Apology
In our last issue we published an editorial about student union governance and referenda. The piece described the process leading to an annual donation to Students Building Schools (SBS), which the editorial writer assumed was a worthy cause, albeit largely unknown to the 89% of students who did not vote. Unfortunately, the headline was not an accurate index of the content of the editorial. At a glance, to someone not reading the editorial, the headline might leave the inaccurate impression that we were critical of SBS or our editorial writer was critical of SBS. That would not be correct. We are critical of the process and not the particular instance or the particular charitable beneficiary of the student union’s largesse by referendum. For clarity, we are pleased to advise that the PEAK acknowledges that SBS did not “dupe” anyone, and we apologize for any embarrassment or inconvenience that our headline may have caused to SBS. Additionally, we wish to clarify that SBS’s own projections are for $47,478 per year in levy funds from students, not $100,000 as erroneously estimated in the editorial. Furthermore, SBS presently does not have a salaried staff. The Peak regrets the error.
You really can’t do anything against the awesome power of African children.
And why would you want to? There’s nobody saying that Schools Building Schools isn’t a worthy charity — nine out of 10 studies will tell you that schools are good. Ten out of 10 studies will tell you that building schools in places that need them is good. I’m not even saying that an SFU student giving their money to SBS is a bad thing. But what is a bad thing is institutionalized panhandling, which SFU students resoundingly supported last week.
As with anything in our little banana republic, ‘resoundingly’ is misleading. For those of you who don’t know, a cadre of students numbering around 2,200 on a campus of 30,000 have decided to tack on a few more bucks to your SFSS fees. It’s only $1 per semester for a full-time student, which I’m betting is part of the reason why it passed so easily. Any more than the price of a terrible coffee and people might have had something to say. But that represents around $100,000 of your dollars per year, which amounts to a pretty nice salary for whoever is hired to run this charity, and a few schools in Uganda, I’m sure.
I have no problem with the mission itself, but the way Schools Building Schools cropped up at SFU and made their levy dreams a reality is less Fame and more Election (the Matthew Broderick one, not the one that is brutal and Japanese. That said, the levy will likely live forever).
First and most distressing is the precedent set that SFU students are amenable to third parties coming in, pitching them a monetary stake in a feel-good cause, and coming away with guaranteed money forever. It’s a pilot fish for other organizations, and blood in the water for whomever else would like a free cheque.
The problem with a levy over voluntary participation in the charity is that to eliminate the fee we would have to go to another referendum. Whatever ‘yes’ side to abolishment that registered would likely be labelled racists for wanting to take food and shelter from needy Ugandans. You can see the corner we’ve painted ourselves into.
SFU has a history of these levies causing problems. There is at least one totally defunct organization still collecting a levy that the SFSS can’t touch. They’d ask permission to do something with the $300,000 or so just sitting in a comical McDuck-style money bank, but they have nobody to ask. To strike the fee would mean a referendum, and SFU political physics says that the more referenda you have on the ballot, the worse they all do. When something important needs to be passed, SFU students just can’t be trusted to care enough.
Not to mention that the Schools Building Schools referendum question was shrouded in controversy from the word go. The question included a separate measure asking that if it were to pass, should there be an opt-out clause. In theory, the measure could have passed with no recourse for students to opt-out. Ask the more alert on forum and they will tell you that they voted to have the opt out clause baked into the question itself, so the opt-out would be in there regardless of the performance of a separate measure. That’s not how it was on the ballot. Of course nobody is taking independent minutes, and the IEC depends on the official minutes taken by the forum secretary, an SFSS staff member, so what we voted on is the official story. But that doesn’t explain away the sheer confusion in the air when the questions were published. Add that to a allegations of IEC intimidation and improper campaigning and you have some questions that need answering.
This is all in addition to the fact that an election that garnered 11 per cent turnout to the polls has set moral policy for the SFSS. It is morally presumptuous to say that all SFU students, current and incoming, will hold the charitable support of Schools Building Schools as a priority. Charities by design must prove their needfulness (and integrity) on a regular basis so the charitable can choose to support them. With this referendum, SFU students have built a cash pipeline to SBS, no questions asked. Four years from now, the first-years who supported the initiative will convocate and nobody will talk about SBS again. It will be lost in the line items of the SFSS annual report, a charitable little parasite, passed by few and affecting many. The metaphor is so on the nose it hurts.
