFS to book a table through a club unrelated to the CFS.

This appears to be a case of "be careful what you wish for." If we want to prevent one outside organisation from booking tables through unrelated clubs, then this policy should apply to all cases of this happening. That is exactly what has occurred here.

Billy Mays pitches for 'No' side!

2011-03-22T12:29:00.005-07:00

Popular media would have you believe that Billy Mays passed away on June 28, 2009. Evidence would show however that the spirit of Billy Mays remains strong on UVic campus. He graciously lent his talents to the UVic Lipdub effort (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpKMIGoUGe0&t=1m59s) and now he's back for the CFS membership referendum.

Last night I received the following email from Billy:

Hi Andrew,

Billy Mays here! I heard about your referendum at UVic on membership in the Canadian Federation of Students. I did a bunch of research (I have a lot of free time here in heaven) and came to the conclusion that UVic students would be better off ending their membership in the CFS. I like to think of politics as "selling" your ideas so to help out I filmed a video for you (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRK0OVIPKNs). I hope you like it!

Good luck,
Billy Mays

View in higher quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRK0OVIPKNs

ISIC card: The Reality

2011-03-22T01:06:00.005-07:00

Campaigners for the 'Yes' side in the CFS referendum often promote the ISIC card as a reason why UVic students should remain members of the Canadian Federation of Students.

Despite what students may be told, the ISIC card is one of the only benefits UVic students would no longer receive if CFS membership ended. UVic students would still have the option of participating in any campaigns of the CFS and make use of services like Travel Cuts.

The ISIC card stands for International Student Identity Card. It's primary purpose is to offer discounts to students at various businesses around the world.

As a CFS member, you can acquire an ISIC card for free. As a non-CFS member this would cost you $20. Have you received your ISIC card? Few students bother and there is a reason for this.

The ISIC Card. You probably don't have one.

Check out all the places you can save at in Victoria here.

You'll notice a grand total of four results. Three of these are online offers that appear to be available to all international ISIC members. These include:

Save $2.50 on a $5.00 tree to plant through WCAFI
Access to Microsoft Dreamspark software (which anyone with a UVic email address can access for free as well)
A free Skype voucher which expired over two months ago: "And hurry up, the offer lasts till December 31st, 2010."
A vague national discount offer for Travel Cuts.

UVic students will find that there are no useful discounts in the Greater Victoria area. In fact, for all of British Columbia the only other discount available outside of these four is a Vietnamese restaurant in Kelowna. For the rest of Canada, the only other discounts can be found at the Hard Rock Cafe's in Toronto and Montreal. That's it.

For whatever reason those who are in charge of the ISIC card have not bothered to obtain benefits for British Columbian or Canadian cardholders in quite some time. If the ISIC card was your reason for wanting to remain a CFS member, maybe it's time to reconsider.

Camosun to send CFS campaigners to UVic

2011-03-19T12:47:00.004-07:00

I recently received an email containing a series of tips from an individual using the alias "John Doe." The majority John's tips were already well known. This included the fact that Camosun has approved unlimited spending in the UVSS's CFS membership referendum. The email also shared the fact that Lucy Watson and Brent Farrington (who are CFS staffers rather than students) were members of the Referendum Oversight Committee.

The aspect of John Doe's email that was particularly interesting was proof that Camosun College Students Society, on behalf of the CFS, has been activity looking for Camosun students to come campaign in the UVSS referendum at UVic.

An email sent from Michel Turcotte, CCSS Director of Operations reads as follows:

From: Michel Turcotte
Date: March 5, 2011 12:57:35 PM PST
To: "ccss@yahoogroups.com"
Subject: [ccss] Help Needed for CFS Referendum

As most of you know, there is a Referendum on CFS membership at the University of Victoria in the last days of this month.

The CCSS has enforced the Pro CFS side.

The CFS would like to know who it can count on to help during campaigning. I have mentioned it to many of you, but I really need some commitments as the planning is really underway.

Please forward your availability in the last two weeks of March ASAP

This is really important in relation to the long term interests of our members.

Please reply asap as I need to let them know.

Thanks,

Michel

As Michel's email indicates, this request for campaigners from Camosun is originating from the CFS itself.

It was already well known that the CFS has flown in a few dozen campaigners to Victoria to campaign and plan this referendum. Now we learn it is also approaching other Victoria area locals to find campaigners. Furthermore, reliable sources have informed me that some UVic students have been approached by the CFS to become paid campaigners during the referendum.

This leads to the obvious question: Why does the CFS need to send outside campaigners to campus or resort to paying UVic students to campaign? If the CFS was worth staying in, shouldn't there be plenty of UVic students interested in campaigning for the 'Yes' side voluntarily? Instead, the CFS is resorting to these expensive means (using the fees you pay each semester) of acquiring campaigners.

CFS membership referendum: A preview

2011-03-17T00:18:00.002-07:00

Officially, the CFS membership referendum campaign begins March 21. In several ways however, it has already begun.

Campaigning in favour of various CFS campaigns does not count as campaigning for the membership referendum. As such, some CFS supporters having been obtaining contact information through promoting these campaigns in the fact few weeks. Undoubtedly this contact information will be used during the official referendum campaign. You may have also noticed yourself bombarded with Facebook ads for the Education is a Right campaign in recent weeks.

A UVSS club supporting the 'No' campaign has launched a Facebook page Wednesday and has put up posters around campus.

The official referendum campaign is expected to bring one of the most intense campaign periods the University of Victoria has ever seen. It will make UVSS elections look tame in comparison. As the Canadian Federation of Students has been involved in a number of membership referendums the past few years, it's tactics and strategy are now somewhat well known.

You can expect to see between thirty and fifty pro-CFS campaigners flown in to Victoria to campaign on behalf of the CFS in this referendum. As the CFS is a multi-million dollar a year corporation, if can afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars to fight this referendum. You can also expect to see an incredible amount of campaign material promoting both sides of this referendum.

You also may see a number of new online media appear during this campaign that promotes the CFS. Odds are these will pretend to be written by UVic students. The first such example is "CFSLover"/UVSSlover.

At stake? It depends on who you ask. The UVSS currently gives the CFS $240 000 a year in membership fees. The organization has strong incentive to campaign hard to continue receiving this fee. On the other side, those critical of the CFS feel this is about saving students money and obtaining autonomy for the UVSS amoung other issues.

This intense campaign will culminate in a vote being held March 29, 30, 31 at polling stations around campus.

My position: For roughly five years now, I have been of an opinion that strongly favours an ending of ties with the Canadian Federation of Students for a number of reasons. While I often make an honest attempt to show both sides of issues I simply am not capable of doing this when it comes to CFS membership. During the campaign this blog will provide various reasons for ending ties with the CFS. The views expressed on this blog will be the views of myself and should not be confused with those of the official 'No' campaign.

UVSS approves $750 for CFS referendum 'No' side

2011-03-16T23:34:00.001-07:00

At the March 14 board meeting, the UVSS board approved funding for the 'No' side of the CFS membership referendum. This followed an official endorsement of the 'No' side a the February 28 meeting.

The motion submitted for the agenda by Kelsey Hannan read as follows:

Whereas the CFS will be contributing high amounts of money to the yes side for the upcoming referendum on CFS membership, and;

Whereas it is in the best interest of students for there to be a fair referendum where both sides have equal opportunity to create materials and campaign, therefore;

BIRT $1000 be granted to both the yes and the no campaign sides for the upcoming referendum on CFS membership, which will be provided each side on the condition that they do not receive additional external funding from any third party, including the CFS and/or its affiliates

During the board meeting, however, this motion manged to go through at least a half dozen amendments to result in a motion that was satisfactory to a majority of board members.

In the end, the final version of the motion had the following provisions:

Only the 'No' would be offered funding.
The amount of money was reduced to $750.
The 'No' side can spend more than this amount if it chooses to.
All printing must be done as Zap (to lesson the real cost to the UVSS)
The 'No' side can access this money up front if a contract is signed
The money only applies to campaign materials approved by the Referendum Oversight Committee

There overall goal of this motion was to level the playing field for the election. The CFS will likely spend tens of thousands of dollars on the 'Yes' side of the campaign.

The vote on the final version of the motion was as follows:

In Favour: Barrios, Bowie, Hall, Hannan, McLeod, Sall, Sangha, Sutherland, Warner

Opposed: Humphries, Johnston, MacDonald, Maraani, Pal, Paterson

Abstained: Sherlock, Spilker

Warner censured, avoids request for resignation

2011-03-15T00:16:00.004-07:00

At the March 14 board meeting a motion on the agenda by Director of Academics Rajpreet Sall called for the loss of Director at Large Nathan Warner’s director privileges (free coffee, subsidized food) and well as censure him (express disapproval) for his multiple voting and stuffing of ballot boxes during the UVSS election.

Following the introduction of this motion, the UVSS board went in camera for about 45 minutes.

After leaving the in camera session, Director at Large Tara Paterson made a motion that added an extra clause that would have the UVSS board request the resignation of Nathan Warner. Paterson argued that a contract was signed at the beginning of the year in which Directors of the Board agreed to act in the best interest of the Society, and be stuffing ballot boxes Warner had violated this contract.

Nathan Warner countered this claim by arguing that his actions will prevent future ballot box stuffing and this he was acting in the best interest of the Society.

Following this, Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan attempted to have the vote on this motion postponed until after the Electoral Office report on the election could be submitted to the board. This will not occurred for quite some time. Hannan’s motivation for doing this was that it was only one business day following the end of the election. All the facts regarding the election have yet to be determined. Hannan also felt it was wise for the board to “cool our heads a bit” before voting on the matter.

Director at Large Jenn Bowie argued that Warner’s confession was enough reason to proceed with a vote on the matter. Ultimately Hannan’s effort to delay the vote on this matter failed.

At this point, Nathan Warner accepted that he “may go down looking like a complete asshole” yet reminded the board that the referendum on online voting was non-binding and asserted that there is now clear student support for the UVSS Webvote system.

Director at Large Rob Macdonald expressed his belief that the real intent of Warner was to demonstrate how smart he was. Macdonald proclaimed that the fact that there was a referendum on online voting was proof that the there was obvious support for this.

Macdonald likely was not being genuine in expressing his last point. At the board meeting where the referendum on online voting was approved, the motion was “omnibused” along with several others at once. Macdonald did not realize he was supporting the online voting referendum and went along with the omnibus. Late in that meeting, Macdonald realized his mistake and attempted to have the board reconsider accepting the referendum after a handful of board members had gone home. His effort was ultimately not successful.

An interesting revelation during the meeting came from Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan who was a scrutineer on election night. According to Hannan, the actions of Warner caused to ballot counters to be instructed to carefully remove ballots from ballots boxes instead dumping them out. This exposed that fact that several clumped referendum ballots were found to be folded together making it seem clear that Warner was not the only one submitting multiple ballots into ballot boxes. Hannan asserted that these measures would not have been taken without Warner’s actions.

During Warner’s next opportunity to speak, he discussed his views on morality. Warner cited the work of Philosopher Immanuel Kant to explain his actions. Warner sees his actions as morally correct according to Kant’s writings.

When the vote was held on whether or not Warner should be requested to resign from the UVSS board, it failed in a 6-6 tie. This was not a roll call vote so the way directors voted is not definitively known. From the votes I was able to note, it fell along Fuse/Students United and Renew lines as is not entirely surprising.

Immediately following this, a vote on Sall’s original motion to censure Warner and take away his director privileges was held. This motion passed with 11 in favour and 3 opposed.

Just when it appeared this matter had been resolved, Tara Paterson made a motion to reconsider it. Paterson had left to use the washroom just before the vote on requesting Warner’s resignation was held and had now returned. What followed was an over thirty minute delay to the meeting that involved several heated exchanges between board members.

At least ten minutes of this delay involved Chairperson James Coccola scanning Robert’s Rules of Order to determine how much support (2/3 majority) Paterson’s request would require.

By this point in the meeting, it was after 10:30PM and five Directors had gone home for various reasons. There was concern that this would impact the outcome of the motion if it was reconsidered.

Director of Services Remy Hall argued that if directors really want to express the will of the whole board, they would wait until the next meeting to do so. If board members went forward with a vote to rescind, they would be taking advantage of a temporary majority.

Director at Large Jenn Bowie argued that Directors have an obligation to stay for the whole meeting and expressed frustration with those who routinely left after the perceived important motions.

Nathan Warner then asserted that it was prejudicial to request who resign from the board in an amendment made at this meeting with no warning.

At this point, Chairperson James Coccola made the board take a 30 second time out in order to calm the mood and regain order in the meeting.

When the vote on Paterson’s request for reconsideration occurred, it was 9-5 in favour. As a 2/3 majority was required, this effort had failed.

Director at Large Nathan Warner had avoided being requested for his resignation yet was censured and had his Director privileges lost. In the grand scheme of things, the effect of these motions means very little, yet over two hours of the meeting was spent debating the board’s response to Nathan Warner’s ballot box stuffing.

UVSS Election aftermath: Warner's multiple voting

2011-03-12T22:56:00.005-08:00

"I believe what Warner has done is both noble and stupid."

This was the summary of Nathan Warner's ballot stuffing of fellow blogger Rich Merinsky. Frankly, I can't put it any better.

During last year's election, two time board member Dylan Hardie offered up his analysis of the candidates. He described Warner in the following way: "Nathan Warner is a vexing candidate. His youth and inexperience often showed this past year, although I do feel he learned a lot. I like him, but I don’t feel he thinks through the ramifications of his decisions before acting."

These words almost seem rather prophetic today.

There are numerous questions to be asked regarding this issue following the end of the election. Some of these questions pertain to facts while others are opinion based.

The first two questions that I am sure many would like to know are:

How many ballots spoiled by Nathan Warner were found by ballot counters?
Did any other member of the UVSS vote multiple times in this election?

The number of Warner's ballots that were found is currently not known.

In an email sent out to candidates on Friday morning, the Electoral Office stated: "we anticipated [multiple voting] might happen and already have a protocol in place whereby we are comparing the record of names of all voters against the students list. This should disclose any multiple voting by the same person."

The process determining if there were students voting multiple times was likely ongoing on Saturday there probably was not opportunity to check the names of students who voted on Friday prior to ballot counting beginning. Currently, some students and commenters are vilifying Warner for what he has done. For me, the true "villians" would be anyone trying to vote multiple times while actually intending to have their ballots count and affect the election outcome.

In the email from the electoral office, the electoral office informs candidates that the possibility that a student might create counterfeit ballots was unanticipated and thus no mechanism had been put in place to detect the fraudulent ballots created by Warner. A 2010 Deputy Electoral Officer, Tim Pritchard, commented yesterday that in last year's election all ballots had serial numbers. This was not the case this year, yet would have allowed the Electoral Office to catch Warner's counterfeit ballots.

Why were serial numbers not put on ballots this year?

The Electoral Office provides the answer of "to avoid [ballot counterfeiting] would cost significant extra costs of printing for a more secure ballot which would then take a significant amount of additional time to count."

To this I say "So what?" UVSS elections already cost in the neighbourhood of $30 000. They are now funded by a dedicated fee which can only be used for Elections and Referendums. Cost and time should not be an excuse for cutting corners on ballot security. Considering the previous year's ballots had serials, the extra effort should not be that much more.

I propose an alternate possibility regarding the choice to have ballots without serials: The list of eligible candidates was determined late in the campaign.

The UVSS ran the election under a brand new appeals system this year. Zoe Staples' nomination form was submitted after 4PM on February 7. This led to the use of the new appeals process which lasted well into the campaign period.

Staples appears in the Martlet insert and participated in the All Candidates Forum on March 2. It was not until after the first week of the campaign that she was officially an ineligible candidate.

Perhaps the Electoral Office held off printing the ballots for the election until after the candidates were finalized. This would indicate that the office only had a few days to prepare ballots. This may have made serialized ballots not feasible.

Another question readers are surely asking is: What are the consequences for Nathan Warner?

The answer to this question is partially known. The UVSS board meets on March 14. On the agenda of this meeting there is a motion submitted by Director of Academics Rajpreet Sall calling for Warner to be censured as well as the loss of his Director privileges. In layman's terms this means the board tells Warner that it disapproves of what he did and he loses the ability to drink free coffee or get subsidized meals. Not really much of a consequence overall, but sends a clear message.

There could however be further consequences. When asking Chairperson James Coccola about this yesterday, he stated that he simply could not talk about it. An anonymous commenter has made the claim that the electoral office has discussed criminal charges.

This of course leads to: What should the consequences be for Nathan Warner?

You will get a wide variety of answers if you poll students. Opinion in the comments on my posts appears quite divided.

I do however believe there is at least some double standard going on and agree with the following comment:
"When Shawn Slavin did it, he was lauded for his noble concern for the integrity of the democratic process. Now when Nathan does it, he is called a corrupt bastard?!

Double standard anyone? For christ's sake, Shawn Slavin was hired as a CEO in fall 2010 after he did his ballot shenanigans."

This also reminded me of the following facts: Shawn Slavin was a candidate during last year's election. He also assisted the Renew slate during that election in the creation of their campaign materials.

By using a second sticker to receive a second ballot in last year's election Slavin did commit a fraud. Yet, the reaction to the two events has quite different.

It would appear that the fact that Warner

Is a sitting board member
Actually put his ballots in the ballot box
Created counterfeit ballots
Did so when online voting was a referendum question

is playing a role for those having negative opinions of what he did.

On the other hand the fact that Warner

went to the Electoral Office to be up front about what he did
claims to have spoiled every ballot
had good intentions in mind
does not appear to have influenced the election results

Are factors that should work in Warner's favour. For me, the last point is perhaps most important when it comes to determining to what extent he should face negative consequences.

Which leads to...Are the election result valid?

I am thankful that the Unofficial results of the UVSS election have all the Executive candidates winning by at least 450 votes each. In my view, we can trust that the rightful candidates have been elected. I would be surprised if any current board members attempted to declare the results invalid.

This of course assumes that the Electoral Office does not find any further cases of multiple voting or ballot box stuffing.

So, will elections be held online next year?

The results of the referendum question on online voting would indicate that the answer is a clear yes. 81.1% of voters indicated support for online voting. It is important to note that this referendum is non-binding and is left up to the next board for interpretation.

As several members of the next board rejected the motion in January to hold votes on UVic's Webvote system, it would seem likely that a different system of online voting will be pursued instead.

What about the CFS Referendum?

In two weeks time, the UVSS will be voting in a referendum on CFS membership. This will be a very competitive referendum. You may be wondering if the referendum will be run under the same voting system and be at risk for students voting multiple times.

According to the CFS bylaws, the referendum vote cannot be held online and thus must be done with paper ballots. Chairperson James Coccola has indicated that the Referendum Oversight Committee foresaw the need to create a more secure and reliable paper ballot system and has been working on doing so. Progress on this continues and the improved system will be ready in time for the referendum.

How to stuff a UVSS ballot box 102: Being undetected

It should be noted that it was possible to stuff a ballot box in this UVSS election in a completely undetectable manner. Warner committed his ballot box stuffing by acting alone, however if he had involved trusted friends the mechanism put in place to catch multiple voting would easily be beaten.

In this scenerio, Warner only votes once and keeps his real ballot like actually occurred. He also creates counterfeit ballots in Microsoft Word as he did before. What Warner would do differently is not vote again, but to instead give counterfeit ballots to students who have not voted yet.

In this manner, numerous cases of ballot stuffing can occur with the Electoral Office having no way of knowing who had committed the acts.

UVSS Elections results, analysis and aftermath

2011-03-12T21:14:00.008-08:00

The unofficial UVSS election and referendum results are in. You can view the detailed results here.

There are roughly 40-50 coop and voucher ballots outstanding from this election. This should not affect the results significantly as the only possible change may be one change in terms of elected directors at large.

As it stands right now, the results are

UVSS

Chairperson
Tara Paterson, Fuse: 1196 (Elected)
Ryan Levis, Independent: 738
Rachel Chapman, Renew: 656

Director of Finance and Operations
Dylan Sherlock, Fuse: 1536 (Elected)
Desi Brisbin, Renew: 970

Director of Student Affairs
Jenn Bowie, Fuse: 1459 (Elected)
Lauren Petersen, Renew: 977

Director of Events
Remy Hall, Independent (Elected)
Approve: 2021
Disapprove: 396

Director of External Relations
Jaraad Marani, Fuse: 1588 (Elected)
Roy Nam, Renew: 866

Directors-at-Large
Ariel Tseng, Fuse: 1359 (Elected)
Emily Rogers, Fuse: 1255 (Elected)
Hafeez Ali Dhalla, Fuse: 1148 (Elected)
Nadia Hamdon, Fuse: 1057 (Elected)
Charles Freund, Fuse: 1019 (Elected)
Lucia Orser, Fuse: 1014 (Elected)
Tessah Clark, Renew: 923 (Elected)
Allison Rhodes, Renew: 912 (Elected)
David Foster, Renew: 899 (Elected)
Chris Hackett, Renew: 889 (Elected)
Samantha Scott, Fuse: 889 (Elected)
Gabrielle Sutherland, Renew: 878
Sam Hagen, Renew: 783
Alec Hermannson, Renew: 641

As the difference between Gabrielle Sutherland and Samantha Scott/Chris Hackett is only 12 votes, it is very likely we will see a recount of the Director at Large ballots especially if voucher/coop ballots close this gap.

Referendum Results:

Athletics Fees
Yes: 1157
No: 1690 (Failed)

Community Garden
Yes: 1779 (Passed)
No: 1056

NSU
Yes: 1360
No: 1460 (Failed)

NSU - CPI
Yes: 1114
No: 1673 (Failed)

Online Voting
Yes: 2294 (Passed)
No: 534

Bottled Water
Yes: 2429 (Passed)
No: 412

Analysis and observations

Analysis

The results of this election make it clear that the stigma of membership in Greek Letter Organizations remains strong on this campus. Just one year ago, the existence of a new fraternity on this campus was barely on anyone’s radar. A year later, a slate with five members of GLOs was running in a UVSS election. If the election results are any indication, many students were wary of giving GLO members influence that comes with seats on the UVSS board. It is notable that David Foster, who has been heavily involved in the UVSS for three years now, is the only GLO member that was successfully elected.

Overall, I was not entirely surprised by the results. There were several indicators online that acted as clues to the impending outcome of this election. Note the following Facebook information:

148 individuals shared the Fuse website while a whopping 339 shared the Fuse campaign video. This is an indication that the Fuse message was being widely spread amoungst the student body and that students supported it enough to share it. Unfortunately typing Renew into Facebook does not provide equivalent information.

In many ways we are looking at the reverse of last year’s results. With eleven directors on a 21 person UVSS board, the Fuse slate should have little difficulty implementing its platform goals. As I have long stated, it is rarely what is contained in election platforms that boards are remembered for. Some issues that will come up in the next year are completely unforeseeable right now and may come to define the 2011-12 UVSS board. Few could have foreseen Access UVic, Maclean’s “Too Asian?” article and Greek Letter Organizations as major issues a year ago.

It seems clear that the next board will have much more focus on activism. Some of the most divisive issues the UVSS board has taken on in the past few years have involved activism on issues that go far beyond post secondary issues. It will be interesting to see what issues this increased activism will revolve around.

Observations

In the brief time I’ve spent scanning the detailed spreadsheet of election and referendum results I have made a handful of observations.

The Chairperson race had 84 more votes cast than any of the other Executive races. This should not be surprising as it was also the only Executive race with three candidates. More options means more students can find a candidate they support.

As the Director of Events race was uncontested it was no surprise that it also had the least amount of votes cast in it. This race had 173 fewer votes cast than the Chairperson race.

Students generally cared more about referendums that would affect their wallet than the students who represent them. 2847 votes were cast in the Athletics fee referendum which would see an increase in the fee of $55 per semester. Compared this with the 2590 votes cast in the Chairperson race. This would indicate that 257 students showed up only to vote in the referendums and left their Executive ballots blank.

2151 undergrads signed the petition supporting the $55 athletics fee. Only 1157 students voted in favour of the fee in the referendum. Apparently a lot of the supporters did not bother to vote.

Rachel Chapman received zero votes in Cornett. I can’t remember a candidate being shut out of a ballot box before.

This is the best showing yet by Ryan Levis in a UVSS election. It was his fifth time as a candidate.

Ariel Tseng came first place in the Director at Large race by over 100 votes. It would appear posting videos of yourself singing is an effective campaign technique. I hope this catches on.

The most votes cast in any referendum was 2847. For UVSS elections this appears to be 2590. There is some debate over what the actual UVSS membership is. If the figure of 15 000 is used, UVSS turnout was 17.3% while the referendum turnout was 19.0%. This is a slight drop from 2010 but still a better turnout than most UVSS elections in the past decade.

With an unprecedented six referendum questions in addition to the UVSS elections, ballots counters had to sort and count approximately 22 000 pieces of paper. This is unprecedented number of ballots to count, yet ballot counting still ended a little earlier than last year. Well done ballot counters.

Aftermath

With the end of the UVSS elections attention in the UVSS now turns to the CFS membership referendum being held in two weeks time. Many candidates involved in the UVSS election will surely have involvement in this election. It will be interesting to see how much energy candidates have remaining following the election.

The drama surrounding Nathan Warner’s ballot stuffing is still ongoing and something I will address in a separate post.

In the final week of the campaign, a poster attacking members of the Renew slate for their membership in GLOs was posted around campus. While unauthorized posters are not exactly new in UVSS elections or referendums, what made this poster unique is the fact that it was stamped by the UVSS Info Booth. This means a record of who stamped it exists. These GLO members have expressed concern that the Info Booth would stamp posters that interfere with an election and may pursue identifying who was behind it and determine why it was allowed to be stamped.

UVSS Election Live Results

2011-03-11T18:35:00.000-08:00

For those of you not at ballot counting tonight, the UVSS is doing live updating of results this year.

https://spreadsheets1.google.com/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0Aj9YYNscqHUNdDZrOVZfdHdWLXJwZWxWNEo5WV9aY2c&output=html

Refresh the page to see the latest results.

An open letter from Nathan Warner

2011-03-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

An open letter to members of the UVSS
By Nathan Warner

As many of you are aware I, Nathan Warner, am a current director at large for the University of Victoria Student Society. I have been on the board for two terms and I am just completing my second term and preparing to graduate from UVic. This past year on the board one issue that I have very strongly supported was to move elections to an online format. It is already done by the University Senate and board of governor elections and it would be very easy for us to join their system. This would save us money, save paper, and in my opinion be much more secure than our paper system. This was brought to the board of directors for the UVSS recently and was voted down by a small margin. Even after speaking out at the board meeting of our terrible ballot security and how I was aware of other people voting twice in elections in the past (I found out after the election results were final and it wouldn’t have changed anything anyways) I was disappointed with the response. The majority of the board seemed to not take the issue seriously. Everyone knew that in theory it was easy to cast fake ballots in the elections; however, the board seemed unwilling to take the most obvious step to solve this problem and move elections online.

This year I decided to do a sort of publicity stunt to prove the lack of security around our elections. On Wednesday March 9th I went to the Clearihue polling station and got a set of ballots. I filled in and submitted ballots for each referenda and for directors at large. I kept my ballot for executive positions. Later that afternoon I went to Monk Office on Fort St. and bought a pack of paper that matched the colour of the executive ballots. That night I made some photocopied ballots on the coloured paper. I also made my own ballots on Microsoft Word 2007. The ballots I made on my own are not perfect but I did only spend about 30 minutes making them. Also at first glance it is very difficult in my opinion to notice the difference between the two. I then took 20 ballots and cut them out and signed them with my signature to spoil them. I did not put any marks near the candidate boxes.

On Thursday March 10th I went to the SUB polling station in the late morning. I had changed the sticker on my student card with a new one so I could “vote” again. I took my pre-folded and pre-spoiled executive ballots and folded them in with some of the referenda ballots. I left all the referenda ballots, the director at large ballot, and the executive ballot blank. I put all 18 ballots (8 blank ballots from the poll sitters and 10 spoiled ballots of my own) into the ballot box. Later that night I did the same thing again at the Clearihue polling station.

That evening before leaving campus I finally decided to talk with someone about what I had done. I spoke with Jose and Kelsey and explained what happened. After all they are close friends. We talked with James and then I went immediately to the electoral office and spoke with all three deputy electoral officers. I explained everything to them as I have done above. I told them they would find my name twice in the register at Clearihue and once in the register at the SUB. I also told them they would find 20 executive ballots with my signature on them (10 in the SUB and 10 in Clearihue).

I want to be very clear about this last part. I cast one (1) ballot for each referenda and one (1) ballot for the directors at large. I cast twenty one (21) ballots for executive of which twenty (20) were spoiled with my signature.

I realize that I have broken society bylaws and I do not expect there to be no consequences for my actions. I carefully thought this out before hand and decided it was going to have the most effect. I apologize to our electoral office, they work very hard and no ballot system will ever be perfect. I am sorry for all the extra work and stress I have put on all of you. To members of the board, I will be at the board meeting on Monday to speak for my actions. Finally to members at large, I know that not everyone agree with what I have done but I hope everyone can see that I never had any intention of casting extra ballots for any candidate. I just wanted to prove a point and I believe I have done that. I encourage anyone who wants to talk with me about this please email me at nwarner@uvic.ca I will not respond to threatening or harassing messages.

Warner demonstrates need for online voting

2011-03-11T14:28:00.004-08:00

At the January 10 board meeting, the UVSS board was presented with a proposal that would see it use UVic’s Webvote system for this election period. During the debate, some board members pointed out that the paper ballot system that was currently in place was not secure. Last year Shawn Slavin demonstrated how easy it was for him to acquire a second ballot in that election.

Despite this fact, the board narrowly rejected the use of UVic’s Webvote system. You can read all about the arguments made both for and against this system here: http://uvssuncovered.blogspot.com/2011/01/board-rejects-online-voting.html

Following this, no attempts or initiatives were undertaken to make any improvements to the security of the paper ballot system. Board members that rejected online voting appeared content hold an election using a paper ballot system that they knew was easy to cast multiple ballots under.

Following this rejecting of using UVic’s Webvote system, Director at Large Nathan Warner was determined to demonstrate just how flawed the UVSS paper ballot system really is.

How to stuff a UVSS ballot box 101

Nathan Warner began to “lose” the sticker on his student card a few times a week in the lead up to the UVSS elections. The sticker on student cards is the method by which the current paper ballot system is supposed to ensure students only vote once.

In this election, poll sitters scratched off the letter “D” on the sticker to indicate the student had voted. By simply removing a scratched sticker and replacing it with a new one, a student can vote multiple times in an election. By the time the election occurred, Warner had acquired over a dozen of these stickers.

Four of the more than a dozen stickers Director at Large Nathan Warner stock piled in the lead up to the UVSS election.

Warner didn’t just duplicate the method Shawn Slavin used last election to vote multiple times; he went a step further.

When Warner went to cast his first set of ballots on Wednesday morning, he did not put all his ballots into the ballot box. Instead, he kept the Executive Directors ballot and walked away with it.

He took this ballot and proceeded to recreate the ballot in Microsoft Word. Within 20 minutes, he had created a ballot that was nearly identical to the real thing. Warner had little difficulty finding identical yellow paper to what the real ballot had been created with and printed out a number of copies. He then cut out these counterfeit ballots.

In just a matter of minutes, dozens of counterfeit UVSS ballots can be created. If placed amongst hundreds of legitimate ballots in a ballot box, no ballot counter or scrutineer would spot that these ballots were fake.

On Thursday Warner, voted three times at polling stations around campus. With each set of ballots he placed in a ballot box, he also included a few of his counterfeit ballots as well. While the electoral office likely could have been able to catch the fact that the number of ballots in the ballot box did not match the number cast at that polling station, there is no way to determine which particular ballots are the ones “stuffing” the ballot box, nor which candidates are receiving the extra votes.

It is important to note that Warner was out to make a point and had no intentions of affecting the results of the elections. Warner claims to have spoiled every one of his ballots (with the exception of the first legitimate set of ballots he cast on Wednesday morning) by writing his name on them.

On Thursday evening, Warner explained what he had done to the electoral office. One of his motivations for doing this was his concern that someone else could have done the same thing as himself, but with intent to influence the results of the election.

Conclusion

This demonstration by Nathan Warner makes it incredibly obvious that the UVSS needs to do away with paper ballots once and for all. In fact, it was incredibly obvious a year ago, if not sooner than that. Yesterday UVic Underground made a post titled “There’s good reason for the paper ballot.” No, there is absolutely no good reason.

For members of the UVSS board to allow this election to occur under a system they know is flawed is simply irresponsible. I strongly believe that board members voted on January 10 based on which system they felt gave themselves or those they supported the best chance to be successful in this election, not based on what was the most fair, secure and accessible system for the UVSS.

The UVSS first began investigating online voting in 2001 following the creation of UVic’s Webvote system. The UVic Webvote system has been used for a decade for voting in Senate and Board of Governor’s elections as well as over other smaller votes as UVic. During this time there have been no known instances of fraud with this system. Knowing the UVSS was considering the use of its Webvote system, UVic had a third party conduct a security audit to confirm the Webvote system is secure.

The recent push to move the UVSS elections online has been occurring since at least 2009. Unfortunately foot dragging by board members, resistance to change and conflicts of interest have prevented the system from being implemented thus far. Hopefully the actions of Nathan Warner can be the catalyst to ensure UVSS elections finally move online for 2012.

When the results become known this evening, I can only hope that there is no evidence of multiple voting and ballot box stuffing beyond that done by Nathan Warner and for there to be significant margins separating candidates. As it only takes a couple of extra ballots to change the results of some races, it would be extremely unfortunately for the UVSS to find itself in yet another election controversy.

If and when the actual number of ballots spoiled by Nathan Warner is known, this post will be updated.

Sustainability?

2011-03-10T11:45:00.000-08:00

Since the 2007 election, "Sustainability" has become one of the key buzzwords in UVSS elections. In a letter in the current Martlet, UVic student Matt Loewen makes the claim that Renew's sustainability platform is greenwashing while Fuse's is genuine. The reality, however, is that as long as Sustainability has been a UVSS election buzzword, it has been far more about appearing "green" than actually being green. I can count on one hand the number of board members that actually walked the walk on sustainability.

I ask Mr. Loewen, if his slate of choice is so genuinely caring of the environment, why are their Senate posters being disposed of in bins intended for landfill waste, rather than being recycled?

Platform Analysis and Endorsements

2011-03-09T00:26:00.004-08:00

For several months now, I have pondered what I will say about the candidates during the election. Who deserves to serve on the UVSS board? Who has values and vision I agree with? Who is being genuine? Who do I endorse? Who do I oppose?

These are all questions I have asked myself on numerous occasions and on the eve of the polls opening, I have made my decisions. I have closely followed the UVSS for over five years and have a thorough understanding of the issues that have affected the organization over this period of time. I hope my insights into the candidates and their platforms can help voters make an informed decision.

As I identified a few weeks ago, both slates have platform that follow the same three board themes. These relate to addressing debt, improving the campus community, working towards improved sustainability. In some ways this overlap is helpful as it makes the platforms easier to compare

Addressing debt

Renew’s promises

Reduce UVSS debt through financial planning and investments
Reopen Vertigo as a source of revenue and entertainment
Change UVSS management to maximize efficiency, minimize bureaucracy
Create an integrated food card for on-campus food services
Create more bursary programs
Lobby for lower student loan rates and reduce debt
Reduce Health and Dental plan administration fee by $20 within 2 years
Save students $240 000 annually by cutting ties with the CFS
Better cash flow and investment practices for the SUB
Establish long term financial planning
Reform SUB business operations
Provide one time opt out of the Health and Dental plans
Create a UVSS emergency financial aid program

Fuse’s promises

Promote SUB businesses beyond campus
Increase dental coverage
Make health plan opt outs easier
Lobby to reduce fees and student debt
Fair indigenous student funding
See affordable housing increased
Lobby to lower interest rates on student loans and creating up front grants
Create a long term financial plan
Additional funding for the food bank
Lobby to reduce coop fees
Reduce one-time use textbooks

Reaction: Both these lists show that the slates have a wide vision when it comes to debt. Some of these promises focus on the UVSS’s current debt while others focus individual student debt. There are quite a few promises that both slates agree on.

Both appear to agree that a long term financial plan is necessary for the SUB. The Renew promises relating to this do appear to be more specific about what this entails.

Both slates mention the UVSS’s Health and Dental plans but address them in different ways. The Renew slate is promising to reduce the administration fee on the plans by $20 over the next two years. Those who followed this blog last Summer will note that I was strongly against this inflated fee at the time and thus strongly agree with this promise. The Renew slate is promising a one-time opt out from the plans instead of having to do it every year, while Fuse wants to make this process easier but still require it to be done yearly. The Fuse slate is promising to increase Dental coverage. The problem with this promise is that the UVSS has signed a three year contract with StudentCare, locking in our premiums, making it highly unlikely that this promise will be fulfilled anytime in the next two years.

Both slates support comprehensive approaches to reducing student debt from reduction loan interest rates, up front grants, more bursaries and reducing tuition and coops fees. Overall promises of this nature are difficult to follow through as the decisions that affect these issues are not made by the UVSS. The UVSS can make its best effort as lobbying on these issues, but this does not ensure success.

On the other hand, I am pleased to see promises on things that the UVSS does have a say in. Last year I advocated for more Food bank funding and it is nice to see the Fuse slate include this promise. I also particularly like Renew’s idea to create an emergency financial aid program.

Renew places the desire to leave the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) in this section of the platform however I will address it later.

Campus community

Renew’s promises

Hold a Frosh week for all students
Reform the board structure to better represent all students
Create more study areas on campus
More late night Access to food services
Hold Vikes Athletics events
Use student cards as SUB food cards
Lobby for designated student use land
Make the UVSS a welcoming place for all students
Reopen Vertigo as a source of entertainment and revenue

Fuses’s promises

Support advocacy groups, clubs and course unions through collaborative activities
Organize events, including bands, comedians, panels and Vikes events
Expand services like free Yoga and the Food Bank
Negotiate a fair and equitable collective agreement
Create discounts for students at local businesses
Updated resource materials for student groups
Fund cooperative projects between student groups
Dedicated buses for early morning hours
Work with Reslife to ensure residents are included in campus life
Promote student involvement in the UVSS
Provide affordable, diverse and health food options on campus
Create a safer campus community
A better academic advising system

Reaction: Once again, we see several promises that appear in the platforms of both slates. Both slates want to see more events on campus in the coming year and make mention of involving the Vikes. It seems slightly odd that both slates would promise this, yet not run any candidate for the Director of Events position. Furthermore several incumbent candidates leave me seriously questioning if they are truly genuine in making this promise.

In his platform from 2010 Dylan Sherlock (Fuse) promised to “expand the UVSS’s roster of special events.” Meanwhile Jenn Bowie (Fuse) promised “more on-campus events including events with the Vikes.” In addition Tara Paterson (Fuse) promised “hosting high-profile speakers and musical acts.” In reality, however, current Director of Services Remy Hall ended up cancelling Special Events meetings because board members were not attending these meetings.

The Renew promise to lobby for designated student use land is one that has caught my attention. What would this land be used for? Who decides this?

It is nice to see Fuse acknowledge the fact that the SUB Union’s CBA expires at the end of this semester. The memory of the 2008 SUB strike is still strong for me and other students and the UVSS definitely does not need a repeat of this.

I am very pleased to see Renew calling for reform of the board structure. I have advocated several times this year for the need to have Faculty representation in order to give all students on campus a voice on the UVSS board. This would be a significant positive improvement in terms of the UVSS representing all of its members.

Sustainability

Renew’s promises

Switch to online voting for UVSS elections
Provide land allocation for student projects
Lobby BC Transit for increased morning and late night bus service
Turn off the SUB lights at night
Renewable energy initiatives in the SUB
Dedicate funding to Spokes bicycle program
Implement a SUB sustainability plan
Phase out sale of bottled water in the SUB

Fuse’s promises

Increase local food options
Support campus community gardens
Implement SUB sustainability audit recommendations
Expand composting and recycling programs
Lobby transit to reduce pass-ups
End the sale of bottled water in the SUB
Introduce electronic voting

Reaction: Once again we are seeing a handful of similar ideas with a couple unique ideas that separate the slates. Both slates support a phase out of bottled water (although David Foster [Renew] specifically does not support this), improved bus service, implementing a SUB sustainability plan and make reference to voting.
It should be noted, however, that a sustainable paperless voting option (UVic Webvote) was put to the UVSS board in January so that it could be used for this UVSS election. All five incumbent board members on the Fuse slate voted against this at the time. This included Jenn Bowie who on a promise of implementing online elections last year.

The Fuse promise to increase the amount of local food in the SUB is somewhat questionable. Over the past five years, I have seen this appear as either a promise or a success of a slate. As a result, by this point I would suspect that any food in the SUB that could be acquired from local sources already is. I am however, quite pleased to see an expansion of composting and recycling programs on campus.

The Renew promise to turn off the lights in the SUB at night is one of the easiest and straightforward ways to improve the sustainability of the SUB. It was pointed out to me a few months back that the lights in the SUB are kept on all night long when no one is inside. This is an absurd practice in terms wasting money and unnecessary environmental impact.

The CFS
Whether candidates like it or not, I consider the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) an election issue. The UVSS has spent a lot of time, energy and money into going to court to win the right to a membership referendum this past year. It finally achieved this in February and a referendum will be held at the end of March.

I feel it is important to know where are student leaders stand on this issue as leaving the CFS would be a fundamental change to the UVSS. One slate has been clear on its stance from the beginning while the other is making every attempt to sit on the fence on this issue.

The Renew slate has made it clear based on its platform and in answering questions at the All Candidates Forum that it supports an ending of membership in the CFS.

The Fuse slate on the other hand makes no mention of the CFS in its platform and members chose not to express their stance on the topic at the All Candidates forum, with the exception of Jenn Bowie. At the February 28 board meeting the UVSS board was presented with a motion that would see it take the “No” (Defederation) side in the upcoming referendum. Dylan Sherlock opposed this while Tara Paterson, Jaraad Marani and Rob Macdonald abstained.

Furthermore, the Fuse slate made use of the CFS office in the SUB to organize for the election and store campaign materials. While I was hesitant to release this February 18 conversation with Jenn Bowie on this topic previously, I don’t want there to be any ambiguity about the fact that the slate used this office:

I have little doubt that Bowie personally favour defederation, but the views of the rest of her slate still remain unclear.

Conclusion
Overall, the slates in the UVSS election agree on a lot of issues and regardless of who students election as their representatives, I would expect these positive ideas and goals to be worked towards during the next board term.

Ultimately though there are differences and some of these differences are very clear.

A recent commenter identifying himself as “Matt” pretty much nailed the slate descriptions:

From a casual observers point of view these slates are very similar in their platforms, but very different in their membership composition, and their views on CFS membership. The real question is what is FUSE's policy on CFS membership? Dylan was the CFS rep but Jenn Bowie has said she wants out of the CFS. They seem to avoid the question, and if it's true that they're being organized by Veronica Harrison then they're likely to campaign on the YES side in the upcoming referendum.

This is just the impression I get, and an over-simplification but:

FUSE: A group of hipster activists attracted to trendy campaigns. Probably protested against the Olympics back when that was cool too. Experienced, but with radical politics and support banning those they oppose. CFS stance unknown (probably pro-CFS).

RENEW: A group of left-leaning sub dwellers combined with libertarian GLO members. These folks would probably disagree with YPY but would never ban anyone. Mostly inexperienced, but with more centrist policies. Anti-CFS.

Ultimately I conclude that the Renew platform contains more reasonable and achievable goals compared to Fuse’s. I especially like the specific ideas Finance candidate Desi Brisbin brings to the table to address the UVSS’s debt; an increasingly important issue as it nears $500 000.

Also, as someone who has advocated against CFS membership for almost five years now, I put a lot of importance ensuring candidates have a clear stance on this issue.

As result my ballot in the UVSS will contain votes for:

Chairperson: Rachel Chapman
Finance and Operations: Desi Brisbin
Student Affairs: Lauren Petersen
External Relations: Roy Nam

Directors at Large
Alec Hermansson, Allison Rhodes, David Foster, Gabrielle Sutherland, Sam Hagen, Tessah Clark, Chris Hacket

Of course this leaves some unfilled positions so I will also be voting for...
Events: Remy Hall

Remy is running unopposed. I also think he’s done a fine job this past year with limited help from board members.

Directors at Large
Hafeez Ali Dhalla, Charles Freund, Emily Rogers

All three of these choices come from either having personally met the candidates in the past year and seen their commitment to the UVSS, or have come highly regarded by others.

Renew campaign video launches, seems very familiar

2011-03-07T18:31:00.000-08:00

Late this afternoon the Renew slate launched what they have labeled as their "Classroom Speech" video.

Here it is:

Shortly into the video I realized, "I've heard this before."

Observe the following scene from High School Musical:

The music in these videos is very similar. Rather interesting.

Fuse official campaign video launches, seems very familiar

2011-03-05T20:38:00.002-08:00

Earlier this evening the Fuse slate launched what they have labeled as their "Official Campaign Video" (I guess Ariel Tseng singing doesn't count).

Here it is:

Shortly into the video I realized, "I've seen this before."

Observe the following video created by the BC NDP youth wing:

Right down to the music these videos are very similar. Rather interesting.

UVic Elections Explained

2011-03-05T14:24:00.002-08:00

The following post was originally posted by Senate candidate Carley Coccola. It does a great job explaining that you can vote in three different elections on March 9, 10, 11. In addition to the three elections described by Coccola, there are also six referendums students can vote in as well that I will address at the bottom. Here is Carley's post:

UVic Elections Explained
By Carley Coccola

The more I talk to individuals about the upcoming senate elections, the more I find people don’t often know there are more than one election going on during this period. In fact, there are technically 3 elections: the UVic Senate, the UVic Board of Governors, and the University of Victoria Student Society. As one of my campaign platforms (this year and last) has been to involve more students in political processes at UVic, I will attempt to explain all 3 (as briefly as possible) in the statements below:

Both Senate and Board of Governors are decision making bodies pertaining to the University while the University of Victoria Student Society (UVSS) is a completely separate entity. Elections to Board of Governors and to Senate are both online @ http://webvote.uvic.ca/, while UVSS takes places at polling stations on campus.

The Senate

The Senate is an important decision making body at UVic pertaining to Academics. The Senate is comprised of various standing committees related to academics such as: The Senate Committee on Academic Standards, The Senate Committee on Appeals, The Senate Committee on Learning and Teaching, the Senate Committee on Admission, Re-Admission and Transfer, The Senate Committee on Learning and Teaching etc. There are 13 total Senate Committees. Work will take place in these various committees and be brought to the monthly Senate Meeting for voting. For example, during my work on the Senate Committee on Learning and Teaching we wrote a policy on Peer to Peer Evaluation for the Academic Calendar since one did not previously exist. Our policy stated that the Instructor has the final say in evaluating a grade and a student cannot directly impact the outcome of another student’s grade. This policy was voted on in this months (March 4th) Senate Meeting and passed. There are 16 students elected to the Senate, with one from each faculty, and the remainder elected as Directors at Large. I am running for re-election as the Social Sciences representative against 17 other students.

Voting for the Senate takes place online at http://webvote.uvic.ca/ on March 9th, 10th, and 11th.

More information on the senate can be found here: http://www.uvic.ca/universitysecretary/senate/

The Board of Governors

The Board of Governors (BOG) is an important decision making body at UVic which pertains more to finances. “In accordance with the University Act, the Board of Governors is responsible for the management, administration and control of the property, revenue, business and affairs of the university. This fifteen-member body consists of the chancellor, the president, two elected faculty members, one elected staff member, two students elected from the university's undergraduate or graduate student societies, and eight members appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council.” (BOG Uvic website) The BOG also has 5 standing committee which meet the day before Board Meetings.

Voting for the BOG takes place online at http://webvote.uvic.ca/ on March 9th, 10th, and 11th.

More information on the BOG can be found here: http://www.uvic.ca/universitysecretary/governors/

The UVSS

“The [UVSS] board is the collective decision-making body for the Students’ Society. They organize events, provide services, and advocate for students.” (UVSS website) Over the few past years, the UVSS has done things like negotiate a cheaper health plan, and secure late night transit.

Last month the UVSS held a special general meeting (SGM) where they made changes to the make-up of the board. The UVSS board will now be made up of 5 Executive Positions, 11 Directors at Large (D@L’s), and 5 constituency representatives (UVic Pride, Womens Centre, etc.). During the elections next week students will be elected to the Executive and Director at Large positions. The Executives are as follows: The Chairperson, the Director of Finance and Operations, the Director of Events, the Director of Student Affairs, and the Director of External Relations.

Voting for the UVSS takes place at polling stations on campus. *You will need your student card in order to vote.
****
UVSS Uncovered addition:

Referendums

In addition to the three sets of elections that you get to vote in, there are six referendum questions that you can vote on this election. These questions range on a variety of topics. Some ask for your opinion on an issue (Online elections, Bottled water) while others are asking for a fee that can range from $0.76 (Campus Community Garden) to $55 (New Athletics Facility) per semester. I will be covering these in more detail in the next few days.

Voting for the Referendums takes places at the same polling stations on campus that you vote in the UVSS election at. *You will need your student card in order to vote.

Conclusion

UVic students are able to vote in elections to three different bodies and well as have their voice heard on six referendum questions. In some ways this can feel like democracy overload and I can totally empathize with this sentiment. The outcomes of these democratic events will have an affect on your campus life and you wallet. I encourage you to get informed and then vote in each of these on March 9, 10, 11.

In a future post I will be compiling a list of all online sources of information pertaining to the UVic Elections and Referendums to assist you in making an informed decision.

The end of Rabbits on campus brings sticker campaign

2011-03-04T16:19:00.003-08:00

As has been revealed in the past week, the official rabbit count on UVic campus is down to 8.

Watch the follow A Channel news story for more:

Corresponding to the end of rabbits on campus, you may have seen stickers depecting rabbits with a hole or circle in them around campus. Here are two such examples:

I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of these stickers is but it is surely not a coincidence that they have appeared at this time.

UVSS Health and Dental Plans: The Myths and Realities

2011-03-04T13:36:00.007-08:00

Throughout the past year and into this UVSS election there have been a number of misconceptions spread about the Health and Dental Plans. Some of these have been honest misunderstandings while others have been intentionally deceptive. The purpose of this post is to make sure students know what has really happened in the past year with respect to the Health and Dental Plans and what is being proposed and claimed by candidates.

The story of the Health and Dental plans begins roughly a year ago. The 2010 Renew slate ran on a promise of renegotiating the UVSS Health and Dental Plans by opening them up to a competitive bidding process, a promise that appeared to be popular with students.

The timeline of 2010-2011 Health and Dental plans negotiation:

On April 29, 2010 outgoing Director of Finance Edward Pullman signed a renewal of the Health and Dental Plans contract on his second to last day in office. The new board discovered this soon after taking office. They also discovered that in 2009-2010 the Administration fee on the plans was $36.75, which is more than double what it was previously. Effectively this inflated admin fee is a cash grab for the UVSS.

At the June 7, 2010 board meeting, the UVSS board voted to not recognize the contract signed April 29. This also meant that it would begin a competitive bidding process to negotiate a new contract.

At the August 3, 2010 board meeting, the UVSS board agreed to sign a contract with the health and dental plan broker StudentCare. At this point there were still a number of details to work out, but the board was agreeing in principal to complete these negotiations this with StudentCare. The quote from StudentCare would give students the same coverage as the plan signed on April 29 would charge $229.50 per student, compared to the $248 cost per student under the April 29 plan. Competitive bidding resulted in an $18.50 savings.

One of the important details not addressed by this point was the Administration fee. The increased Administration fee in 2009-2010 had allowed the UVSS budget deficit to remain below $50 000. If the fee had not increased, we would be seeing deficits of over $150 000.

At the August 9, 2010 board meeting director at large Dylan Sherlock submitted a motion that had the UVSS support in principle a reduction the Administration fee to a level reflecting the actual cost of administrating the plan. After quite a bit of debate, this motion passed.

It was now up to the Finance Committee to decide what level the administration fee should be set at.

At a Finance Committee meeting on August 17 the committee debated the possibility of adding new coverage to the plans that had not been included in previous years. These included vision care and travel insurance. Adding these additional coverages would increase the cost of the plans by $13.25. In the end, most of the voting members of the committee agreed to add this coverage. This brought the base costs of the plan up to $242.75.

On August 31, the Finance Committee met to determine what the Health and Dental plans Administration fee would be set at for 2010-2011. After much negotiation the amount agree to was $29.97. This represented a $6.78 reduction in the administration fee from 2009-2010 but is still $15-20 more than the actual cost of administrating the Health and Dental plans. This Administration fee proposal was supported by Directors at large Dylan Sherlock, Jaraad Marani and Rob MacDonald as well as Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan. David Foster opposed this amount.

The end result of the bidding and negotiating process was that the combined Health and Dental plans for 2010-2011 would cost $272.72. This was a $15.28 savings over the contract Pullman signed April 29, yet also included Vision and Travel coverage. It also still included an Administration fee of $29.97 which represented a small reduction versus the April 29 contract, but still far higher than the true costs of administering the plan.

Throughout this process, it should be noted that I was strongly against an Administration fee and felt the $29.97 negotiated fee was still unacceptably high. (here, here)

Fast forward to the present...

Not too surprisingly, the Health and Dental Plans and Administration fee have become UVSS election issues.

UVic Underground (aka Veronica Harrison) and "Renew_Exposed" have attempted to rewrite the reality of what occurred this past Summer: http://uvicunderground.tumblr.com/post/3639987070.

I don't even know where to begin with this post as it is so incredibly off from what really occurred. Students saved $15.28 this year out of a combination of reducing the Administration fee by $6.78 and from opening up the Health and Dental contracts to competitive bidding. The claim that Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan colluded with StudentCare to try and make students pay more is absurd.

The Health and Dental plans Administration fee is also being addressed in election platforms.

Desi Brisbin (Renew) has a platform promise that would see the Administration fee reduced from $29.97 to $10 within 2 years.

Although Brisbin's opponent Dylan Sherlock (Fuse) was a proponent of reducing the Administration fee to this sort of level at the August 9, 2010 board meeting this topic is absent from his election platform.

The CFS Office and the UVic Elections

2011-03-03T00:34:00.003-08:00

Two weeks ago, the Martlet reported that a "break in" occurred in the CFS office of the SUB in Early-Mid February. While the article alludes to the possibility of crowbar being used to break in, Chairperson James Coccola informed me that such a claim is erroneous as the damage to the door jam mentioned in the article has "been there for years." What the Martlet story also neglects to mention however is how this section of the article is related to the UVic elections.

The connection to UVic elections is that the CFS office was being used at one point by the Fuse slate to organize and store materials for the UVic election. This fact was confirmed to me by Fuse candidate Jenn Bowie.

The use of the CFS office by the Fuse slate resulted in an elections complaint submitted by Renew candidate David Foster. In Foster's complaint, he alleges that the use of the CFS office for election purposes constitutes an unfair advantage as not all candidates in the election have access to such a resource.

The complaint goes on to point out that the only reason Fuse had access to this office is because Fuse candidate Dylan Sherlock was the current CFS representative for the UVSS board. As a result of this reality, Foster felt use of this office undermined the fairness of the UVSS electoral process.

Ultimately, the elections' Chief Electoral Officer Dianne Flood did not see things Foster's way. It would appear that Foster did not submit evidence with his complaint as the CEO disagreed that such use of the room had occurred. The CEO also went on to rule that even if the room had been used, it would not be serious enough to require disqualifications.

In the past few days there have been a few interesting developments relating to this CFS office issue. At Monday's board meeting, Dylan Sherlock resigned his position at CFS rep. The issue of CFS office use also came up during Wednesday's All Candidates Forum as an exchange occurred between Foster and Sherlock relating to this issue. The exchange as documented in the Martlet's Live Blog reads as follows:

Martlet News:
David Foster asserts that CFS money went towards financing the FUSE slate's office

Karolina Karas:
Dylan Sherlock says question is inncorrect. Foster says there are photographs. Sherlock mentions CFS office break in. False information was purposely placed into his office and says that asking this question is proof of the break in.

Karolina Karas:
Foster says it was him over hearing a meeting.

This is not the first time the CFS office has become an election issue. During the 2005 UVSS election, the CFS office was also used to organize a slate. During this election, the Chairperson of the time Joanna Groves lent the key for the CFS office to the Chairperson candidate of the Putting Students First slate Penny Beames. This resulted in quite the election controversy and an attempt was made to remove Groves from the Electoral Committee. The board minutes of the March 8, 2005 meeting show the exchanges that went on when board members learned about the use of the office.

Ultimately, I wouldn't expect the members of the Fuse slate to know about or remember this incident that occurred six years ago except one: Dylan Sherlock. Sherlock and myself both ran in the 2007 UVSS election while this issue was still fresh in the minds of UVSS candidates. The CEO of the time specifically emphasized at a candidates meeting that we should not be using SUB resources that aren't available to all candidates, referencing the 2005 incident. Although the use of this office does not constitute a violation of election rules, Sherlock surely should have known that using this office to organize for elections would be viewed as a faux pas.

Renew website launches

2011-03-02T22:48:00.001-08:00

The UVic slate "Renew" has launched it's website for the election. The slate has chosen to go the Facebook page route with is site at http://www.facebook.com/renewUVic.

As I predicted in my post on the Fuse website, the two slates in this election are running on platforms that contain very similar organizating statements.

The Renew platform is using the same three statements from last year:

Plan for the Planet
Create Community on Campus
Down with the Debt

Thus it can be confirmed that both slates' platforms cover the following topics:

addressing the UVSS's debt
improving the campus community through events
working towards improved sustainability

UVSS board takes CFS referendum “No” side

2011-03-02T21:34:00.002-08:00

At the Monday February 28th board meeting, the UVSS board took a stance in favour of defederation in the upcoming CFS membership referendum. This decision was not without considerable debate about whether to delay a decision on the issue, as well as debate about whether than UVSS should even take a stance.

Early on in the debate on the motion submitted by Director at Large Karina Sangha, an attempt was made to table the motion to the next board meeting.

One of the main reasons provided in favour of tabling was that board members wanted more time to consult with members they represent before taking a stance on the issue. This point was especially emphasized by Constituency group representatives.

Native Students Union rep Tanille Johnston pointed out that the NSU had not had a chance to meet and discuss the issue as it has been busy. Students of Colour rep Jessica Humphries echoed Johnston’s sentiments stating that SOC had yet to meet to discuss the issue. Meanwhile Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan and Director of Academics Rajpreet Sall argued in favour of making a decision at this meeting since the CFS has already been campaigning on campus.

When given the opportunity to speak, I pointed out that the UVSS board regularly makes decisions, some of which can be very controversial, with the same amount of notice as with this motion.

Debate eventually turned towards an effort to schedule an extra board meeting sometime before the March 14 meeting. Chairperson James Coccola and Directors at Large Jose Barrios and Mehak Mehra all informed the board that they have prior commitments that would not allow them to attend a board meeting if held March 7. An effort to schedule a board meeting for March 8 was also rejected.

Eventually the board voted on tabling the motion to the next board meeting. The result is as follows:

In favour: Pal, Marani, Paterson, Humphries, Johnston, Macdonald, Sherlock

Opposed: Warner, Sall, Macleod, Hannan, Hall, Mahek, Barrios, Sangha

Abstained: Spilker, Sutherland, Bowie

The motion to table failed with 7 in favour, 8 opposed, 3 abstained.

With the failure of this motion, debate then turned to Sangha’s motion itself.

The debate on the motion had little to do with what side the UVSS board should take during the CFS referendum, but rather whether or not it should take one at all.

Director at Large Dylan Sherlock felt the UVSS should remain neutral to ensure free and fair elections. Similarly, Director at Large Rob Macdonald felt students should be allowed to make up their own minds.

Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan pointed out that by endorsing the No side, no director was obligated to support that side. Director at Large Tara Paterson then quoted Hannan’s comments from October 2009 (which were posted earlier that day on UVic Underground ) at which time he advocated in favour of the board taking a neutral stance.

Hannan then clarified that his stance on the issue has changed because the circumstances had changed. At the time he felt the CFS would play fair and follow its own rules, but instead the UVSS has to go to court twice just to get a referendum.

When it came time to vote on Sangha’s motion the outcome was as follows:

In Favour: Warner, Sall, McLeod, Hannan, Hall, Mehra, Barrios, Sangha, Bowie

Opposed: Sherlock, Pal, Humphries, Johnston

Abstained: Marani, Paterson, Macdonald, Spilker, Sutherland

The motion passed with 9 in favour, 4 opposed and 5 abstentions.

As a result, the UVSS will endorse the “No” side in the CFS membership referendum.

Commentary:
Throughout the debate on this motion, it appeared clear that the current and ongoing UVSS election was an elephant in the room that was not discussed. This was partly due to a request from James Coccola that the election not be discussed during the board meeting. Moreso, however, I believe board members are reluctant to openly discuss their views on the CFS membership referendum while the election is underway.

The All Candidates Forum held earlier today would appear to confirm this. Candidates who opposed or abstained on this motion at Monday’s board meeting continued to oppose expressing their personal views on the issue at the All Candidates Forum.

As I pointed out during the board meeting, it seems more than reasonable to me for the UVSS board to endorse a side in this CFS membership referendum. We already have had outside student unions (Camosun College) take a position in our own referendum and even commit funding to the Pro CFS side. The least the UVSS board could do is make its own position known, which it did.

Why I have never attended UVSS Finance committee

2011-02-26T00:38:00.003-08:00

The topic of this post is one which I considered doing back in the Summer of 2010 but never got around to it. A motion on the Agenda of the February 28 board meeting has prompted me to write it now, however.

The motion contained on Monday's agenda reads as follows:

Motion 2011/02/28: 21 - Coccola/ (25 mins)

Whereas UVSS committees contain seats for directors and students at large, which are elected by the Board of Directors;

Whereas some students at large elected to the Finance Committee in May 2010 have never attended even one meeting of the committee, but are preventing other students from gaining those seats;

Whereas reelection of inactive committee positions every semester (four months) will ensure that members of the committee are those actually participating;

BIRT UVSS Policy—Terms of Reference—Definitions be amended as follows, as recommended by OD:

Elected Membership Directors and members elected to an open membership committee by the Board of Directors shall lose their membership if they have not attended at least one committee meeting by the end of the semester in which they were elected.

This motion would appear to be directed at myself and possibly Geoff Sharpe.

At the May 10, 2010 board meeting David Foster, myself and Geoff Sharpe were nominated as at large members for the Finance Committee. Only two of us could be elected to the Finance Committee. It was myself and Geoff Sharpe.

I have never attended a Finance Committee meeting. Foster has attended many and received voting rights after three meetings. Again, I can't speak for Sharpe.

To be clear though, I had full intentions of doing so at the time I was selected to it. This past Summer was spent renegotiating the Health and Dental Plan contracts and creating the UVSS budget. Given the UVSS's budget deficit and the unique opportunity the Health and Dental plan contracts presented, I wanted to be a part of this process.

What the motion to be discussed on Monday's board meeting does not address however, is consultation with committee members.

The first communication I received about this committee was an email on May 27, 2010 from Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan. It read: "I will be holding a Finance meeting this upcoming Monday, May 31. I've put together a Doodle poll in order to find out the best time for people on Mondays: http://www.doodle.com/wuk8vz99ptzm7saa. Please reply today and tomorrow I'll email out a time/location for us to meet."

The next day, a follow up email was sent out announcing that the meeting would be held at 2PM on May 31.

A week and a half later, on June 9, Hannan sent out another email containing the following: "After discussing with various members of the committee, it looks like Tuesdays at 4 pm work for many as a meeting time. In consideration of this, I have scheduled our next Finance meeting to be on Tuesday, June 15th at 4pm."

I was a member of the committee yet was not included in this discussion. Like a typical UVic student, I worked on Tuesdays during the Summer (although other weekdays did work for me). While I could have complained about this situation, I chose not to as it appeared to work for the majority. At the same time though, those that schedule committee times should have an obligation to consult with all members elected to a committee about their availability, not just some.

As a result, I did not attend meetings during the Summer, and would be removed from the committee if the proposed policy was in place.

In the Fall Semester, Hannan demonstrated similar definiciency in consulting about the committee meeting time. On September 13, the following email was sent out to committee members:

This is notice that our regularly scheduled Tuesday meeting is not on for this week. I've got a doodle poll up to find a new time for our committee meeting. I'm looking for two things: First, times that people are available to schedule a meeting for this week, and second, people's availability to schedule our weekly meetings. If we find a time at the end of this week that works for everyone generally for the semester, then I will make that our weekly meeting time. Please fill out the doodle poll at the link here: http://doodle.com/6irandr7my2xiyuh

There was a significant issue with the set up of this doodle poll, however. September 13 was the week of Clubs and Course Union days which was unique to this week alone. If filling out this poll based on the dates specified in it, one would have different and less availability than for a poll asking for availability for the semester as a whole. Hannan ended up choosing Friday's at 12PM to meet based on this particular poll; a time that conflicted with my classes.

In the current Semester, no formal effort was even made to hold a doodle poll or consult with committee members. An email was simply sent out January informing members that meetings were to be held at 1PM on Mondays.

To give Hannan some credit, in several of these emails he did contain a line informing recipients that they could request a different meeting time. That said, it is important to keep in mind that this committee contains seven elected members, in addition to students like David Foster who earned voting rights. Should a meeting time be changed to accomodate one person? On the flip side, if all committee members were properly consulted about availability in the first place perhaps a time that works for everyone could be found.

It also should be noted that Hannan's effort is also an improvement over past Executives who made little or no effort to ask for committee member's availability in my experience.

One reality to keep in mind regarding the motion on the agenda of Monday's board meeting is the fact that any student can attend these open committees and gain voting rights. Effectively, there is no difference from a student who is elected to the committee and one who attends and receives voting rights. Keeping those elected to the committee on it may prevent others from holding those seats, but it is not preventing others from attending these meetings and having a say on the committee's decisions.

While this motion on the surface makes sense, it neglects ackowledging the need for committee chairs to consult with the members of their committees about when meetings should be scheduled.

Fuse website launches

2011-02-18T22:35:00.006-08:00

The UVic slate "Fuse" has launched it's slick looking website at http://www.fuseuvic.com/

As we are still in the Senate and Board of Governors-only election period, the website is very much geared towards the Senate and BoG candidates. Surely much more content will follow once the UVSS Election officially begins.

"Fuse" does not appear to be an acronym, but instead used cleverly to summarize its election platform.

The platform contains the following three planks:

deFuse the debt
inFuse the campus community
reFuse to stand down on sustainability

More details on what these mean will no doubt follow.

Those of us who have followed the UVic elections for a couple years now will notice that Fuse is following a platform formula that has proven quite successful in recent years. Several slates in the past few years have organized their platform around the following three topics:

addressing the UVSS's debt
improving the campus community through events
working towards improved sustainability

Consider the following...

Renew platform from 2010:

Plan for the Planet
Create Community on Campus
Down with the Debt

BANG! platform from 2009:

People
Planet
Profit

The 2008 and 2009 Team FAST slates covered two of these organizers:

Sustainability
Affordable Education
Campus Community

This of course leads to the question of what the 2011 Renew slates platform will be. If is resembles that of it's predecessor, we could very well have two slates with quite similar platforms in this election.

CFS membership referendum dates set

2011-02-18T17:28:00.002-08:00

On March 29, 30, and 31 the UVSS will be having a long-awaited referendum on its membership in the CFS.

Earlier this month, BC Supreme Court justice Malcolm Macaulay ruled that the Fall 2009 petition to have a membership referendum contained the necessary amount of signatures to hold a referendum. In his judgment, Macauley expressed that he saw no reason why the CFS would not work with the UVSS to set a referendum. Thus Macauley chose not to set a date for the referendum at that time.

In the two and a half weeks that passed since the judgment, little to no progress was made on the referendum. The CFS maintained the belief that the UVSS was not entitled to a referendum on the grounds that membership fees from the 1990s were still owing. For this reason, the UVSS and CFS met in court again this morning.

As a result of the short case, the UVSS now has a court mandated referendum to be held at the end of March.

The pro-CFS side of the referendum will likely be well-funded. In an article written by Renée Andor of Camosun College's Nexus paper, it is revealed that the Camosun College board has authorized unlimited funding of the Pro-CFS side during the referendum.

It is currently unknown what the UVSS is budgeting to spend during this referendum.

Response to Veronica Harrison

2011-02-17T21:34:00.007-08:00

Today, Veronica Harrison responded to my post that identified her as being behind UVic Underground.

While I do not want to begin a back and forth series of responses between our two blogs, I feel it is important to respond to what she has said today, as well as to some of the comments I have received in the past 24 hours.

Harrison has labeled me "progressive-hating", yet never provides any evidence of this. It is a baseless label. She similarly labels me right-wing and conservative, yet this is far from the truth. I strongly identify myself as being center-center-left and liberal. It is disappointing to see that Harrison thinks she can continue to spew misinformation about others.

My own anonymous blog, Vote Smart UVSS, did not break UVSS election rules as Harrison falsely claims. Election rules do not apply to non-candidates and thus cannot be broken by non-candidates.

When I received the screenshots yesterday, my belief was that they were sent by the owner of the account seen in the screenshot. The blacked out sections of the screenshot indicated to me that this was someone who was attempting to hide their identity as the leaker. If this is a case of someone forgetting to log out of their account, why would someone go through the effort of blacking out sections of the screenshot? Several comments have pointed the finger at a board member as the so-called "hacker." Given the comment by Edward Pullman, I am now convinced the images were acquired after he did not sign out of his Facebook account.

Last night, several commenters pointed the finger at me as the source of the screenshot or made the claim that I knew who was behind it. I had absolutely nothing to do with the acquisition of these screenshots and was legitimately surprised to have received them.

Harrison also falsely makes the claim that I am purposely keeping the identity of the person that emailed the screenshots anonymous. The email address used to send me the screenshots was undergrounduncovered@hotmail.com and apparently came from "John Smith." This afforded me zero clues about who was behind the email.

As you can see, the email I received provided me no clues as to who had sent it.

Ultimately, it appears Harrison and several commenters are completely dense as to why I have taken issue with UVic Underground now and in the past. My issue with UVic Underground is not the fact that it was anonymous. My issue with UVic Underground is the fact that its posts have made claims that are complete fabrications of the truth. I have no issue with expressing opinions or having slanted writing, but I take strong issue with the outright lies UVic Underground has tried to spread.

I also still continue to take issue with the fact that at least six board members knew who was behind these false claims UVic Underground was making against their fellow board members, yet did nothing. Letting a fellow board member know who is making false claims about them online is a simple courtesy I would expect to see from board members who claim to work towards bipartisanship and cooperation.

UVSS SAGM Live Blogging

2011-02-17T15:22:00.013-08:00

Check back to this post during the UVSS AGM (and afterwards if you forget) to receive periodic updates at the AGM. I'm not a huge fan of 'Cover It Live' so I'll just use Blogspot's edit function to update this post throughout the UVSS SAGM.

3:21PM
The UVSS SAGM was scheduled to start at 3:00PM. Quorum for the meeting is about 87 students. Currently there are about 30 here. It appears unlike that we will achieve quorum by 3:30PM.

3:24PM
Regardless of whether or not the meeting achieves quorum, we are told pizza will arrive at 4:00PM.

3:28PM
James Coccola just blinked.

3:29PM
James tells a story: "Once upon a time there was an AGM that had quorum."

3:30PM
We have over 20 people so we can carry out some business, but not the main motions.

3:31PM
Chair of the meeting approved.

3:32PM
Agenda adopted.

3:33PM
Agendas of the two previous meetings adopted

3:34PM
Question Period

"Where is the couch that was previously in the resource center?"
"It will be returned March 14."

"Will the table be returned as well?"
"No"

"Have Nadim's magnets been found?"
"No."

"Where is the table?"
"It was removed because people could not treat it with respect"

"We didn't hear any public warnings about the table being taken away"
"A sign was taped to the table for several months"

"I couldn't see it over all the garbage"

"Did you miss not having a meeting on Monday?"
"Yes it was heart wrenching experience"

"Why can't we address the other motions on the Agenda?"
"We needed 85 people"

"will there be beverages in addition to pizza?"
"there will be some vitamin water and there is a fountain outside"

"Is there a correlation between the removal of the couch and the fact that there is not quorum"
"No it appears to have brought people out to ask questions about it"

"Comment on the screenshot on UVSS Uncovered from the Chairperson..."
Chair declines to answer the question.

"Can we go get pizza now?"
"Yes."

3:46PM
Motion to adjourn.

Meeting adjourned.

UVic Underground uncovered

2011-02-16T17:47:00.016-08:00

This afternoon I received an email from a so-called "John Smith". Attached were two very informative images. These pictures are truly worth a thousand words.

Here they are in the form I received them (click to view full sized):

Note: I have blurred the original images due to the revelation that someone acquired them without authorization from Edward Pullman's Facebook account.

These images tell us a lot. It seems very clear that former UVSS Chairperson Veronica Harrison is behind UVic Underground. This is hardly a shock to myself or others as Harrison has long been on many UVSS followers short lists as being behind UVic Underground.

What is very interesting is that fact that members of lasts year's Students United slate and now members of the current Fuse slate have been aware of this fact since October 2010. This includes current candidates Dylan Sherlock, Tara Paterson and Jaraad Marani.

(Note: This next paragraph has turned out to be untrue)
Perhaps even more interesting than this is that fact that these screen shots are from private Facebook exchanges. Someone who Harrison believed she could confide details about this blog to appears to be the source of these screen shots.

Harrison's UVic Underground posts have now included two very clear attempts to defame the reputation of current Chairperson James Coccola through the posting outright lies. In December 2010, the unsubstantiated claim of a Coccola-Hannan-Barrios legal pact was made. Then in January 2011, UVic Underground claimed Coccola acted unilaterally in initiating legal action against the CFS, despite the fact all legal action has come as a result of motions passed by the UVSS board.

I find it extremely disappointing that at least six current board members were aware of who was behind these false claims against their Chairperson and chose to remain silent. Rest assured they will be asked about this during the Question Period at this Monday's Board Meeting.

Update: Since this post was originally made, it has become clear that the screenshots were not taken by the person who owned the Facebook account seen in them. It turns out Edward Pullman forgot to sign out of his Facebook account while using a Resource Centre computer and someone went through his account to acquire these screenshots. I made a judgment based on the information I had at the time and believed that the screenshots were taken by the person who owned the account. I got it wrong, and I apologize for playing a part in spreading this.

The Bus Stop Incident information wanted

2011-02-16T00:05:00.000-08:00

On February 8, there was a public incident that occurred at the UVic Bus Loop near the Bookstore. The spark of this incident was related to the fact that candidates and their supporters were attempting to save the wall space of the Bookstore for banners.

Over the past week, I have come across bits and pieces relating to this incident and now realize it was more heated and bigger than I had originally believed. As the Bus Loop may have dozens of students in its vicinity at any given time, there were surely many people who witnessed what took place.

If you saw what took place, I would be interested in hearing your version of events. The email, as usual, is uvssuncovered@hotmail.com

The Unofficial Campaign Begins

2011-02-13T18:27:00.008-08:00

For many years now, the UVSS Electoral Policy has contained the clause "No campaigning shall occur until the Chief Electoral Officer officially opens the campaign." This rule is one that tends to result in at least a handful of complaints every election as candidates tread the line on what constitutes campaigning.

It also means that candidates are very careful not to talk publicly about their candidacy and can't even confirm if they are running. Note Remy Hall's comment in a recent Martlet article after someone declared him to be running with Fuse: "I cannot reveal whether I am running in the election or not until the campaigning period begins..."

Breaking this rule has resulted in disqualifications, like that of Ali Lee in 2009, so candidates are careful not to blatantly campaign early. That being said, there is definitely an unofficial campaign underway.

Back in 2008, the Electoral Office made the realization that several campaign rules for Senate and Board of Governors elections were being misinterpreted in the past. The campaign period for those elections officially begins the moment nominations end. You are also allotted 50 posters and 4 banners for these elections in addition to your allotment for UVSS ones.

As a result of this discovery, election strategy has changed. For the past three years, candidates have been "saving" preferential wall spaces by placing quickly made Senate and BoG banners in these locations, to be replaced later with better quality UVSS ones.

This year, candidates began "camping out" at preferred locations a full five hours before the end of nominations closing in order the "save" this preferred wall space. Reportedly there was a heated exchange of words between the slates last Tuesday relating to this. If anyone is wondering why so many board members are not running again, this absurd amount of commitment to save wall space should be a clue.

As mentioned previously, running for Senate and BoG also allows you to have twice as many posters and banners up around campus with your name on it. With all these advantages of running for both the UVSS and Seante/BoG candidates are almost foolish not to run for more than one body. It should not be surprising that we now see so many UVSS board candidates running for other bodies as well.

An unfortunate downside to this though is that is it difficult to determine who is genuine in their intentions to serve in the Senate and BoG and who just wants more posters and banners that they can put up early. Understandably, some students who are keen to get involved in campus will want to run for more than one body. Others probably couldn't care less about Senate and BoG.

For this reason, it is nice to see some candidates who only run for one body. In this election I am aware of three such candidates. Paul Donaldson and George Benson are running only for Senate on a slate that appears to be a mashup of the other two: "Refuse". Carley Coccola is similarly running for only Senate. It is clear that these individuals are legitimately interested in serving in the positions they run for and thus will be receiving my vote.

Unrelated note: It has come to my attention that Ryan Levis is in fact making a third attempt for the UVSS Chairperson position. I have updated this fact in the previous post.

UVSS Election 2011: The Candidates

2011-02-11T23:55:00.011-08:00

The 2011 election will feature two slates, as occurs during most years. This year's slates are Renew and Fuse. At this time it is unclear if Fuse is intended to be an acronym for anything or is just simply the word 'Fuse'. Renew, like last year, is a reference to Renewing the UVSS.

There is also two Independents running in this Election: Remy Hall and Ryan Levis.

Here are the candidates in for the 2011 UVSS Election:

Renew

Executives
Chairperson - Rachel Chapman
Finance and Operations - Desi Brisbin
External - Roy Nam
Student Affairs - Lauren Petersen

Directors at Large
Tessah Clark
David Foster
Chris Hacket
Sam Hagen
Alec Hermansson
Allison Rhodes
Zoe Staples
Gabrielle Sutherland

Note: The candidacy of Chris Hacket and Zoe Staples cannot be confirmed at this time due to issues surrounding their nomination forms.

Fuse

Executives
Chairperson - Tara Paterson
Finance and Operations - Dylan Sherlock
Student Affairs - Jenn Bowie
External - Jaraad Marani

Directors at Large
Hafeez Ali Dhalla
Charles Freund
Nadia Hamden
Lucia Orser
Emily Rogers
Samantha Scott
Ariel Tseng

Independents

Events - Remy Hall
Chairperson - Ryan Levis

As the official election campaign does not start until February 28, I see little reason to give much commentary at this time. We do not know what platforms these candidates are running on and probably will not know until the election period.

It is interesting that both slates are roughly the same size and both decided not to run a candidate against Remy Hall for the Director of Events position. With no slate running 11 Director at Large candidates, the board is guaranteed to have representation from both slates next year. I tend to see this as a good thing.

Also of note are the implications of blogger David Foster as a candidate. As a result of the UVSS's restrictive Elections Policy, it is quite unlikely that we will see much new content on Eye on the UVSS during this election.

UVSS's Cinecenta sells deal on Groupon

2011-02-04T18:29:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, the Groupon deal for Victoria was a coupon for Cinecenta theater in the SUB.

Those that took advantage of the deal can get Two Admission Tickets, a Medium Fountain Drink, and Medium Popcorn for $9. This is regularly a $21.15 value.

A whopping 3000 Groupon users jumped at the offer causing it to sell out. In my month or two of following Groupon deals, I have never seen a deal sell 3000 coupons before. Will the sales of this coupon result in a major influx of new Cinecenta patrons? Given the 3000 coupons sold this should be expected.

Cinecenta could certainly use the new regular patronage this coupon may bring. In the past few years Cinecenta has routinely underperformed as a business. From 2003-2004 to 2007-2008 the Net Revenue of Cinecenta declined from $100 000 to $34 000. In the past two fiscal years the business has posted losses. The current budget projects a $13 695 Net Revenue loss.

Groupon deals do involve some risk to the businesses involved. Some businesses that have sold coupons on the site become swamped by all the new business they receive. This can cause the promotion to backfire if the new patrons have an unpleasant experience and do not return.

There are also financial implications. Roughly half of the cost of the Groupon coupon goes to the business, while Groupon takes the other half. This means Cinecenta is offering $21.15 worth of product and only making about $4.50. If every one of the coupons is claimed, this would represent $49 950 in lost revenue.

With this particular deal however, it is important to keep in mind that the actual cost to the business of providing a drink, popcorn and two movie viewings is a small fraction of the $21.15 they would retail for. If a large number of the new patrons become regular customers, Cinecenta may return to posting positive Net Revenues.

CFS Petition: The Straight Facts

2011-02-03T23:10:00.006-08:00

Earlier today the mystery blog UVic Underground made a post that contains several significant inaccuracies regarding the CFS Petitions that were collected in the Fall of 2009. It also makes false claims about how the UVSS ended up choosing to go to court to achieve a referendum.

The only fair label that can be applied to this post is that is contains deliberate fabrications of the truth.

Although I did not collect any petition signatures during the Fall of 2009, I was privy to details about the planning and execution of the signature collection effort.

False claims 1 and 2:

"a small clique of UVic students, over a period of at least three months, secretly circulated an anti-CFS petition"

"only when they were nearing the threshold of 10% of Uvic undergrads that they needed did they make their campaign public, offering very little time for anything but their own propaganda to be heard by signatories to their petition"

Facts:
The petition was sent to the CFS National office on October 26, 2009 (http://www.martlet.ca/martlet/article/UVic-referendum-petition-off-to-CFS-national-offic/). For the petition to have been circulated for three months, this would imply a late July beginning. Yet, in reality the collection of petition signatures only began on September 21, 2009. Observe the message sent out to potential petitioners below:

In no way was this petition effort kept a secret. In fact, petitioners felt press coverage would be beneficial to the effort. A story appeared in the September 28, 2009 edition of SFU's "The Peak" paper in which Jose Barrios speaks about the progress of the referendum. Within two weeks, the petition had collected signatures from 1664 students (http://www.martlet.ca/martlet/article/Petition-questions-future-of-UVics-CFS-membership/).

After this point, the petition effort largely went dormant for about 10 days as the clear bulk of the work had been completed. Then in mid-October petitioners became aware that a counter petition was being collected on campus. The petitioners spent a few days collecting a few hundred more signatures. By about October 20 the petitioners had to submit their petition to the University Secretary to verify the signatures as the deadline to submit the petition to the CFS was looming. As previously stated, it was sent off to the CFS on October 26, 35 days after the first signature was collected.

False claim 3:

"in less than half the time, the pro-CFS students gathered twice as many signatures on their petition as were gathered on the original petition, including hundreds of signatories seeking to have their name removed from the anti-CFS petition"

Facts:
The petitioners became aware of the counter petition on October 14. In Justice Macauley's ruling (paragraph 14) it is stated that the counter petition was mailed on November 13. The counter petition contained 2180 valid signatures. The defederation petition contained 1892 valid signatures. Contrary to UVic Underground's claim, both petitions contained similar amounts of signatures and were collected during similar timelines. The counter petition also had the benefit of having UVSS Executives collect signatures during their paid office hours as well as help from Executives from other Universities (http://www.martlet.ca/martlet/article/New-petition-fights-CFS-referendum-question/).

False claim 4:

The general claim that somehow students were misinformed or mislead about the CFS petition and yet the counter petition was entirely truthful.

Facts:
This argument goes both ways. Your average UVic student probably knew little about the CFS at the time. The same student can probably be convinced to sign both petitions if the person collecting signatures is an effective campaigner. At least by having a referendum students will receive the arguments from both sides and make an informed decision.

False claim 5:

"UVSS Chairperson James Coccola, without a mandate from the UVSS board, immediately launched a lawsuit against the CFS (more on that here), demanding that the CFS deny UVic students the right to have their names removed from the original petition. The CFS refused and Coccola took the CFS to court."

Facts:
The UVSS board as a whole approved of the UVSS taking legal action to win a referendum onJune 12, 2010 (http://www.martlet.ca/martlet/article/UVSS-to-pursue-CFS-referendum/). Chairperson James Coccola did not even submit the motion to the board. The minutes of that board meeting indicate that the motion was submitted by Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan and seconded by Director at Large Jose Barrios.

False claim 6:

"All because a few UVSS directors have a personal grudge."

Facts:
The Supreme Court of British Columbia has ruled solidly in the UVSS' favour. If this case merely involved a petty personal grudge, the UVSS' case would not have stood up in court. It seems abundantly clear that the author of UVic Underground is the one with a personal grudge.

Removal from Student Blog list:
The purpose of the "UVic Student Blogs" list you see on the side panel is intended to allow readers to easily navigate the different student blogs at UVic and receive information from different perspectives. It is also an acknowledgment that no single source can give complete coverage of student issues.

On multiple occasions now, UVic Underground has posted material that is deliberately misleading. I have no interest in assisting in the spread of misinformation and have removed this blog from the list.

UVSS cuts ties with Access UVic, new Constituency group to be created

2011-02-02T22:30:00.004-08:00

At the January 31 board meeting the UVSS board chose to replace Access UVic with a new constituency group for students with disabilities. At the meeting the board effectively had two options: Continue with Access UVic as its constituency group for students with disabilities or end ties with Access UVic and create a new constituency group in its place. For many board members this was a very difficult decision, but in the end the latter option was chosen.

Before debate on the motion began, the board received a presentation from Access UVic lawyer Jacqueline Horton. Horton informed the board that Access has complied with all requests made of it during the auditing process. While the investigation was being completed by Norgaard, Neale and Camden, Access UVic conducted its own internal investigation. It hired a Chartered Accountant to redo its financial statements who also made recommendations for change to Access in November 2010. In December 2010 Access implemented the recommendations that were made during this internal investigation. According to Horton, all deficiencies in Access UVic’s accounting have been addressed.

Horton did acknowledge several times that previously Access did have deficiencies in its accounting and that Access UVic did not dispute this fact. She also emphasized that no findings of fraud or misappropriation found in the investigations that have been done. She pointed out that Access' Executive Director Rose Mariana Robb is not a bookkeeper and as a result Access UVic has now put a bookkeeper in place.

Horton’s presentation went on to state that there would be serious legal consequences if the fees collected on its behalf are not remitted. She added that these funds cannot be diverted to any group other than Access. Of particular note in Horton’s presentation was the assertion that Access is not a constituency group.

Horton also made the claim Kyla Berry’s removal as Access President had nothing to do with her raising concerns about Access’ finances. Instead, Horton claimed that Berry was removed from her position for making unauthorized expenditures. It was evident that board members did not buy this claim as Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan pointed out that Berry was removed a mere three days after she went to the UVSS about Access’ finances.

Following Horton’s presentation, debate on the motion presented to the board began. For the most part debate on the issue came down to whether or not board members believed Access would follow proper accounting practices in both the short term and long term future.

The Executives of the board seemed unanimous in their belief that a new constituency group ought to be created. Director of Services Remy Hall reminded the board that it is responsible for the fees it collected. He stated that he had lost faith in Access in terms of its finances and emphasized that Access had not lived up to its Memorandum of Agreement with the UVSS. Hall wants to see an AGM held where all students with a disability can create a new organization.

Director of Academics Rajpreet Sall echoed Hall’s sentiments stating that Access is making empty promises. She pointed out that they were supposed to follow proper financial procedures before and did not.

In a rare occurrence during this board’s term Chairperson James Coccola made his position on the motion clear. Coccola felt Access would make changes to its financial practices in the short term, but expressed doubts that these would continue in the long term since Access’ director will change. He felt it was inevitable that the UVSS would be as a similar position in the future.

Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan mentioned many of the issues relating to Access’ finances and pointed out the fact that groups that make use of the UVSS’s accounting system do not have any issues with their finances. Under the proposal in the motion the new constituency group would make use of the UVSS’s accounting system. He pointed out that issues with Access’ finances only began when it incorporated under its own society and began keeping its own finances. He also added that the UVSS is offering Access protection for any liabilities that may be incurred as a result of its accounting issues.

Support for the motion was however far from unanimous. UVic Pride Rep Gabrielle Sutherland was satisfied with Access’ effort to deal with its financial shortcomings. As it was stated that Rose Mariana Robb would no longer be doing the bookkeeping she opposed the motion. In a later statement, Sutherland also pointed out that Access was being punished for the alleged actions of one person. She was also concerned that disabled students at UVic would be alienated if the motion passed.

Director at Large Jose Barrios was spoke against the motion. He was concerned that it would expose the UVSS to legal liability and felt it set a dangerous president for constituency groups. Barrios later pointed out that the UVSS has also had its own history of financial mismanagement and it was able to reform and recover from this.

Director at Large Jenn Bowie expressed that she believes in giving people second chances. She pointed out that Access admitted its mistake and is correcting them. At one point Bowie attempted to add a new motion that would instead see a new Memorandum of Agreement made with Access, however this effort failed.

Besides the financial deficiencies of Access, another criticism of the organization was the claim that it is not an inclusive organization.

Director at Large Tara Paterson and Director of Academics Rajpreet Sall both claimed to have been approached by students with disabilities critical of the inclusivity of Access UVic or the lack of advocacy provided by the group. A student with a disability in the gallery named Alexa Hansen echoed this claim stating that Access is not inclusive to a significant degree.

Other students with disabilities in the gallery included Access’ President Scott Garnett and Access’ Treasurer Julia Munk. Garnett declared that not recognizing Access UVic severely limits the quality of life of students on campus. He also emphasized that there has been no evidence of fraud or misappropriation. Munk argued that members of Access are competent and the organization is capable of change. She asserted that passing the motion meant the board was discrediting Access members as human beings.

When the board finally went to a vote on the motion it was clear several members remained torn and conflicted on the issue. Ultimately though, the board recognized that a decision had to be made so that students with disabilities could once again receive the advocacy they require.

The outcome of the vote is as follows:

Opposed: Barrios, Bowie, Humphries, Johnston, Maraani, Sutherland

In Favour: Hall, Hannan, McDonald, McLeod, Pal, Paterson, Sall, Sangha, Sherlock

Abstain: Mehra, Warner

The motion passed 9-6.

Did the board make the right decision? In the days following the decision my answer leans toward “yes”. The fact that three separate individuals at the meeting made the claim that Access has become an organization that lacks inclusion leads me to believe there is some truth to this. By inviting all 800+ students with disabilities on campus to help draft a constitution for a new constituency group, it is likely that more students with disabilities will have involvement in the new group.

I was surprised to see Access’s lawyer arguing that Access is not a constituency group. If Access is not a constituency group, then by all means the UVSS should be creating a group that identifies itself as a constituency group.

Perhaps the most important detail of the meeting for me was the lack of presence at the meeting of Access’ Executive Director Rose Mariana Robb whom is at the center of this entire ordeal. I feel that board members could have benefited from being able to ask her questions about her current roll within Access as this was not made perfectly clear. Remy Hall even brought up the fact that he hadn’t seen Robb’s job description. For an organization wanting to convince the board that it is now more accountable and transparent, Rose Mariana Robb’s absence did not help its case.

The board had to make a decision and it did so. Perhaps only time will tell if it was, in fact, the right one.

UVSS and Jose Barrios v. CFS: The Complete Judgment

2011-02-01T20:54:00.004-08:00

As announced this morning, the UVSS has successfully won its case against the Canadian Federation of Students. As a result work will now commence on selecting a date for the referendum as well as determining the rules by which it will be held.

Those wishing to view the complete ruling of BC Supreme Court justice Malcolm Macaulay can download it here.

Upon viewing Macaulay's ruling, it is understandable why it took over three weeks to complete. The judgment is comprised of 17 pages and 62 paragraphs. No doubt this was a complex case with many details to consider.

The first 54 paragraphs of Macaulay's ruling contain a statement of facts relevant to the case. The actually "judgment" section of this ruling can be found in paragraphs 55-62.

At the root of Macaulay's ruling is the fact that second petitions (commonly referred to as the counter-petition) were not formally mentioned in the CFS's bylaws at the time Jose Barrios and other collected their petitions. It was also not considered a long standing practice of the CFS to allow such second petitions.

The judge points out that had Barrios known that second petitions could be considered valid, he likely would have collected more signatures. Thus, in paragraph 58 Macaulay declares the second petition to have no bearing on whether or not Barrios' petition had sufficient signatures.

As a result, Justice Macaulay declares the petition submitted by Barrios to have reached the required threshold. Thus, he expects work on scheduling a referendum and determining rules to commence immediately.

While the judgment was very much in the UVSS's favour, it did not quite get everything it wanted in this ruling. A key request in the UVSS's case was that the judge set the date for the referendum. Justice Macaulay did not do this in his ruling because he believes the CFS will comply with the judgment and work with the UVSS's representatives to set a date. If this does not occur, however, Macaulay may in the future choose to impose a referendum date.

Referendum Oversight Committees (ROC) in CFS referendums have four members; two from the student organization and two from the CFS. As a result of this structure, the committee can often become deadlocked when determining dates and referendum rules. This has been the case at several Universities. The UVSS may very well require further intervention from Justice Macaulay in this trend holds true.

This judgment from Justice Macaulay represents the culmination of a great deal of effort from numerous individuals over the past 16 months. Yet, in many ways, it is only a beginning. To say it will be an interesting semester for the UVSS is surely an understatement.

CFS court ruling coming Tuesday

2011-01-31T19:56:00.003-08:00

A very brief post to inform readers that the judge's decision in the court case between the UVSS and the CFS will be released tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10:30AM. The over three week wait for a decision will finally be over.

February 1 Update: The UVSS has successfully won it's case! Read the details at Eye on the UVSS.

Responding to the Auditor's Report on Access UVic's finances

2011-01-30T19:59:00.000-08:00

At the January 31 board meeting, it is expected that the UVSS board will make an important decision pertaining to the Constituency group for Students with a Disability, common known as Access UVic.

The Motion
The motion on the meeting agenda in its entirety is as follows:

WHEREAS the UVSS Board has a fiduciary duty to ensure that members’ fees are properly accounted for; and

WHEREAS based on the findings of the auditor’s report, the UVSS no longer has the confidence that student fees will be properly accounted for by Access Association of Disabled Students; and

WHEREAS based on the findings of the auditor’s report, there is no confidence that Access Association of Disabled Students could enact lasting reforms to address these issues; therefore

BIRT the UVSS board make known to students with disabilities on campus that it will be accepting a constitution and bylaws that has been ratified at a general meeting that has been given due notice, for a new constituency group to fill the role of the UVSS constituency group ‘Society for Students with a Disability’ as laid out in Bylaw 21 of the UVSS Bylaws; and

BIFRT the UVSS board will offer to provide resources to students with disabilities on campus in order to create a new constituency organization, and that such resources may include: room bookings, assistance with policy development and helping to organize a general meeting; and

BIFRT the UVSS consider, on a case by case basis, covering liabilities to the Access Association of Disabled Students’ Board of directors that are directly related to the operations of Access Association of Disabled Students’ up to January 24, 2011 and not in excess of the amount currently held in trust by the UVSS; and

BIFRT if at some point in the future the new group wishes to separately incorporate they may do so under the guidelines set out in Bylaw 18.4 of the UVSS constitution and Bylaws

It is certainly possible that the final motion that is voted on will look nothing like this.

The Auditor's report on Access UVic finances
As mentioned last night, the auditors report is now public as per the motion passed last Monday, but not widely available. Having read it, I can confirm that all the concerns raised about Access' finances in a preliminary report made available last August are confirmed in the final version. These included poor accounting record keeping, cash withdrawals from Access' account that are unaccounted for, cheques signed by only one signing authority and debit purchases made for items that appear to be for personal use. There are also several new discoveries made in the latest report as well such as failure to remit deductions made for incomes and GST on contracts.

In short, I am confident that the UVSS did the right thing in freezing Access UVic's finances, holding their fees in trust in ensuring this audit was conducted.

Moving Forward
Responding to the findings of the Auditor's Report is where this issue gets complicated. Now that it has been strongly established that fees students paid to Access UVic were not being properly accounted for, a return to the status quo of January 2010 would be unacceptable.

As the UVSS has a fiduciary duty to ensure that members’ fees are properly accounted for, any action taken to move forward on this issue must involve some form of UVSS oversight given the findings of the audit.

Access UVic is its own incorporated Society. As a result, it is in charge of its own accounting unlike many other groups in the UVSS who make use of the UVSS's accounting department. The proposed solution on the agenda of Monday's board meeting would create a constituency group for students with disabilities that is under the umbrella of the UVSS. This would give the UVSS oversight of the finances of such an organization and ensure student money is being properly accounted for.

This is, however, not the only possible solution. In fact, some legal issues raised by David Foster seem to be worth investigating before taking the proposed action. Questions about whether or not the UVSS would be breaking its own bylaws as well as who is entitled to the current fee being collected on behalf of Access should be addressed before the proposed action is taken.

I also question the clause stating "based on the findings of the auditor’s report, there is no confidence that Access Association of Disabled Students could enact lasting reforms to address these issues." Is it true that Access cannot reform itself? Has the organization been given any opportunity to do so?

An alternate solution could be to work with Access UVic to come up with the lasting reforms the UVSS desires to see. Presumably, such reforms would allow the UVSS some sort of oversight over Access' finances. Of course, part of the reason Access incorporated itself as a separate Society in the first place was to attain a level of autonomy over its finances*. There could certainly be resistance to having UVSS oversight of its finances again.

Regardless of the route chosen to move forward on this issue, so long as it ensures UVSS oversight of Access' finances and allows for a timely resolution of this matter, I will be supportive of it. No doubt, this saga has meant some students with disabilities have not received the support and assistance they need. It is an unfortunate byproduct of ensuring student fees are properly accounted for.

*It is relevant to note that this current saga between Access UVic and the UVSS is not the first time the two have been in a conflict over the spending of student fees. One of the driving forces that led to Access UVic forming a separate Society occurred in 2005. Access held an event at IQ Bistro during which food and alcohol was purchased. The receipt was submitted to the UVSS Director of Finance Shamus Reid for reimbursement. Although the UVSS had no policy at the time that prevented using student fees to purchase alcohol, Reid declared that the alcohol portion of the receipt would not be reimbursed. It took several years before relations between Access and the board improved.

Referendums! Referendums! Referendums!

2011-01-30T17:45:00.003-08:00

If the agenda of the Janaury 31 board meeting is any indication, UVic students will have many opportunities to exercise their democratic rights this semester. On the agenda for the meeting is the approval of six referendum questions that students would be able to vote on during the UVSS elections in March. The referendum questions include:

A fee for a campus community garden ($0.76/$0.38).
An increase in the Native Students Union (NSU) fee ($0.98/$0.49).
Increasing the NSU fee at the rate of inflation, not to exceed 2.1%.
Approving online voting for elections of the UVSS board.
Supporting an initiative to phase out bottled water.
A fee for the SPOKES bicycle loan and rental program ($0.10/$0.05)

These referendum questions would be in addition to a referendum on funding a new athletics facility. According to a recent Martlet article, the petition for the new facility received 2151 signatures, which is more than enough to cause the UVSS to put the question to a referendum.

Also on the list of possible referendums this semester is a much anticipated referendum on CFS membership. Earlier in January the UVSS and CFS met in court. While the case left the UVSS cautiously optimistic that it would receive a referendum, the judge reserved judgment on the case. There is no set time line for when Justice Malcolm Macaulay will make his judgment. In the meantime, UVSS members can only wait and see if they will also have the opportunity to to vote in this referendum as well this semester.

The monetary value of the first seven referendums mentioned here would cost UVic students over $56 per semester if all passed. A bottled water ban would also have an impact on the UVSS's bottom line. As these referendum will likely happen in conjunction with the UVSS Elections one would be logically expect voter turnout to exceed last year's total of 21%. If UVSS politics does not being out voters, the potential impact on their wallet surely will.

Access audit release delayed...Sort of

2011-01-30T00:55:00.000-08:00

At the January 24 board meeting, the UVSS Board approved public release of the Access UVic audit report on January 28. In the days following the board meeting, Access UVic requested that public release of the audit be delayed until after the organization has a chance to make a presentation at the January 31 board meeting.

The result is a bit of a compromise. The auditors report is available to members of the UVSS that request to read it in the Resource Centre, however it has not been released in any widespread manner. As such, you'll be able to read about it here sometime on Tuesday.

YPY motion delayed until February 7

2011-01-27T18:20:00.000-08:00

Members of the UVSS Board realized this morning that an error was made in the notice of motion made regarding YPY. It turns out my post on the motion where I stated "I'm not exactly sure how a misleading name constitutes behaviour that is discriminating" made board members realize the wrong section of the Harassment Policy was referenced in the motion.

As a result of this error, a new notice of motion has been given. In order to ensure all interested parties have notice of the correct motion, it will now be addressed at the February 7 board meeting rather than on January 31.

The correct section of the Harrassment Policy that the complaints committee found Youth Protecting Youth to be in violation of is a clause in Section 2 which states "It is not necessary for the club or club representative to intend for the conduct to produce feelings of fear or intimidation, only that the club or club representative reasonably ought to have known that the conduct would cause such feelings."

While I can see how the committee could reach such a conclusion, it also seems clear that this section of the policy is very subjective.

The delay in addressing this matter could be seen as a positive development. The board was intending to address both a controversial proposal regarding Access UVic as well as this YPY motion in this same meeting. By addressing issues at separate meetings, the board can give more focus to each of these issues.

UVSS SGM Live Blogging and Wrap up

2011-01-27T15:23:00.000-08:00

Check back to this post during the UVSS SGM (and afterwards if you forget) to receive periodic updates at the SGM. I'm not a huge fan of 'Cover It Live' so I'll just use Blogspot's edit function to update this post throughout the UVSS SGM.

3:28PM
Quorum is achieved...just in time.

3:30PM
The Agenda has been adopted.

3:32PM
We are now onto the main motion of the SGM.

3:33PM
Director at Large Dylan Sherlock is speaking in favour of the motion. He sat on the committee that came up with these proposed changes. The committee put in about 40 hours of committee time coming up with these. He describes the benefits of the motion.

3:36PM
Director at Large Jenn Bowie calls the question. It is ruled out of order because both sides must be allowed to speak on the motion before the question can be called.

3:37PM
David Foster moves an amendment. It contains significant changes to the role of the Chairperson.

3:46PM
Several Points of Order and Points of Information were asked. Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan gave a fairly thorough argument against Foster's amendment. Women's Centre Rep Robin Spilker called the question on Foster's amendment. A strong majority opposed the amendment.

3:48PM
Back on the main motion. Director at Large Rob McDonald makes a brief case against the main motion. Jenn Bowie calls the question again. We go to the vote.

3:49PM
Only David Foster oposes it the main motion. It passes!

3:51PM
Time for draw prizes. A student just won the iPod Touch.

3:52PM
Kelsey Hannan suggests the meeting should have a Question Period.

3:53PM
Chair Andrew McVie rules Question Period is not required.

3:54PM
Meeting adjourned!

Wrap Up
As is clear from this live blog, the Special General Meeting was relatively uneventful. While David Foster is somewhat displeased with the outcome, a strong majority of students present supported the changes to Bylaw 8 in their original form. As the quorum achieved was perceived to be tentative, there was little interest in discussing significant amendments to the main motion on the Agenda.

Foster correctly points out that the official enrollment number given by the University is more than 2000 students less than at some previous General Meetings. The reason given by James Coccola for the reduction in the official number of students enrolled (and corresponding lower quorum) was that coop students are not counted towards the enrollment total. As a large number of students are on coop this semester, the official enrollment is also affected.

The YPY saga continues

2011-01-25T14:00:00.001-08:00

Although it appeared that the long saga of disagreement and conflict between the UVSS Board and pro-life club Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) was over last Summer, just issue is about to reappear in UVSS politics.

The following notice of motion was served at the end of Monday's board meeting:

Whereas a Complaints Committee was struck in response to complaints received regarding an event called "Echos of the Holocaust" hosted by the club Youth
Protecting Youth; and

Whereas the complaints committee investigated several different complaints;

and Whereas by naming an event "Echos of the Holocaust" Youth Protecting Youth allowed for people to be misled about the nature of the event and the Complaints Committee deems this to be in violation of the harassment policy, clubs policy part 2 section b;

and Whereas significant concerns were raised by students about off the conduct of campus groups such as, "The Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform";

and Whereas the UVSS would like to find long lasting, proactive solutions to reoccurring issues; therefore,

BIRT the UVSS investigate a mediated solution with Youth Protecting Youth to help prevent further issues;

and BIFRT Youth Protecting Youth be censured for violating the harassment policy found in clubs policy part 2 section b;

and BIFRT the Political Action Committee hold a restorative justice;

and BIRFT legal counsel be consulted to investigate if there can be changes to policy that would address concerns around the conduct of off campus groups or
speakers.

The Harassment policy Part 2 states that harassment is constituted by:

b. Behaviour that discriminates against a person or group of persons on the basis of race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, nationality, religion, family or marital status, physical or mental disability, age, sex, sexuality, gender, gender identity, or conviction for a criminal charge;

I'm not exactly sure how a misleading name constitutes behaviour that is discriminating, however I am sure the debate surrounding this motion with clarify this.

At the end of the day, it appears that this motion sets up the UVSS Board for a return to conflict with the club Youth Protecting Youth. Where it will lead is anyone's guess.

January 24 Board meeting: Endless in cameras, Gender neutral washrooms, Access UVic audit complete

2011-01-25T01:27:00.012-08:00

Some of the highlites of another Monday evening in the SUB:

Endless in cameras
As has become a common occurrence for the 2010-2011 UVSS Board, a number of issues on the agenda had to be discussed in camera. In fact, of the nearly five hour duration of this board meeting, less than an hour was spent with the board out of camera. The issues discussed at this meeting included Access UVic, complaints committee and the CFS. In camera denotes portions of a meeting in which confidential matters are discussed. For these periods, observers in the gallery leave the room and minutes are not taken.

Board to investigate Gender Neutral Washrooms

Chairperson James Coccola and Director at Large Tara Paterson were given a directive by the UVSS board to investigate the creation of gender neutral washrooms on the main floor of the SUB. While the idea has been discussed for a while in the UVSS, Coccola and Paterson were looking for support in principle before pursuing the effort further. They will report their findings at the February 7 board meeting. The report will provide the board with quotes for converting existing washrooms to gender neutral ones.

The SUB currently has a single gender neutral washroom on the main floor. The signage on this washroom makes it clear that it is reserved for students with disabilities. There is also a concern about this washroom’s close proximity to a men’s washroom.

The current Gender Neutral washroom in close proximity to a Men's washroom.

During debate on the motion Pride Rep Gabrielle Sutherland spoke strongly in favour of the motion and described her own personal experiences using gendered washrooms as a transitioning person. In the past, Sutherland had been accused of being a pedophile, received transphobic slurs and even had someone call police over her use of a gendered washroom.

There was some question as to whether this motion meant pursuing single use or multiuse washrooms. Coccola and Paterson appear interested in investigating both possibilities. Paterson pointed out that multiuse gender neutral washrooms would make a stronger political statement.

Riding the Omnibus
With the exception of the Gender Neutral Washrooms motion, all other motions the UVSS Board passed at the meeting via omnibus. Omnibus involved voting on multiple motions at the same time. While this is an efficient method of addressing motions and cuts down on the amount of time meetings take, it also means that no debate occurs on these motions. For this reason it is generally used for topics of which there is going to be near unanimous support. Motions covering support for a UVic Accessibility Coordinator, Capital fund expenditures, and the release of the Access UVic audit were passed in this manner.

Access UVic Audit complete
As readers may recall, last August the UVSS Board passed a motion declaring that it no longer recognized Access UVic. This was due in part to unusual transactions that an accounting firm spotted in the organization’s finances as well as disagreement over who would pay for a University-ordered forensic audit of Access’s finances.

It was revealed at Monday’s board meeting that the auditor’s report is now complete. The report will be made public on Friday January 28. No doubt you will be able to read the report and analysis of it here.

Back in August, I pondered when Access UVic would be recognized by the UVSS Board again. The outcome of the audit will likely have a strong impact on how the UVSS Board moves forward on this situation.

Coccola interviews George Abbott about Post Secondary Education

2011-01-24T21:42:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday, January 20, BC Liberal leadership candidate George Abbott visited the SUB.

UVSS Chairperson James Coccola and CCSS (Camosun College) External Affairs Executive Matteus Clement interviewed Abbott after the event to get his thoughts on post secondary education policies.

Here is the interview:

View in higher quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9KXbX6Mis4

UVSS to give away iPod Touch at SGM, but should it?

2011-01-17T21:02:00.004-08:00

During my years of following the UVSS board, a number of strategies and incentives have been used by boards in attempts to achieve quorum at General Meetings. Sometimes the issues themselves are deemed incentive enough to attend. Other times, a wide variety of small offerings from coffee and cookies to pizza have been used. Overall, there really appears to be no pattern or criteria used to determine what will be provided at General Meetings.

In an attempt to achieve quorum at the Special General Meeting January 27, the UVSS board will be giving away door prizes. One of the door prizes will be an iPod Touch. The catch to the door prizes is that they will only be given away if quorum is achieved and maintained long enough to have a vote on the proposed changes to Bylaw 8.

Details about the iPod Touch, such as which model it is and if it comes at a cost to the UVSS are unclear. Depending on the model, an iPod Touch can retail for between $250 and $430.

The fact the board is giving away door prizes is a clear sign that the UVSS board supports the proposed changes to the UVSS Executive that are on the agenda and wants them to pass. The question is, should the UVSS board be going to this extent to influence AGM attendance, and by extension, it's outcomes? If there were motions on the agenda a board did not want to pass (impeachment perhaps?), it is doubtful door prizes would be given away to achieve quorum.

Giving away expensive door prizes can set a bad precedence for the UVSS board. If General Meeting's lack door prizes and fail to achieve quorum, should the UVSS board then be accused of suppressing attendance? It is doubtful these implications were considered when the decision to give away door prizes was made.

Athletics facilities petition confirmed

2011-01-15T20:01:00.006-08:00

It can now be confirmed that a petition is currently being collected at UVic's Ian Stewart Complex seeking approval of a new $55 fee. Here is a copy of the petition with it's wording:

A Facebook Event for the petition has also been created: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=171494142893421

The current methodology of collecting signatures appears to simply have a clipboard with the petition sitting on a desk at the front desk at Ian Stewart as well as one at the desk in the Fitness Weight Center. There is a small sign by the one at the front desk. This is a fairly passive way of obtaining signatures and makes is quite unlikely the goal of 2000 signatures will be reached in a timely manner. The Facebook Event for the petition indicates the signatures must be collected by January 18, however this might not exactly be the case.

The wording of the petition specifies that a referendum be held in March, but it does not specify any dates. A January 18 deadline is clearly intended for holding a referendum during the UVSS Elections in early March. There is nothing that would prevent such a referendum from occurring in late March if the required number of signatures was presented to the UVSS board sometime in February.

Check back in a few weeks to see how this petition turns out.

January 19 Update: A message from the Facebook Event creator, Katrina Laquian, states "Now that enough signatures have been gathered to have a referendum vote on the new facilities, we must have it removed from facebook." This would indicate the goal of 2000 signatures was reached.

Another Referendum for new Athletics facilities?

2011-01-15T00:05:00.003-08:00

During my latest visit to the University's Ian Stewart Complex I came across the following sign posted:

As readers may recall, UVic already had a referendum on new recreation facilities in October 2009. In the lead up to the vote the UVic Grad Students Society strongly objected to the referendum passing on the grounds that the corresponding $55 Athletics fee increase would violate provincial legislation prohibiting universities from raising fees at rates higher than inflation.

There is, however, a bit of a loophole to the legislation. As the Ministry of Advanced Education's webpage on the topic states: "The tuition limit does not apply to: Mandatory fees for student association or society fees (collected on behalf of student associations)." In other words, if the same referendum is held (and passed) through a referendum held by the UVSS rather than by the University, it would then comply with the province's legislation.

At the time of my visit to ISC, there was no petition available to be signed. Current UVSS board members also appear to be unaware that such a petition is being collected. This would indicate that the petition is likely being led by a small group of students with the support of Vikes Recreation and is likely in the very early stages of being collected.

Presumably, the goal of such a petition is to hold a referendum this semester in conjunction with UVSS Elections. This would give a fairly narrow window of opportunity for petitioners to collect the necessary signatures from 10% of students. Given the reality that thousands of students make use of the current athletic facilities at Ian Stewart every week it is certainly possible that a petition could be successful.

Check back for an update when there is more concrete and definitive information on this petition.

Update: The following Facebook Event confirms the petition is under way: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=171494142893421

UVic considers going Rabbit-free

2011-01-13T23:46:00.005-08:00

In the latest twist to the rabbit saga at UVic, the UVic administration is looking to make the campus fully rabbit free. I can't say I am entirely surprised and this was probably the end goal of the administration all along. Anyone who's observed the campus the past few months has probably noticed themselves the dramatic reduction in the rabbit population since the rabbit management plan was released last June.

The good news for animal lovers is that the remaining rabbits would be spared from a cull and will instead be relocated to sanctuaries much like those that have already been removed from campus.

Read all about this development in the Times Colonist article.

Bowie's response to criticism of her Online Voting vote

2011-01-12T02:04:00.004-08:00

Director at Large Jenn Bowie published the following note to her Facebook profile Tuesday evening with the title "An Open Letter on The Online Election Vote". Being an open letter, I am republishing it here in full for readers to see Bowie's reasoning for why she voted the way she did. At the end, I have made a critique of Bowie's reasoning.

Jenn Bowie's Open Letter:

I have decided to address the concerns which have been vocalized . I understand the backlash. I did run on online elections, I did not , however , run on the idea that any online election system that is thrown our way is the best option for the UVSS.

Before I get into detailed accounts of my reasoning, I would like to clear something up. I decided to vote the way I did right before I voted, this was not something which Dylan or any other board member told me to do. In fact the only people who were telling me how to vote were the “renew” board members who texted asking me to abstain. I am not someone who allows myself to be coerced, and I did in fact consider my decision very carefully

I had 4 primary concerns with this system which lead me to make my decision. I wasn’t able to speak to these because the chairperson erroneously counted a Point of Information as a speaking right and therefore denied me my chance to speak (I gave a speaking right to one of the audience members):

First, The Idea of Election Parties/ People Forcing Students to Vote with Laptops: This is a concern for me because it has been an issue at other schools. At both Concordia and York Universities there were instances of students being told to vote certain ways.

Second, The fact that we were allowing UVic to Handle our elections: The UVSS (orignally the AMS) was founded on the principle that it would function as a scrutineer to the University. I feel like allowing the University to have oversight over our elections would be like the CAW union having their elections overseen by General Motors. When I ran on online elections I had imagined that we would have a third party system created specifically for the UVSS, which would be accessed during polling hours. Asking a system that has already been created to modify itself for us with a months notice isn’t what I ran on.

Third, in the letter from the University they wrote, “ We will not investigate allegations of security breaches unless the university determines there is significant reason to do so” : for me this provided a large and unconscionable grey area. With the paper system we have now any alleged breach is brought to the attention of the CEO and Candidates. It is about transparency. If there is any perceived breach it should be investigated, and from that letter it was clear the university wasn’t willing to do that.

Fourth, by having this system there would be less student jobs: The UVSS’s Operating Policy explicitly reads, “5. To provide employment and training to UVic students.” By having a system like this student jobs would be lost. If there were to be remote voting for students at polling stations , the jobs would still be there, and the priority for me is student employment.

Thank you for reading this. I understand that many of you are disappointed with my choice, and I understand the reasons why. This response is just to provide context which was lacking. If you wish to speak to me directly about this matter I will be at the UVSS table tomorrow from 10:30- 4, please feel free to approach me and discuss this matter further.

Jenn Bowie

UVSS Uncovered Critique:

One of the major reasons UVSS members have had such a negative response to Bowie's choice to vote against online voting Monday night was that she provided none of these reasons at the meeting despite three hours of debate on the topic. Bowie's claim that she intended to provide these reasons but was denied the ability to do so as a result of Chairperson error is categorically false. While James Coccola erroneously told Bowie she had used both her opportunities to speak, Bowie stated at that time that she had intended to call the question (a Robert's Rules term for going straight to the vote).

Reason one. I would like to see Bowie expand on her examples of Concordia and York as reasons we should not move to online elections. It is well known that Concordia and York have had some of the most controversial student elections of the past decade. They make the UVSS's issues look tame in comparison. There are deep systemic issues at these Universities that are causing their electoral problems. The controversies at these two institutions have occurred with both paper ballots and online voting.

Reason two. The claim that Bowie thought online elections would mean a third party system created specifically for the UVSS is completely bogus. Every reference to online elections heard from the Renew slate last election specifically mentioned using UVic's Webvote system. There are repeated references to using the University's online voting that can be found in the minutes of the 2009-2010 board (here, here and here). The Renew promise was to continue working to make the work of the previous board a reality. Prior to Monday's meeting no board member had ever expressed a preference for a third party system.

Reason three. Bowie is making far too much out of this one sentence in the University's letter. The University is merely stating that it requires a significant reason to conduct any investigations into election fraud etc. Every year dozen's of complaints are launched during UVSS elections. Many of them are petty or baseless and go nowhere. The University isn't going to do an investigation if there isn't a reasonable amount of evidence that one needs to be done. They will do one if warrented however.

Reason four. Student jobs would not be lost if we used the Webvote system. Chairperson James Coccola specifically stated this. You would still have polling stations with laptops that would require poll sitters to be hired. There is no reason why student jobs should be affected if the UVSS moved to online elections.

To conclude, I find most of Bowie's reasons to be either false or misleading. As they were not made during Monday's meeting they were not able to be disputed at that time.

Fun Fact: The UVSS has been working towards moving to internet voting for ten years now! (Meeting Minutes)
"Be it resolved that a task force be established to investigate and make recommendations on the feasibility of establishing Board policy to allow internet-based voting for Society referenda and/or elections.

Robinson said that the electoral committee has discussed this issue a number of times over the past couple of months. She said that UVic has set up web-voting for the Senate and Board of Governors elections and the suggestion has been made that the society use web-voting for the up-coming general elections."-February 20, 2001

UVSS Board rejects Online Voting

2011-01-11T00:28:00.014-08:00

At the January 10 board meeting, the issue of online voting was prominent on the agenda. The topic was actually addressed in three separate motions during three hours of debate on the issue as the UVSS board attempted to come up with some sort of compromise that would make online voting a reality for the UVSS election.

The topic began with Chairperson James Coccola giving members of the board a presentation about what online voting for the UVSS would entail. The presentation, which included a handout for board members, described that the elections would be done via UVic’s Webvote system. This is the same system that is used for the UVic Graduate Students Society, Senate and Board of Governors elections. Coccola’s presentation went on to state that a third party had done a security audit of the University’s system which found the system to be secure.

The presentation went on to describe the online voting systems and their effects at several other schools including UBC, SFU, U of Frazer Valley, Kwantlen, U of Alberta, U of Ottawa and St. Francis Xavier. Coccola pointed out that the well publicised security issue at UBC stemmed from the fact that UBC’s AMS hired a third party company to administer its elections rather than use a University based system.

If the UVSS chose to use UVic’s Webvote system, it would cost $4500. Coccola also pointed out that UVic has decided not to put stickers on student cards next Fall so the board will need to find a solution to address this reality for the 2012 election.

Prior to the meeting it was expected that any concerns against online voting would relate to possible security issues that may come from it. In fact, there was very little mention of this topic during the meeting.

Director at Large Dylan Sherlock expressed opposition to online voting in the proposed format because UVic’s Webvote system allows for voting to occur outside of polling stations from any computer. He labelled this “remote voting” and expressed concerns that since students could vote anytime of day from any computer we have no way of knowing if they have been coerced or influenced while voting. Thus, Sherlock went on to label elections held under UVic’s Webvote system undemocratic.

Several other board members expanded on Sherlock’s point about remote voting, expressing concerns that large “voting parties” with alcohol and laptops may occur where students may be convinced to support a candidate and vote for them. It was also suggested that a candidate may walk around with a laptop allowing students to vote on it.

Former board member and fellow blogger David Foster took strong issue with Sherlock’s labelling of elections held using UVic’s Webvote system as undemocratic. Foster passionately declared that his election as a Student Senator via the Webvote system was democratic and legitimate.

Accessibility was also an interesting topic surrounding online voting. What made accessibility so particularly interesting was that it was used by board members both arguing for and against online voting. Gabrielle Sutherland, speaking on behalf of UVic Pride, stated Pride’s position was that online voting does not give everyone equal access to voting. This was reiterated by NSU rep Tanille Johnston stating that a certain class of people have increased accessibility when elections are held online. The reasoning behind this position was that more well off students have more internet access since they own personal laptops and smartphones.

Conversely, board members such as Director at Large Jose Barrios argued online voting would in fact increase accessibility as all UVic students have free internet access. This could also be very helpful for students with disabilities he added.

Throughout the debate, several board members emphasized that paper ballots were not secure and that board members are kidding themselves if they believe it to be secure. Director at Large Nathan Warner reminded the board that last election Shawn Slavin demonstrated how easy it would be to vote twice in an election (Martlet article). Director of Services Remy Hall mentioned that any student can claim they lost their sticker and go to the University Centre to get a new one. Students can also entirely “lose” their card and pay for a new one to vote twice as well. Director of Academics Rajpreet Sall reminded the board that two elections ago 150 ballots went missing from a polling station and were never found.

Another aspect of the debate was human error in paper ballots. Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan pointed out that roughly 200 ballots were contested during a recount last election as voter intent was not clear. Rajpreet Sall was elected by a mere 8 votes in that recount. As online voting does not involve any interpretation of intention, this issue would no longer exist.

At one point I was given the opportunity to speak and used this to remind the board that 10 of the current members (all present) had ran on platforms that explicitly pledged to implement online elections. I encouraged these board members to follow through on their platforms.

To my astonishment, several board members that followed me argued against board members following their election platforms. Dylan Sherlock felt it would be undemocratic for a board member to justify their decision solely based on promises contained in their election platform. NSU rep Tanille Johnston argued that board members ran for the board a long time ago and have come a long way. She suggested board members may change their minds as they become more familiar with the topic.

A further issue that came up during the debate on online voting was the apparent lack of consultation on the issue. Dylan Sherlock stated he was infuriated with the lack of consultation on the issue. He also made a claim that Director at Large Jaraad Marani was being not invited to meetings that pertain to online voting. Unfortunately no board members that followed specifically addressed this assertion that Marani had been deliberately left out of meetings leaving this allegation rather unresolved. Feeling personally attacked, James Coccola responded to Sherlock's criticism stating he has so many meetings every week that it would be unreasonable to expect him to update the board about every one of them. He simply does not have the time. Coccola went on to state that it was part of his job to meet frequently with the University and gave the example that he had had three meetings with various University representatives earlier in the day.

After a full hour of debate on the issue the board finally went to a vote on the issue.

Results
In Favour
Jose Barrios, Remy Hall, Kelsey Hannan, Laura MacLeod, Mehak Mehra, Rajpreet Sall, Karina Sangha, Nathan Warner

Opposed
Jenn Bowie, Jessica Humphries, Tanille Johnston, Jaraad Marani, Rob McDonald, Caitlyn Pal, Tara Paterson, Dylan Sherlock, Robyn Spilker, Gabrielle Sutherland

The vote for online voting failed 10-8.

But this was not the end of the issue of online voting at this meeting. Following a recess Jose Barrios attempted to add a motion regarding online voting to the agenda of the Special AGM (which had been approved earlier in the meeting). What followed was another two hours of debate, and numerous amendments and an effort to go back and try to find some sort of compromise on the issue at this meeting.

Barrios’ initial motion was a straight forward motion that would ask the general membership if they wanted online voting. This was amended by Dylan Sherlock to restrict remote voting to only those who are on coop or those with disabilities that request it. This was a peculiar move given his labeling of remote voting as undemocratic earlier in the meeting. Ultimately a compromise could not be achieved due in part to the technical limitations of the UVic Webvote system. As a result, the UVSS will not have online elections in 2011.

Promise Not Kept

The majority of controversial decisions that are made by the UVSS board involve issues that were unforeseen during the previous election or simply not addressed in candidate platforms. The 200-300 words candidates have only allows them to make a handful of promises.

Many candidate platforms in the 2010 election explicitly mentioned a promise to implement online elections. One such candidate was Director at Large Jenn Bowie. Bowie’s platform stated “Plan for the planet: Move to Online Elections.” Yet, Bowie voted against online elections Monday night. With the 10-8 result, a kept promise from Bowie would have meant a 9-9 tie and allowed Chairperson James Coccola to cast a deciding vote. There is little doubt Coccola would have supported online voting given the work he has put into making this possible.

It appears the likelihood that Jenn Bowie would go against her platform was foreseen by some board members. During question period early in the meeting Jose Barrios had asked Bowie specifically whether or not she had campaigned in favour of online voting. Given how few promises candidates actually make during an election, I am very disappointed to see a board member blatantly go against one contained in their platform.

UVSS Uncovered’s Guide to running for the UVSS Board

2011-01-08T23:55:00.008-08:00

January is the time of the year when the final decisions about candidates for the UVSS board are made. In reality, some potential candidates have probably been making plans for the 2011 election for a few months now.

Maybe as a reader you’ve been thinking about running for the board or perhaps someone connected to a slate has approached you.

This guide is intended to give students a realistic idea of what kind of commitment running and serving on the board entails. Generally the guide focuses on the Director at Large experience as most new candidates for the UVSS will be running for these positions.

Before the Election

Get involved in the UVSS and familiarize yourself with its structure, functions and people. Attend a board meeting and/or committee meeting. Consider that if you are elected you’ll be expected to attend roughly 25 board meetings next year. Do these meetings seem like something you want to attend twice a month? I would expect that if someone was really serious about running for the UVSS board that they would already be involved in some way.

If you decide to run for the UVSS board, you basically have two options: run on a slate or run as an independent. In general, being on a slate has significant advantages for being elected to the board. Independents do sometimes get elected but will need to be involved and well known around campus to have a real chance.

How do you get on a slate? There is no simple answer to this question. The first step is to figure out who is leading the slates as this isn't always widely known. This is party because it could violate election rules for a slate to publicize who its members are. If you have been involved with the board in some way this year, you can probably figure out what students to talk to. If you are really stumped, contact a current board member or simply walk into the Resource Centre and talk with someone.

Decide why you are running. What do you want to do if you get elected to the board? If you are on a slate some of your goals will align with the slate, but it is good to have individual goals as well.

Pay attention to deadlines. Nominations for the UVSS election open January 31 and close February 7. When you submit your nomination package on or before February 7, you will need to include your nomination form with 15 signatures, your election platform and an election photo.

Post Nomination Preparations

Following the February 7 nomination deadline, the election is not yet officially underway, but for candidates it begins to feel like it has.

Running for the UVSS board requires a significant commitment of time. Some candidates will choose to take fewer courses this semester because of this.

After nominations are closed, candidates generally hit the ground running in terms of creating media for their campaigns. You will want to have handbills, posters, banners, various forms of electronic media and others in order to be successful in the election. As we aren’t all great at graphic design and other skills required to create these materials, this is one way being on a slate can be a significant advantage.

Expect to spend quite a few hours preparing materials for the election. You’d be surprised how long it takes to create a good quality banner.

What are you doing during reading break? Candidates serious about running for the board will generally spend it working on campaign preparation.

This year’s campaign dates are a little different from past years in that there is an extra week of preparation time. This will probably make the preparation process a little less intense than years past.

During the Election

The actual UVSS election begins on Monday February 28. Undoubtedly candidates will wake up at some ungodly hour as a means to reserve some of the preferred wall spaces around campus. Candidates will strive to get their posters and banners up as soon as possible.

During the election, anytime you are not in class, you will probably be campaigning in some way. This means speaking to classes about your candidacy, hand billing and meeting students and addressing fallen banners. It’s definitely the type of thing that favours extroverts.

Do you plan to sleep? I didn’t think so. You will make good friends with Red Bull.

The elections last two weeks and can be very intense time when juggling other aspects of life.

Follow the rules. You don’t want to have all your effort go to waste over a silly oversight.

The campaign closes at 4PM on March 11. By the end you will have no doubt become close to the people who ran with you as a result of your shared experience.

Post Election

After the election ends, it is quite likely you will spend the last couple weeks of the semester catching up on some of your courses. You’ve spent six weeks focusing on the election and generally progress on readings and essays falls behind.

If you were successful in becoming elected, your UVSS board term will start at the beginning of May 2011 and go until the end of April 2012. You are allowed to take a four month leave of absence during your term. Generally if you ran because you wanted to make changes it would be recommended that you stay in Victoria during the summer. Generally more work gets done from May-August (as board members tend to have fewer classes and more time) than any other semester.

While on the board you are expected to attend the board meeting every two weeks as well as serve on at least two UVSS committees. The amount of time commitment this entails can vary significantly. Some board meetings can last two hours and others can go over six hours. It really depends on what issues the board is being faced with at the time. Similarly, the frequency of committee meetings and the length they last can also vary a lot.

Conclusion

Running for and serving on the UVSS board requires a significant commitment of time and energy.

While there is minimal compensation for serving on the board you will likely improve your organizational, interpersonal and leadership skills which can be valuable assets. You are also likely to make close friendships with those you run and serve with.

Perhaps most importantly, I genuinely believe you can make a difference while serving on the UVSS board. The success earlier this board’s term of extending Late Night Transit is just one example.

Evaluation of Organizational Renewal Committee's proposed changes

2011-01-05T23:58:00.004-08:00

When the Ad Hoc Organizational Renewal Committee was created last July it was given a fairly vague purpose to ""reevaluate and reassess the current board structure and make recommendations to the BoD."

The most common criticism of the UVSS that I have heard over the years can be summed up under the umbrella of "The UVSS doesn't represent me." For this reason, I interpreted the overall goal of this committee to come up with suggestions that would make the UVSS board more relevant and representative to the UVSS Membership.

So how has the committee done? The recent proposal that has come out of the Organizational Renewal Committee is a positive change, yet will represent only a small change in terms of making the UVSS more relevant and representative of students.

UVSS Executives have stated for years that they are often working more than the 37.5 hours a week that they are paid for. During the busiest times of the year they may even be working double this amount. It seems pretty clear for me that at least some of the Executive positions have too many responsibilities, particularly the Director of Services position. By creating an extra Executive position then each Executive will have less work load and be able to have more focus in their jobs.

For me, the most significant change is the creation of the Director of Events position. I suspect that Special Events are given secondary importance to more essential functions of the current Director of Services under the current board structure. This is unfortunate due to the fact that putting on events is a great way for the UVSS to connect with its membership. By having a dedicated position for events in conjunction with the recently passed Special Events fee, the UVSS will undoubtedly put on significantly more quality events for its members if these proposed changes pass.

The proposed changes to the UVSS Executive are definitely ones I encourage students to support.

Despite this positive proposal that has come out of the committee, I feel the biggest way to make the UVSS more relevant and representative of students is to investigate changes to the current Director at Large positions. These positions make up a majority of the board and contribute significantly to the direction each board takes.

The UVSS board will never be great at representing all of its membership so long as large sections of it's membership are literally not represented. Of the current fifteen elected board members, ten have degrees in Political Science or Women's Studies. While it is understandable for students in these Departments to be more politically active, this leaves Departments and even entire Faculties with no representation on the UVSS board.

Chairperson James Coccola has indicated that the work of the Organizational Renewal Committee will continue for the rest of this board's term. His comment on the previous post on this topic hints at a desire to address changes to the Director at Large positions. As it took the committee roughly six months to complete the proposed changes to the Executive Directors it appears the committee has its work cut out for it if a new proposal regarding the Director at Large positions is to be completed before the end of this board's term.

UVSS and CFS to meet in court January 6

2011-01-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

As short but sweet update on the UVSS's legal action against the CFS to start the new year.

Back in November the UVSS board decided to take the CFS to court to obtain a membership referendum. Tomorrow, January 6, the UVSS meets the CFS in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to settle the matter.

In the fall of 2009 a group of students, which included several students who are now board members, collected a petition containing signatures from 11.4% of UVSS members. Around the same time a counter-petition that stated students wished to have their names removed from any such petition was also circulated. In March 2010, the CFS informed the UVSS the required threshold of signatures (10%) had not been met, apparently as a result of the counter-petition.

It is expected that the court case will focus on the legal standing of the counter-petition that was collected as well as the $200 000+ debt the CFS claims the UVSS owes from 1998-99. It is expect the case will be resolved by the end of the day. Check back soon to hear results of the case.

Special AGM to decide on Executive restructuring

2010-12-21T19:10:00.005-08:00

Way back in June the UVSS board created the Organizational Renewal committee. This temporary committee has had the mandate to investigate restructuring the UVSS board so that it can better serve members. The last time the board underwent a major structural change was 1996.

After months of meetings the committee has come up with proposed changes to the structure of the UVSS executive. Instead of the current four executives, there will be five positions.

Director at Large Jenn Bowie has created a Facebook event to receive feedback on the proposed changes. I encourage readers to give read up on the new structure and give feedback as changes can still be made.

A few days ago Chairperson James Coccola also posted the proposed changes. Fellow blogger Rich of What does it for me raises some very good questions that have yet to be answered. At this point it is unclear how Executive compensation will be affected and whether the number of Directors At Large will be reduced as a result of this.

One question I am left with after seeing this proposal is "Is the work of the Organizational Renewal committee done now?" Addressing the structure of the UVSS Executive is a good start, however, considering changes to the At Large positions could also be beneficial.

Before any of these changes to board structure can go into effect, Bylaw changes must be approved at a General Meeting. To have this new structure go into effort for the 2011-2012 board term a Special General Meeting will be required in late January.

Special General Meetings are fairly rare in the UVSS as only one has occurred in the past decade. It will be interesting to see if enough students can be convinced to come out to the meeting to achieve quorum since board structure isn't exactly a topic that tends to get students interested enough to attend a General Meeting.

UVic Sorority not as inclusive as portrayed

2010-12-16T19:28:00.002-08:00

Today the Globe and Mail covered the establishment of UVic's first Sorority, Kappa Beta Gamma.

While the majority of the article is largely a rehash of facts that many UVic students will already know, there was one new piece of information that stood out to me:

"But Kappa Beta Gamma organizer Ashley Slade wasn't dissuaded. Last month, she turned down 20 women eager to join the sorority, which today has 28 members."

Throughout the process of attempting to have the University of Victoria officially recognize the Sorority, the organizers of the interest group repeatedly portrayed the Sorority as inclusive to self-identifying women.

At the June 14 board meeting Women's Centre Rep Robyn Spilker asked "UVSS clubs are inclusive and cannot exclude – what is the membership criteria for your sorority?" Sorority organizer Ashley Slade's response was "For a sorority, the member needs to be a woman. We don’t know if there will be grade requirements or a fee."

A Saanich News article published in advance of the UVSS AGM stated:

"Chapman, who kickstarted the campaign to get sorority approval, says the goal isn’t to establish an elitist group. Rather, it’s one that gives female students a positive, familial option for socializing."

With these and similar statements from Sorority interest group representatives over the past seven months it comes as a surprise to learn that 40% of the women who expressed interest in joining the Sorority were denied membership. Given such a significant number of turned down applicants, I can only conclude that UVic students were mislead about the inclusiveness of Kappa Beta Gamma.

Join UVSS Uncovered!

2010-12-15T22:44:00.001-08:00

When I started this blog I always hoped that it could have some similarities to some of the blogs that cover UBC's AMS. Namely, that they have multiple contributors.

Being a believer that two (or more) heads are better than one, I am opening UVSS Uncovered up to being a collaborative effort. Any student, regardless of their political persuasion is encouraged to email me at uvssuncovered@hotmail.com to become a member of the UVSS Uncovered team.

This could be the ideal opportunity for someone who wants to ease into UVSS or UVic related blogging without feeling the need to compete with more established blogs. It also also allows you to write as frequently as your free time allows.

While almost anyone is eligible to apply, there are three criteria:

Your posts must be made under your own name

You cannot be a board member or intend to run in 2011

You want to blog about the UVSS, UVic and related topics

If you meet this basic criteria, UVSS Uncovered wants to hear from you!

Who is UVic Underground? Part 2

2010-12-10T00:15:00.012-08:00

I'll keep this post short and sweet.

In the past week UVic Underground has made two posts that indicate I was a little off in my first profile of who is behind it. While a week ago I felt think blog was being written by a current board member, this is likely not the case.

The two posts (1, 2) indicate that the writer is very much in favour of UVic's CFS membership. They are also anti-Coccola-Hannan-Barrios (the addition of Coccola is new addition and appears baseless). As almost all members of the current board (yes, even the majority of those who ran with Students United) are far more critical of the CFS, I no longer suspect the writer to be a current board member. The writer also accepts the legitimacy of the CFS counter petition to be a given with no need to justify it.

Given these latest posts, it seems clear the writer of UVic Underground is pro CFS and very likely was part of the counter-petition effort. They also just might have a grudge against the current chairperson.

No further comment.

The cost of UVic Graduation

2010-12-09T20:12:00.001-08:00

The deadline to apply for May 2011 graduation was December 1. For those that missed this deadline, they can still apply by February 15, 2011 and pay a $10 late fee. Those that applied on time will have noticed that the cost to apply to graduate with a degree at UVic is $50. I have heard more than a couple people over the past week wonder what this cost covers.

This $50 fee includes a $10 grad class fee, meaning UVic's take is $40. Does what UVic provide actually cost $40/student? I'm more than a little skeptical.

The $40 goes towards the following: Confirming you are eligible to graduate, printing off the degree with your name on it and the right to attend your convocation. One would expect the biggest expense of this would be convocation, however the cost to the University is negligible considering it owns Farquhar auditorium. Graduates also need to rent a cap and gown in addition to this fee.

There is also the questions of why you must apply six months before convocation. Final confirmation of ones degree cannot occur until final grades are submitted after the April exam period, yet the University appears to need to know you are intending to graduate more than a semester in advance.

The cost of graduation is not the only degree related expense where the University seems to charge a fee much higher than the actual cost of providing the service. Need an official transcript? $10 to hit print and apply a stamp. A degree completion letter? Also $10. A Certification of degree completion? That'll be $15. Hopefully you don't lose your degree. Replacing a degree will set you back $75. If you change your name (as may occur due to marriage) the same fee and process applies.

One can't help but wonder if all these extra fees are a way for the University to circumvent the BC Government's legislation limiting tuition increases at the rate of inflation. Either way, I'll be sure not to lose my degree.

New carpets a reasonable expense

2010-12-09T19:22:00.002-08:00

Last week, David Foster was highly critical of the UVSS board approving the replacement of carpets in the Resource Centre. This $5200 expense was approved via omnibus (passing multiple motions at the same time without debate). In Foster's post, it is stated that the carpets are still usable and do not pose health risks.

Intrigued by the post, I made a note to look more closely at the carpet next time I was in the Resource Centre. Here's what I found:

The carpet in the UVSS Resource Centre is covered in many small and large stains. Is it usable? I suppose it depends on what you consider a usable carpet to look like. A better question is what message a carpet like this sends to visitors of the Resource Centre. It is, afterall, a place a business.

The UVSS board may be able to get by leaving the carpet a little longer, but replacement is certainly not the luxury expense it is portrayed as in Foster's post. Perhaps some office rules are needed to ensure the new carpet does not end up looking like the current one.

Coccola enters UVSS blogosphere

2010-12-09T00:45:00.001-08:00

Readers may have noticed a new addition to the "UVic Student Blogs" section in the side panel. UVSS Chairperson James Coccola has decided to try his hand at blogging. His Chairperson blog can be viewed at http://jcoccola.wordpress.com/.

It is perhaps not entirely surprising that Coccola would begin blogging. He has submitted posts to blogs in the past and has sent out the odd press release to UVSS related blogs.

With only one post up, it remains to be seen what Coccola's blog will become. It may serve as another means of communicating what is going on around campus. Maybe Coccola will give us his insights into issues or perhaps advocate a position on an issue. The latter would be particularly interesting given that he generally chooses to remain neutral when chairing meetings. Whatever he writes, I look forward to reading.

Camosun College to become smoke free. Will UVic follow?

2010-12-08T23:45:00.001-08:00

While this blog strives to take a UVic-centered approach, there are a number connections between UVic and Camosun College that are both formal and informal.

http://www.timescolonist.com/health/Camosun+College+aims+make+itself+smoke+free/3944264/story.html

Currently Camosun requires smokers to be at least five meters away from doors, windows and air intakes, which exceeds the CRD's bylaws. UVic on the other hand brought in a policy in 2007 that require smokers to be at least ten meters from building entrances and structures.

Camosun will move to smoking only in designated areas on February 1 to be followed by a full campus ban in a few years.

Those who have been around UVic a while may recall that the there was a big push at UVic about four years ago to see a similar ban on smoking. That effort was led by a UVSS Club called the Tobacco Free Pro Health Club. Their website from the time is still up. The UVSS board of the time was split on the issue, and in the end the motion didn't pass. The club's efforts did however lead to the current ten meter policy.

At Monday evening's board meeting, the UVSS board selected Director at Large Nathan Warner to sit on the UVic Smoke-free Areas Committee. This would appear to be an indication that the University is considering ways to further limit smoking on campus.

Coccola and Sall selected for Referendum Oversight Committee

2010-12-07T00:37:00.004-08:00

In what appears to be a case of putting the cart before the horse, the UVSS board selected its two representatives to a Referendum Oversight Committee (ROC) for a future referendum on CFS membership. The representatives will be Chairperson James Coccola and Director of Academics Rajpreet Sall.

It seems a little peculiar to select the UVSS's representatives to the ROC at this time. The UVSS only began to initiate legal action against the CFS last month and has not even received a court date for the case yet. I would interpret the selection of representatives this early to be a sign that the UVSS board is confident they will win the right to a referendum in court and hold it this school year.

The selection of Coccola and Sall is interesting as neither of them participated in collecting signatures for the defenderation petition in 2009, nor have they publicly taken a stance on continued membership to this point. With a half dozen or so board members who did participate in collecting signatures for the petition, one might have expected these board members to have run for the ROC. Choosing board members who are neutral can be beneficial, however. ROC representatives with strong views will be more likely to encounter deadlocks rather than engage in reasoned negotiation.

If and when the UVSS holds a referendum, I am sure Coccola and Sall will represent the UVSS's interests well.

Hannan proposes GIC purchases to generate new revenue

2010-12-05T23:07:00.010-08:00

In the past week, Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan has come under a lot of criticism in online comments following his censure at the last board meeting. It's easy to focus on the negatives while neglecting Hannan's positive contributions.

One of Hannan's best attributes is that he is always looking for ways to improve upon the status quo. Given the UVSS's current fiscal situation, this type of approach is precisely what the UVSS needs.

Hannan has recognized that large amounts of the money collected by the UVSS go untouched for long periods of time throughout the year. This money simply sits in various accounts until it needs to be spent. In a motion to be discussed at Monday's board meeting, Hannan proposes the UVSS put this money to use to generate new revenue.

Rather than having money sit in various accounts, Hannan's proposal would see money invested into GIC's for periods of the year when it is not being used. The motion states that the UVSS can generate thousands of dollars of revenue by investing money in this manner.

Hannan's motion emphasizes that the investments would be ones that carry no risk of losing money and would allow the UVSS to access the money for spending at any time. It goes on to state that money would only be invested in this manner during periods of good cash flow.

For me, this proposal seems like a no-brainer. The UVSS will be able to generate extra revenue by making a rather small change to the way it operates. It leaves me to ponder why no one else thought of this before.

Who is UVic Underground?

2010-12-01T21:37:00.002-08:00

Since September, followers of the UVSS may have noticed a mysterious newcomer to the UVSS/UVic blogosphere known as UVic Underground. What makes UVic Underground stand out is the fact that it is run by an anonymous individual(s). It also purports to accept reader submissions.

At least, the blog would like you to believe "submissions welcomed and encouraged" and that it is "looking forward to your first submission." Having attempted to make a submission it seems clear that accepted submissions must be in line with the spin they want to be published.

So who is UVic Underground? To be honest, I don't know. The posts on the blog however do leave several clues:

The most recent post contains the fact that the Kelsey Hannan has been suspended from attending Pride meetings.This fact has not been reported anywhere else.
Multiple posts are related to anti-homophobic topics.
Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that UVic Underground and former Director of Services Heather McKenzie both reblogged this ad for the "Challenging Anti Asian Racism" teach-in from the same source.
In the description of the Health Plan negotiations, a number of the details provided are something only members of the Finance Committee and people who have spoken with these members would know.
Two posts have promoted arts events (1, 2) at UVic. (I recognize that arts and music are mentioned underneath the title of the blog)

Overall this profile leads to the conclusion that the primary writer of UVic Underground is very likely a member of UVic Pride who is a fan of the arts (and maybe even an art/music student). It is also very likely that if the writer is not a board member, they are otherwise close friends with one. If it is a board member, this would likely explain the desire for the writer to remain anonymous.

Hannan censured for "not meeting commitments"

2010-11-30T22:05:00.011-08:00

Back in September, I highlighted how Director of Finance Kelsey Hannan was choosing office hours that began much later in the day than his counterparts on the UVSS Executive. He was also noted to have missed some important meetings he had scheduled.

Over the past two months it appears that not a whole lot has changed. I have heard Board members express frustration that Hannan wasn't around. His choice of office hours have also been mentioned in comments on the Martlet's website as well as other UVSS blogs.

As a result, it is not too surprising that the UVSS board censured Hannan last night. A censure is a formal reprimand that a board can use to express disapproval of a board member's actions. While it has no real impact, it is still undesirable to be censured by ones peers. The debate on the issue was done in camera so the specific reasons for Hannan's censure are currently unknown. The motion itself seems to give a few clues:

Whereas Executive Directors of the UVSS fill an invaluable role of working towards
the betterment of our Society,

Whereas when Executive Directors take their position lightly they do a disservice to
our members,

Whereas the UVSS Director of Finance made commitments to the other executives and
has not met these commitments,

BIRT the Director of Finance be censured for his actions.

This motion was moved by Chairperson James Coccola and Director of Academics Rajpreet Sall. The wording of the motion suggests that Coccola and Sall likely discussed in the past the need for Hannan to improve his job performance. While he appears to have agreed to certain expectations, these have not been met.

One of the expectations that Hannan was to follow was to arrive at work by 10:30AM. This has not occurred on a regular basis.

I would suspect that there is a little more to Hannan's censure than merely arriving to work late based on the fact that the discussion on this motion occurred in camera. In camera discussion is generally reserved for topics that are of a confidential nature. Roughly a year ago, James Coccola attempted to censure then-Chairperson Veronica Harrison. While this motion did not pass, the discussion on this motion occurred publicly, rather than in camera.

David Foster has indicated that he has asked Hannan for a statement on the matter and will do similarly for Coccola and Sall. I am somewhat doubtful that these statements will shine much light on the details surrounding this censure. As Hannan's performance was discussed in camera I would be surprised if these details could be made public.

Analysis of the SUB Macleans Ban

2010-11-30T00:13:00.006-08:00

Earlier this evening, the UVSS board voted to ban Maclean's magazine if it does not apologize for an article published on November 10. The Maclean's article was titled "Too Asian" and was on the topic of Asian students at universities. It has resulted in a significant backlash from students across Canada as well as from minority groups.You can read the article here. There is also a Facebook page in response to it. Maclean's has until December 31 to apologize for the article or it will no longer be sold in the SUB.

This decision by the UVSS is significant because it marks the first real controversy this year's UVSS board has had to make. While other issues may have divided the board, for this particular board meeting, about 25 students showed up to have their voice heard on the issue: a rarity for board meetings.

The issue of banning Maclean's magazine from the SUB is a complicated one. Those on both sides of the issue can justify their position for very different reasons. Those who support banning Maclean's see this as standing up against racism. Those who oppose banning Maclean's see this as a freedom of the press and freedom of choice issue. Both can certainly be noble goals.

Any ban in the SUB cannot help but be compared to the attempted Canadian Forces ban in 2007. In this case, there are some similarities and there are some differences:

Since very few issues of Maclean's are ever sold in the SUB, this is very much as symbolic gesture, much like the Canadian Forces ban.
What sets this apart from the Canadian Forces ban, however, is that the justifications for the ban appear to be truthful/provable, unlike many of the claims made in a meeting three years ago.
The Maclean's article is also much more of a "student issue" compared to the Canadian Forces ban. It is much less likely to be labeled as the UVSS board overstepping their authority.
Timing will play a role in how UVic students respond to this decision. The Canadian Forces ban saga began in September and ended in October. With final exams right around the corner, students will surely be less likely to express their approval or disapproval of the decision.

A very key aspect of the attempted Canadian Forces ban was the Martlet article that covered the meeting where ban first took place. The title "No right to choose" and a corresponding quote from then board member Christine Comrie resulted in making students more displeased with the decision than they otherwise would be. The Martlet will be covering this possible ban on Thursday. The portrayal and tone of the article may very well influence student reaction to the board's decision.

The decision to ban Maclean's from the SUB also raises a number of questions beyond student reaction:

The original motion would also see a ban against Rogers media who owns Maclean's. The motion was amended to remove this clause since the UVSS is likely to enter into an advertising contract with Rogers. Does this imply that if you pay the UVSS enough money, they'll make an exception to you?
The UVSS is banning Maclean's based on a single controversial article. It likely doesn't represent the views of the magazine. Is this setting a precedent that newspapers and magazine that publish articles that students find offensive will also be banned from the SUB?
This Martlet article calling the Pope a jackass offended me. There have been similar offensive articles over the years. Should the board ban the Martlet from the SUB?

I see no problem with the UVSS taking issue with Maclean's "Too Asian" article. The question remains whether or not banning the magazine is the best way to respond to the situation. Jaraad Marani's motion also contained a clause that would see the UVSS sign on to the letter titled “A Call to Eliminate Anti-Asian Racism”. Perhaps signing on to this letter would have been a sufficient response to the article.

Perhaps it would have been wise to delay action on this matter for another two weeks. Board members were given notice of this motion on Friday afternoon. This only allowed board members a few days to gauge any student input on the issue before the meeting. If you still want to express your view on how the UVSS board should be responding to the "Too Asian" article, feel free to contact the UVSS executives.

UVSS Board steps up legal efforts for CFS referendum

2010-11-16T20:25:00.004-08:00

Earlier this evening, David Foster broke the story that the UVSS has initiated further legal action against the CFS regarding the CFS's denial of a membership referendum at UVic.

What's particularly interesting about this news is that it is the first official progress we have seen on a referendum on the CFS in some time. While the UVSS board first hired David Borins for this legal effort on June 14, the only action that has occurred publicly on this issue until now is a letter written to the CFS asking nicely that the organization reconsider. Not surprisingly, the CFS rejected this request in early September.

Since then, two months have passed. While the board has discussed the topic in camera on several occasions, us UVSS watchers could only be told that progress was being made.

One would assume that the goal of this legal action is to have a referendum on CFS membership before this end of this school year. If it were to be delayed for yet another school year, this would represent two years or more since the petition to have a referendum was collected. Could this result in a referendum being rejected by a court since the student population could have changed significantly since the petition was collected?

As Foster's article states, "recently [Guelph Central Student Association] financial statements showed that the student association has spent $203,000 on litigation related to the CFS."

Meanwhile, only $15 000 from the 2010-2011 UVSS budget has been allocated towards legal expenses relating to a CFS referendum. This leads to the question of what the UVSS should reasonably expect the legal action to achieve a referendum to cost. Have board members raised this question and received answers? Does the ruling in favour of the Guelph Central Student Association represent a legal president that will ensure the UVSS's legal costs will be much cheaper? It looks like we are going to find out.

In other CFS referendum related news, the referendum at the University of Regina still has no results available publicly. The polling for this referendum ran from October 26-28. Nearly three weeks later, we still have no results from this referendum as the eligibility of a number of students to vote was in question. We can only hope that the UVSS and CFS sort out all of these issues before any referendum occurs to avoid a mess like this.

UVSS Referendum Analysis

2010-11-10T21:20:00.001-08:00

Last week the UVSS held referendums in which students voted on five different questions. When the results came in, every question achieved a majority of votes to successfully pass, yet there was large amount of variability between questions. This shows students tended to judge each question on its own merits. In this post I hope to make educated guesses about the outcome and what the result means. As David Foster covered this earlier today, some of this post will be in response to his post on the topic.

Voter turnout

The key component in the overall outcome of the referendums was voter turnout. Voter turnout in these referendums was a mere 7%. This happened for a number of reasons: The referendums occurred in November instead of during the March elections, there was a lack of coverage in the Martlet, and the referendum questions weren’t especially contentious and involved small amounts of money.

Having such a low turnout very likely benefited the referendum questions. As a minority of students seemed to even know there were referendums occurring, it generally meant only students who take an interest and see value in the UVSS voted. It is rather telling that a whopping 43% of the ballots were cast in the SUB, when in a normal UVSS election the SUB only tends to represent about 15% of votes cast. The SUB votes not surprisingly represented clear majorities of support on every referendum question.

It think it would be safe to say that these referendums were less representative of the general student population compared to UVSS elections, but democracy is all about who shows up to vote. The voters who showed up wanted these fee increases.

Campaigning

A more minor component of the outcome of the referendums was the fact that students (mostly board members) actually campaigned in these referendums. Previous efforts to increase the UVSS operations fee have occurred during the UVSS elections in March. Instead of campaigning to pass referendums, everyone is understandably busy campaigning to get elected during this time. Holding referendums in November meant that board members actually campaigned in favour of referendums, which surely played a role in helping referendums pass. Of course, as David Foster (and myself) point out, we also had SUB employees campaigning during these referendums as well.

And now onto the questions...

Do you support a gradual increase of funding for the operations and services provided to students by the UVSS in the amount of 20¢ per part time student and 40¢ per full time student per semester each semester for the next three years?

Yes: 796 (69.7%)

No: 346 (30.3%)

David Foster’s post on this question takes issue with a lot of aspects of the campaigns surrounding this referendum question. Foster feels the question was dishonest as it allegedly describes the increase as a 40 cent increase. The full question I have provided above should not have misled anyone into believing that this fee increase was only 40 cents. Although it could have explicitly stated that the increase would be $3.60 after three years, it was pretty clear what this question entailed.

Foster also takes issue with the unofficial “Save the SUB” campaign that appeared to be led by the UVSS resource coordinator. This to me seems slightly bizarre considering Foster himself also “campaigns unofficially” (as I did in 2008) during UVSS elections by endorsing candidates. His blog posts are never approved by the elections office and are not attributable to candidates. Unofficial campaigns are simply not covered under UVSS election and referendum rules.

For me, the passing of the operations fee question really isn’t that surprising. Last March, a similar question regarding an operations fee increase received about 48% support despite next to no campaigning on the referendum. The UVSS did a much better job making a case for passing an Operations Free increase this time. In addition to the lower turn out, this was enough to ensure a strong passing of this referendum question.

At no cost to students, do you support reducing the Building and Capital fund by $4 per full time student per semester and $2 per part time student per semester and reallocating this amount to the UVSS Operations Fund?

Yes: 907 (80.1%)

No: 225 (19.9%)

For me, this referendum question was a no brainer. Considering it passed by such a strong margin, it appears a lot of students agreed. This question didn’t cost students a dime and gives the UVSS board money they desperately need to help the UVSS bottom line. A reduction in the Building and Capital fund seems like a very good idea right now considering there seems to be no long term plan to actually do a major renovation of the SUB.

It is a hunch of mine that almost all of the 225 students who did not support this were probably ones who voted 'No' to every question.

Do you support establishing a dedicated fee for the purpose of organizing special events for students on campus in the amount of $0.25 per part time student per semester and $0.50 per full time student per semester?

Yes: 747 (65.2%)

No: 399 (34.8%)

Foster’s analysis of this fee indicates that $8000 will now subsidize UVSS events, but in fact this referendum question represents more like $15 000 a year to put on events for the UVSS. Foster seems to have a lot of worries that this fee will simply be used to fund Armed With Understanding lectures. I think this is an overstated concern. The wording of this question is very clear that this money is to go towards special events, which implies entertainment events as put on by the Special Events committee. As the Special Events committee has never put on an advocacy lecture to my knowledge, it seems Foster’s concerns are baseless.

In reality, this fee means fun and entertaining events put on for students by the UVSS. The UVSS will be able to provide more events to students that run as a service by operating at a loss. Really, the possibilities of what this fee can mean for students are only limited by the creativity of the Director of Services and the Special Events committee. It represents a three time increase from what is currently budgeted on special events.

Do you support establishing a dedicated fee for the purpose of funding an independent UVSS elections office in the amount of $0.45 per part time student per semester and $0.90 per full time student per semester?

Yes: 583 (52.0%)

No: 539 (48.0%)

This question is particularly interesting because its margin of passing was so close. Despite the fact that it seems like a good idea, students appear to have had their reservations about the question. My hunch regarding this question is that there was a lack of information put forth about what this question really meant..

As can be noted in the question, there is no description about how the new electoral system is different from the previous one. There may also be a misconception that somehow this new elections fee ends up directly benefitting candidates, such as giving them a larger Zap credit etc. Maybe students also just have a negative connotation with elections and didn’t support this. In the end, this question received just enough support to pass, and that is enough. The UVSS will now be able to fund its new independent elections system, thanks to this fee, making the Mike Waters’ and Team Work scandals things of the past.

Do you support the establishment of a new student fee in the amount of 95¢ per semester for full time students and 45¢ per semester for part time students to be allocated to UVic Pride?

Yes: 681 (59.3%)

No: 468 (40.7%)

The fact that this question passed is a slight surprise. Prior to voting, David Foster ran polls on his blog for each of the referendum questions. In these polls, three of the questions easily passed, the Operations Fee question was a tie, and the Pride question only had 35% support. I had several hypotheses going into voting as to why this might be, but in the end it did not really matter. More than enough students ended up supporting this fee.

Pride will now be able to move into its new office and provide better services for its members. David Foster seems unaware in his post that the new larger Pride office has already been selected. Pride will be moving into a portion of the Graffix office following a minor renovation.

This brings to a close coverage of the November 2010 referendums. There may be a second round of referendums this school year, likely during the March election period. The UVSS is currently working with lawyer David Borins to obtain a referendum on our CFS membership. Time will tell if this becomes a reality.

Hannan's response to Health Plan criticism.

2010-11-10T09:45:00.002-08:00

Hannan wrote this in response to the recent criticism of the Health Plan contained in the Martlet. This was intended to appear in the latest edition of the Martlet, but was submitted after the edition's deadline.

Frequently asked questions about the UVSS dental plan
by Kelsey Hannan

Is it true that there is lower coverage in this year's dental plan?

It is true that dental coverage was reduced with the plan provided this year. Most importantly, the annual maximum for dental was decreased from $1000 to $750, and one checkup per benefit year from two.

Why: The claims on last year's UVSS Dental plan were much higher than in the past. No insurance company would provide us the same comparative price as last year for continuing the coverage given the higher amount of claims. As such, providing last year's dental coverage this year became prohibitively expensive to offer, given that the UVSS must keep the plan fee for the dental plan below $144 per student–a legal cap on the dental plan price we are legally obligated to remain within for pricing the dental plan. The Health and Dental plan signed with Morneau Sobeco in the previous Board term for this benefit year also contained reductions in dental coverage.

The Finance committee decided to continue with these reductions to dental coverage for the upcoming year because during our market tender this summer, multiple health and dental plan administrators competing to be selected all recommended this modification of coverage as a positive move to ensure good plan maintenance for this upcoming benefit year.

Why did claims spike with last year's Dental plan?

It is not yet clear why dental claims spiked last year, but an audit of these claims was underway by Greenshield before we selected our new plan administrator (StudentCare) and insurance provider (SunLife Financial.) SunLife Financial will likely continue a similar process moving forward in the future.

In the 2009/10 claims year with Greenshield the annual maximum for dental was increased from $500 to $1000. This resulted in $244,000 of additional claims. After this amount was calculated into the claims ratio the claims are still too high for the year resulting in the audit.

Higher out-of-pocket expenses with new UVSS dental plan

For eligible coverage, the new UVSS dental plan covers the same percentage of dental work that the old plan provided: 70% of claimed costs. However, depending on what practitioners students utilize for their dental work, this amount will actually be lower with the new UVSS Dental plan:

By going with StudentCare as our plan administrator, students now gain access to provider networks that use the sheer market power of the very large UVSS dental plan to leverage better coverage for students from local practitioners. For the dental provider network, membership in the network is open to all dentists to initially join, but requires dental providers to lower their fees by 20% (meaning students get 90% of their dental work paid for instead of just 70%) or face losing business to other dentists in the area who are on the dental network providing more affordable prices. StudentCare (look them up at Ihaveaplan.ca) gives students access to a map where UVSS members can find dentists in their area on the dental network who provide this discount, which is only available through the UVSS dental plan or other University student dental plan. Studentcare has already found 5 dental practitioners in the Victoria area volunteering to be members of the dental network.

The Campus Dental Centre, which had one of their employees quoted in the Martlet article criticizing the cost of the plan to students, was offered to be a member of the dental network by the UVSS this summer and declined the offer.

Board takes a break, Coccola grows mustache

2010-11-08T18:37:00.000-08:00

A rather strange phenomenon in the UVSS is occurring this Monday evening: The UVSS board is not meeting. Following six straight weeks of meetings (including three requisitioned ones) in addition to campaigning to pass the five UVSS referendum questions last week, the board has decided to take a break for a change.

One board member won't be taking the night off, however. Chairperson James Coccola will be hard at work attempting to grow a mustache.

This past Thursday it was suggested to Coccola that he participate in the Movember fundraiser this year. Coccola replied that he would only participate in it if a petition could be collected with 100 signatures by the next morning. To Coccola's surprise, a petition with 126 signatures was delivered to him by the end of the day. Being a man of his word, Coccola committed to participating in the fundraiser.

James Coccola with the Movember petition.

To donate to Coccola's cause: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/897048/

One of the great things about mustaches (and there are many) is that they come in so many great shapes and sizes. Let's help James Coccola find the style that fits him.

Mustache style: English

Mustache style: Chevron

Mustache style: Fu Manchu

Mustache style: Handlebar

Mustache style: Painter's Brush

Mustache style:Walrus

Which Mo' should Coccola grow?

UVSS Referendum Results

2010-11-05T19:16:00.005-07:00

The ballot counting for the UVSS referendums has now finished. All five referendum questions succeeded in passing.

Results (Unofficial) - PDF Version

Do you support establishing a dedicated fee for the purpose of funding an independent UVSS elections office in the amount of $0.45 per part time student per semester and $0.90 per full time student per semester?
Yes: 583 (52.0%)
No: 539 (48.0%)

Do you support establishing a dedicated fee for the purpose of organizing special events for students on campus in the amount of $0.25 per part time student per semester and $0.50 per full time student per semester?
Yes: 747 (65.2%)
No: 399 (34.8%)

At no cost to students, do you support reducing the Building and Capital fund by $4 per full time student per semester and $2 per part time student per semester and reallocating this amount to the UVSS Operations Fund?
Yes: 907 (80.1%)
No: 225 (19.9%)

Do you support a gradual increase of funding for the operations and services provided to students by the UVSS in the amount of 20¢ per part time student and 40¢ per full time student per semester each semester for the next three years?
Yes: 796 (69.7%)
No: 346 (30.3%)

Do you support the establishment of a new student fee in the amount of 95¢ per semester for full time students and 45¢ per semester for part time students to be allocated to UVic Pride?
Yes: 681 (59.3%)
No: 468 (40.7%)

It would appear that roughly 1150 students participated in these UVSS Referendums. This represents a turnout of 7.0% of the UVSS membership.

Check back later for analysis of these results.

Dale Robertson becomes SUB General Manager

2010-11-03T18:31:00.001-07:00

The following memo was sent out to SUB employees today announcing significant long term changes to SUB senior management:

"After much discussion and careful consideration we have decided to reduce the number of excluded Managers permanently from three to two. We have been very happy with performance of the entire staff and the two excluded managers since the restructuring late this summer. Effective immediately Dale Robertson has been appointed as the General Manager of the UVSS and Al Bishop, Support and Administration Division Manager,will take on greater responsibilities. For the most part the areas that each has been responsible for will not change but this may evolve over time.

We are confident that we will all be able to work together to bring the SUB out of its current financial position. Over the next couple months and on-going we will look to staff for further ideas on how to improve efficiencies, reduce costs and increase revenue.

Please feel free to talk to any of us if you have any questions or concerns."

Dale Robertson has been performing several of the General Manager duties since August 9, when the UVSS board and former General Manager Marne Jensen mutual agreed to part ways. Previously Robertson held the title of Business Operations Manager. Over the past three months there has been speculation as to whether Robertson would officially move into the General Manager position or if a new General Manager would be hired from the outside. Given that the UVSS has made the decision to go with only two senior managers, it was logical to promote Robertson to General Manager.

By eliminating one senior management position the UVSS stands to save in excess of $90 000 a year in wages. This represents a significant step towards improving the UVSS's fiscal position.

UVic gets first Sorority despite AGM result

2010-11-02T23:39:00.001-07:00

Despite the recent result at the UVSS AGM greek life appears to be taking a hold at UVic. As readers will recall, nearly two thirds of students at the recent UVSS AGM voted to not recognize Fraternities and Sororities at UVic.

This did not deter the Sorority interest group, however. Rather than continue to pursue membership in the National Pan-Hellenic Council, which requires a letter of approval from the University, the Sorority interest group has simply found a Sorority that does not require such a letter.

UVic now officially has a chapter (known as Upsilon) of the Kappa Beta Gamma Sorority. This represents Kappa Beta Gamma's first chapter in Canada.

Referendums are finally Here

2010-11-02T20:32:00.004-07:00

A month and a half ago I first alluded to the fact that the UVSS would be having referendums on fees in November. The time to vote is finally here. Let's take a look at the ballot questions you'll be voting on.

Do you support the establishment of a new student fee in the amount of 95¢ per semester for full time students and 45¢ per semester for part time students to be allocated to UVic Pride?

Reason to support: UVic Pride represents, advocates for and provides services for queer students at UVic. They are also welcoming of allies.
Reason to oppose: You are cheap.

Reason to support: This is a no-brainer. The Building and Capital fund has been used to perform very expensive renovations over the years with little to show for it in terms of benefits for the SUB. This is partly because these accounts are limiting in terms of what the UVSS board can spend them on. Putting the money into the Operations Fund gives the board access to much need money that can help balance the budget.
Reason to oppose: You like expensive renovations that don't really improve the SUB.

Reason to support: The Operations fee of the UVSS hasn't been increased since 1988. As a result of over 20 years of inflation this fund is very much in need of new funds. Approving this question will also allow the UVSS board to stop collecting the excessive Administration fee on the Health and Dental Plans.
Reason to oppose: You continue to believe the SUB businesses are inefficient.

Reason to support: You like big concerts, festivals and other special events this dedicated fee would allow the board to put on. It would still be able to put on events without passing this fee, however passing this fee gives the board a mandate to put on more and bigger events on campus.
Reason to oppose: You feel special events are not a necessary function of the UVSS.

Reason to support: Passing this fee will help the UVSS implement the new, more impartial, Elections structure that was approved earlier this year. This new system will ensure the UVSS does not see a repeat of the fiascos involving the TeamWork slate and Mike Waters of past years.
Reason to oppose: You would rather the money for the new Elections structure come out of the Operations fee mentioned earlier.

Now head to the polls around campus and vote!

The SUB Union and its connection to UVSS Referendums

2010-11-02T19:55:00.002-07:00

Since my previous post on the"Save the SUB" campaign it has become increasingly obvious that the UVSS board is not behind the campaign, but instead the SUB Union.

There are a number of reasons to conclude this:

The United Steelworkers logo is printed on the handbills and posters
It is pretty much a known fact that the UVSS Resource Coordinator (a Union position) operates the "Uvee Essess" Facebook account that created the Facebook event for "VOTE YES & SAVE THE SUB"
An email sent to a UVSS Listserve with the subject "URGENT: Save the Student Union Building" originated from uvss.res.coordinator@gmail.com.
The UVSS website is updated by a Union employee
The Info Booth where posters were stamped is employs union workers

Given these facts, it seems obvious that members of the SUB Union, United Steelworkers Local 2009, are behind the "Save the SUB" campaign.

This really should not be surprising that the SUB Union's members would campaign during this referendum. The Union has a rather direct impact on the UVSS's bottom line and is at least partially responsible for the UVSS's current debt and deficit.

As readers may be aware, the SUB Union had a two month strike in 2008 before a new Collective Agreement with the UVSS was reached. In the end, neither side really came out a winner. The Union was asking for a pay increase of $3.00 over two years and received $1.50 spread out over three years. The UVSS not only had to pay this pay increase, but incurred a $200 000 debt due to lost revenue from the strike.

The UVSS's finances have never recovered from this. The pay increases in the Collective Agreement means the costs of labour in the SUB have increased by $60 000 for each of the past three years. In other words, if the UVSS was able to pay Unionized workers at their 2008 levels, the past two UVSS budgets would have actually been surpluses rather than deficits.

The current collective agreement ends in April 30, 2011.This makes the reality of SUB Union workers campaigning for the referendums particularly interesting. Do SUB Union workers hope to negotiate a better Collective Agreement if the referendums pass? Only time will tell.

So long uSource

2010-11-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

The University of Victoria has announced that it's webportal is receiving a replacement over the reading break period this November. The University will be both upgrading the underlying software (Banner) and replace the web interface that interacts with Banner. The replacement for uSource has yet to be given a name.

Since UVic launched uSource in 2008 numerous students have complained about losing functionalities (incompatibility with TimeTable Assistant, inability to print an aesthetically pleasing timbetable), errors (not allowing students to register for courses they should be eligible for) and uSource's somewhat confusing user interface.

Few will miss uSource and its replacement is welcomed.

UVSS Chairperson makes the case for supporting Referendums

2010-11-02T18:55:00.001-07:00

UVSS Chairperson James Coccola sent the following letter to all UVSS related blogs this morning:

As many of you know, the UVSS is conducting several referendums this week. The purpose behind the referendums is to save the Students’ Society. Over the past three years we have accumulated a debt of nearly $370,000 and this year we are projecting to go an additional $90,000 into the red.

The last increase to our fees was in 1988. There are students coming to campus this year for the first time who were born in 1992. Inflation alone has damaged our ability to pay for services and now we are left with a 22 year gap in funding that we simply are not able to deal with.

Many students have asked me why we don’t try to cut costs more. The simple answer is that we have and there really is nothing left to cut: our Grafix Department has been reduced to one part-time staff from two and-a-half staff; info booth hours have been reduced, including a closure in the summer; our committee budgets have been dramatically slashed; and the Student Union Building is now only open until 9:30. Among many other projects, we are currently looking to cut down handbook costs.

There are four questions related to the UVSS that we encourage you to VOTE YES on. (Plus a question from UVic Pride that you should also VOTE YES on.)

The first question asks for 50 cents per semester for events. Whether it’s concerts, speakers, pancakes or beer gardens, the UVSS wants to make sure that there are events that you will remember for years to come. The money collected for this fee could only be used for events. This means that no matter what, our budget will always have the money to put on the great events that you expect and deserve.

The second question is asking for 90 cents per semester for elections. UVSS members recently voted to change our bylaws so that the UVSS board is removed from the process that adjudicates complaints between candidates. This means that external professionals will now be adjudicating our elections so that the process is as fair as possible. But impartiality comes at a price, which means our elections will be getting more expensive.

Many students don’t realize just how costly UVSS elections are. Last year, they cost the Society $27,000. This pays for an external Chief Electoral Officer, two deputy electoral officers, 40 pollsitters, 12 ballot counters, advertising, materials for candidates and legal costs for the complaints process.

The reasoning behind the dedicated fees for special events and elections is that no matter the state of UVSS finances, there will always be money to throw great events and to ensure fair and impartial elections. It will also free up money from our over-burdened operations fund which currently pays for these things so that we can pay down our considerable debt.

The third question doesn’t cost students any money at all and would benefit the Students’ Society tremendously. The question asks students to allow us to transfer $4 a semester from the Building and Capital fund (B&C Fund) and move it to the Operations Fund. This question is a little confusing and requires a bit of explanation.

The Building and Capital Fund is currently $13 per student per semester. It can only be used on large equipment purchases and on building renovations. When Bean There was upgraded last year, we used the B&C fund. Same thing for when we painted the SUB. This fund always has a healthy balance - so much so that it would be prudent to transfer a portion of it into operations. On the other hand, the operations fund is in rough shape. It pays for everything else: janitorial, campaigns, events, the wages of our student employees, etc.

Students always say things like: “If you have the money to spend $100,000 on a renovation, why don’t you use that money to pay for your operations?” The simple answer is that we can’t. When a student fee is decided by referendum and targeted for a specific purpose, it is essentially illegal to use that money for a purpose other than for which it was intended.

This third referendum question seeks to create a balance between the building and operations funds. This way, we don’t have to ask students to fund more than is asked in our fourth referendum question.

The fourth referendum question is directly related to the operations fund. We are asking to increase fees by 40 cents a semester, each semester for the next three years (a mere 10 cents per month). In total this represents an increase of $3.60 over the three years.

The purpose of gradually increasing fees is so that we can pull ourselves out of debt in the short-term and also so that the Society can make financial plans for the long-term. There is also the simple fact that basically no organization or government out there that can be expected to provide the same level of service over 22 years without an increase in its core funding.

As a bonus, if you graduate in the next year or two, you will not pay the full increase. This way, the fee increase takes place in the fairest way possible. Future students will pay for the services they use.

The Students’ Society is looking to pursue several projects: eliminating the health and dental administration fee and offering more services within the SUB are just a few. Unfortunately, we face severe financial restrictions until these referendums are passed. It’s only a few dollars out of your pocket, but it will put us on solid financial footing and allow us and future UVSS Boards to build the kind of students’ society that our members deserve.

On November 3rd, 4th and 5th please vote YES and help bring a little change to the UVSS.

James Coccola