Recently, plans were passed to build a new student union building at SFU Burnaby campus. With a multi-million dollar plan like that on the line, one would have expected there to be some sort of response in terms of voter turnout. However, when all the votes were counted up, only 11 per cent of eligible voters participated in the decision that will cost students an estimated $65 million over the coming years. Furthermore, of that 11 per cent, only approximately 54 per cent voted in favour of the project, meaning that of all total eligible voters, fewer than 6 per cent actually voted for the project, suggesting that the student government functions as more of an oligarchy than a democracy. Our current quorum requirements are too low. This needs to change.
It is time for student government to realize that we should start to look beyond just the percentage of the votes that referenda questions receive, and start to look at the larger picture. Perhaps it is time that we initiate a system that allows certain referendum questions, particularly those that will put new costs to students, to be required to garner a mandate-worthy turnout of total eleigible voters. This would entail the creation of a threshold for minimum support over the whole undergrad population, meaning that not only would a referendum question, like that regarding Build SFU, require 50 per cent of the vote to pass, but also a defined percentage of the total undergraduate population to express such in the election. This percentage could even start out relatively small, with a modest 20 per cent already implying the representation of more than three times as many students. However, as engagement would rise, this number would ideally rise as well, as initially it would still be but a fraction of what would be required for a majority.
In addition, such a program would introduce actual incentives for groups involved in student governance, to encourage and seek out further public engagement, instead of purely theoretical ones, which seem to be all that is in place currently. This would push candidates and proponents of initiatives to engage the student population not only because of the desire for more representative democracy in student government, but also because of the necessity of doing so in order to achieve their end goal.
This would force the SFSS and the interest groups behind such initiatives (i.e. Schools Building Schools) to seek out and actively engage students in new ways, and show a degree of innovation in student engagement, something that will prove necessary if the SFSS plans on representing more than 10 per cent of the SFU undergrad population.
Some may argue that such a policy would prevent anything from being done within the SFSS. However, such an argument is fundamentally flawed. If that were so the SFSS board would be unnecessary, and we could decide everything in the style of a plebiscitary democracy, with regular referendums and public initiatives. However, as that is not the case, as it is clear that the SFSS board could still act for students the same way they would in any other term, and that only referenda questions would be greatly effected. It’s a small price to pay for a more representative student government.
Sometimes in an election, the biggest message can be found not within the successes and failures of certain candidates or initiatives, but with the successes and failures of the election itself. Applying that notion to the last election, it is clear that SFU student politics seem heavily oriented to simply getting enough support to pass a motion, or to get elected. With school politics oriented to such a degree on getting enough popular support, it’s time we increased what enough means.
