I won’t bore you with a history of the legal dispute between the Simon Fraser Student Society and the Canadian Federation of Students; one of the foundational assumptions of this article is that you don’t care. I respect that. You have no reason to.
You don’t need a full understanding of the details of the case, however, to know that something is fishy when the SFSS and CFS agree to end a lawsuit and to refuse to explain the terms of the agreement to their memberships.
This decision, for which I can see no intended effect other than to let those in charge of the SFSS and CFS avoid accountability for their decisions, should surprise no one; it’s entirely typical of the sordid, corrupt culture of student politics.
Even something as fundamental as your membership fees are kept hidden from you: if you’re an SFU undergrad taking more than three credits’ worth of on-campus classes, you pay $32.99 for one semester’s membership in the SFSS, but you won’t find that as a line item in your Go SFU account. Instead, it’s grouped together with many other student group levies (admittedly including The Peak’s) and hidden behind an opaque $65.64 “student activity fee”.
Student politicians may argue that members can find a full breakdown of that fee in the university calendar or the society’s annual financial statements. Nobody’s looking there, though, and I have yet to hear a convincing reason why that full breakdown can’t fit on every student’s Go SFU statement.
In an SFU student election, any voter turnout figure over 10 per cent is considered a miraculous anomaly. The most recent SFSS election had a turnout of 23 per cent, which is better, but still far too low for a legitimate democratic mandate.
Student politicians like to foist the blame for such numbers on the membership. If only people would get involved, they say, things would be better. But what incentive do they have to do so? It’s hard to start a taxpayer revolt when so few citizens are even aware they’re being taxed.
Most of the functions fulfilled by a student society could be better performed by other types of organizations. Why can’t clubs and departmental student unions simply be formed by groups of like-minded people? Is the university not capable of providing study spaces or event supplies? I love the Highland Pub, but would an independent business have any trouble turning a profit selling beer to college kids?
Student societies are also an open invitation to corruption. Consider the Kwantlen Student Society, where 12 board members were impeached in November. Those who were cast out had dropped a lawsuit alleging that former directors and staff had ‘misused’ more than $2 million in society funds. Whatever actually happened — the lawsuit was dropped, so we’ll never know for sure — the thinking is easy to follow: nobody’s watching this organization, so we can take money from it without consequence. If we’re caught, we’ll just have our friends run in the next election and bail us out.
Clearly, the status quo isn’t working. Student unions shouldn’t be allowed to collect millions of dollars from memberships that are barely aware of their existence, and they shouldn’t be allowed to hide what they’re doing with it. I have a hard time convincing myself that we wouldn’t be better off if we did away with the whole concept.
