By Joel Warren
Eleven years ago, the SFSS held a referendum encouraging students to radically alter the SFSS governance structure. Previously, the board of directors was composed of six executives — inclding one for grad students — plus a representative from each departmental student union. The new structure was to be more efficient. As such, DSUs were demoted to an advisory role on forum. The board created faculty representatives, two at-large positions and a seventh executive, the member services officer.
I remember disagreeing with this proposal, as the centralization of power would not only weaken any sense of student ownership of the SFSS, but it would reduce meaningful, inclusive participation in SFSS governance. But most importantly, I knew it would turn the board into a dirty site of ideological contest and petty alliances because a voting block of less than 10 students could hold the authority to promote personal interests rather than students’ interests. I genuinely wish I had been wrong.
The influence of the Canadian Federation of Students back then was more complicated, as they knew they could only appease, not control, a 35 to 40-member board. The CFS meddling then was minor compared to the following six years, where the dominant theme of SFSS board politics became CFS versus anybody else. This battleground dynamic led to the alienation of and eventual secession by Grad students, the impeachment of the CFS, half of the board and, eventually, SFU’s defederation from the CFS.
Progressive-minded students, which traditionally comprised an unaligned majority at forum, gradually shunned the SFSS, focusing their efforts inward towards various constituency groups, SFPIRG groups, DSUs, and clubs, creating a vacuum in SFSS politics which, absent the CFS presence, allowed a radical rightward shift culminating in this last year’s fascistic coup of the Leninistic party vanguard structure of SFSS governance.
If forum was the board like it used to be, the tragic events of this last year would never have happened. Forum-as-board would not abide a three-month lockout and cuts to services. Instead of taking an IMF austerity approach to budget deficits, more inventive measures to balancing the budget would have been taken. There would have been transparency, debates, and meaningfully inclusive participation in the discussions and decision-making surrounding the student union building (SUB). Arry Dhillon would have never been capable of saying, to paraphrase, that there is to be no debate on the SUB levy outside of a ‘No’ campaign for the referendum. [Eds. Note – Dhillon denies this quote, and maintains that debate over referendum questions is under the purview of the IEC, the BuildSFU campaign is informational only, and that the SFSS is not currently running a ‘Yes’ campaign on the referendum question as the period to do so has not started.]
The SUB is the largest initiative the SFSS has ever undertaken and according to Arts Representative Kyle Acernio, the levy proposed is the largest in Canadian student political history [Eds. Note – The Peak could not independently confirm this figure.] The process to introduce it unfolded at the last possible board meeting available to put referendum questions to ballot, a deadline conveniently prior to a chance for forum representatives to consult their constituencies and advise the Board. This is the student politics equivalent of proroguing Parliament because the minority in power fears the majority might prefer something resembling a democratic institutional process.
Less than a half-dozen board members sat in secret negotiations with the SFU administration, hacked out a deal, and manipulated timeframes and deadlines to ensure nobody but them had a say — either in the nature of the referendum question or on the SUB proposal marketed to students. The Board is asking for an incremental levy, eventually capping at $270 per year in 2022 — but has done nothing to earn students’ trust that we should support them. Like the snake-oil salesman, they claim a SUB is a panacea of all student ills then set up a propaganda office to close the deal.
A closer look at the deal presented is revealing. Surrey and Downtown students will not benefit much from this SUB but will pay the same as Burnaby students so the board is likely to encounter significant opposition there. Throw in a football stadium (athletics and rec being under university jurisdiction, and is thus SFU’s responsibility to pay for) and you can buy jock ‘Yes’ votes to counter satellite campus ‘No’ votes.
In exchange we get an old building requiring massive retrofits and upgrades to become our SUB. On any hierarchy of needs, an upgrade to, say, student family residences outweighs a sports complex, but that would not buy enough votes. So instead of meeting real needs, or utilizing a more accessible space between the MBC and AQ, where we are not architecturally hindered by aging structures, a couple of SFSS autocrats chose the inferior site, throwing in a perk that will benefit a few to secure an unequal levy. Aside from these dirty political tricks, the board bowed to university pressure for student money as if the deal would crumble without immediate guaranteed funds. Bollocks! SFU wants a SUB too, because it helps their place-marketing.
Ultimately, however, the SUB hustle — “the McCann Scam” — may prove the catalyst to the end of the decade-long failed experiment in centralized SFSS governance. Many DSU’s and constituency groups are livid, not over the SUB, but over the secrecy and manipulation candy-coated with hollow appeals for post-hoc community input. My prediction is that come summer semester you will likely see forum pushing back and itself instituting legally binding procedural standards for the SUB project rooted in inclusion, transparency, and accountability which the Board must meet before one cent can ever be collected. This momentum may give rise to the self-confidence needed for a complimentary push by Forum for a return to decentralized SFSS governance, ensuring a handful of self-interested and ideologically aligned students cannot treat our non-profit society like their own private enterprise.
Ends may ‘justify’ means in business, but in non-profits, the means are ends themselves. Indeed, no board-designed procedural standards for the SUB are acceptable. Accountability must be imposed from below. Viva forum!
