How to Reform The Peak

The Peak, as we never tire of reminding you, was founded in 1965. Specifically, the first proper issue — which ran under the banner “Name Your Student Newspaper,” offering a case of beer to the person with the best suggestion — was published on October 13 of that year.

It should surprise no one that SFU’s campus life and student organizations were dominated by leftist political sentiment in those days. The first issue’s editorial, for instance, clearly considered the decision to accept advertising dollars to be the most controversial aspect of the paper’s founding. That editorial also included a quote that’s more relevant to the modern Peak: “It would be desirable that as many students as possible be given an opportunity to work on the paper.”

That’s still true today, and though I love The Peak and think it’s done great things recently, I can’t ignore that we face some fairly serious problems. Our publisher, the Peak Publications Society, is an independent non-profit whose most basic rules are laid down in a constitution.

The bulk of the most important problems can be traced back to that document, which was written before the Internet existed and seems to be designed more to safeguard the paper’s left-wing bonafides than to create an accountable and effective organization.

I am currently the society’s business manager, but I’ve previously been a volunteer, a board of directors member, and an editor, and I’ve been intimately familiar with this organization for more than five years. I’ve spent a couple of months hashing out how we can change the constitution to make The Peak more accountable, and to set it up for success in the future. My suggestions include some very radical departures from the status quo.

I’ve written this article because every fee-paying student at SFU is a member of the Peak Publications Society, and you deserve to know why I’m seeking the changes that I’ve chosen. In addition to this article, I wholeheartedly encourage all SFU students to head to the-peak.ca/constitution, where you will find the full text of the current and proposed constitutions, explanations of the changes, and venues to criticize and discuss the draft.

The Big Goals

Despite the slurs I’m casually directing at the political left, today’s Peak, like every other student group I’m aware of, is a deeply conservative organization. I mean this in terms of the deference they display to established power structures, and their intense resistance to change. This is a key difference between boomers and millennials — for the children of the sixties who founded this paper, challenging authority was an end unto itself, but today’s young people are too fearful of making the wrong decision to commit to large changes.

That’s a bad attitude to have, especially in disciplines like publishing that are in a state of particular turmoil. The first goal that I had in mind when writing the draft constitution was creating easy avenues to change. The current constitution mandates a lot of stagnant structures, and the fact that the day-to-day operational rules at The Peak are based more on oral traditions than written policy makes it tough to break with precedent.

“It would be desirable that as many students as possible be given an opportunity to work on the paper.”

Anyone that has kept track of our web site for the past five years will agree that The Peak needs to be capable of changing faster than it does.

The other priority that influenced this draft was the creation of meaningful accountability. That A-word has been reduced to a meaningless cliché by generations of lackluster student politicians, but it’s nevertheless a very important principle that is sorely lacking in today’s Peak, mostly because of the design of the constitution.

The draft emphasizes mechanisms to hold people accountable for the quality of their work, which is in opposition to the current system and its emphasis on complete freedom and independence for each editor.

A Return to Heirarchy

Even though the founders of The Peak were a bunch of dirty hippies, they understood that leadership is a desirable trait: that’s why we have a surviving photo of Sam Steenhuus, the first editor-in-chief, glowering at the camera over his sub-culturally mandated facial hair. Something terrible happened to the political left between his tenure and that of the architects of the current constitution, and his role was eliminated in the name of “structurelessness.”

Power in The Peak is concentrated in a body called the Peak Collective, which is comprised of the current editors and recent regular contributors. The two key powers of this body are the ability to set editorial policy and the right to vote in editor elections, which select the entire editorial staff once per semester.

As the name implies, Collective has no leader, and it elects editors that answer to no one except their voters. The current constitution even prevents the board from firing editors for anything short of theft; the only other methods of disciplining underperforming editors are defeating them in elections or holding a recall vote (which, to my knowledge, has never happened).

Like most damaging ideas, a “non-hierarchical decision making structure” such as this sounds great in theory. In practice, however, there is no such thing as a non-hierarchical organization of humans: there are only organizations where the hierarchy is explicit, and those where the hierarchy is hidden.

As no less a progressive authority than Jo Freeman has pointed out, even if an organization such as the Occupy movement or SFU’s own Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG) deny that they are governed by hierarchies, it’s clear that some members have informal leadership roles: their opinions are listened to more than others, and they are generally deferred to.

If power-holders can deny that there is any power structure to dominate, they can maintain power much more easily than people whose jobs are created by written rules, and who can be influenced or removed through written procedures.

For this reason, one of the key changes in the draft constitution is the resurrection of the editor-in-chief. While we have exploited loopholes in the constitution in order to have a coordinating editor for the past two years, their powers don’t go far enough. The draft empowers the EIC to alter editorial policies, approve or spike all content, distribute formal warnings to editors, fire editors if warnings accumulate, and to investigate and respond to complaints.

They’ll also keep track of the paper’s circulation, sit on the board of directors, hold a veto over changes to the editorial structure, and sit on the committee that hires editors. This position will be able to define a clear vision for the publication and make sweeping changes, and since they will still be elected by Collective, that vision will be open for criticism ahead of time.

Less Voting, More Democracy

The editor-in-chief is the only editorial position that will be elected under the new system, since the current editor elections are not meaningful tools of accountability. Sitting editors dominate all Peak elections because they are all friends and usually vote as a bloc; while volunteers might outnumber them, they usually defer to their own editors.

As a result, in the 150 or 250 individual editor elections that have occurred in the five years I’ve been watching, only once has an incumbent run for re-election and lost. Widespread understanding of this problem has bred apathy: not a single current editor at The Peak faced a challenger for their job this semester.

The new constitution establishes hiring panels staffed by one former editor, one member of the board of directors, and the editor-in-chief. This panel will have the opportunity to administer tests and perform detailed interviews. This is a clear improvement over elections in which everybody simply votes for the incumbent editor, or the person who has been around long enough to “deserve it.”

This system will especially benefit newcomers. Currently, editors are able to stick around for as long as they want, and they’ve taken advantage: three-year terms at The Peak are not unheard of. Hiring panels will have the resources and authority to decide to give someone new a chance, and newcomers who are especially well-suited to the job will be able to compete on equal footing with incumbents and heirs apparent, rather than relying on the chance that they will arrive just as an editor decides to leave.

The Membership Problem

The single part of the new constitution I’m most undecided on is how to deal with membership. Currently, every fee-paying student at SFU is a member of the Peak Publications Society; this system appeals to me politically, as it encourages everyone to feel they have a stake.

The problem is that our bylaws decree that all changes to the constitution require a vote of at least five per cent of the membership, which last semester was 1,504 people. I hardly need to explain the likelihood of that happening at our famous “commuter campus.”

We all have the opportunity to make The Peak the best student newspaper it can be.

I consider The Gateway, the University of Alberta’s student newspaper, to be the finest example of good governance at a Canadian student newspaper. Membership in their organization is restricted to directors, editors, and recent contributors who opt in; with this small pool of people, bylaws can be passed at a meeting of 30 per cent of members by a 75 per cent supermajority vote.

The goal of making The Peak easier to change would be served by such a rule, but I am very hesitant to remove people from our membership. On this issue, I would very much appreciate some debate.

So, what now?

These are just a couple of the major changes and their justifications in a very wide-ranging project. In a perfect world, everybody who has read this article this far will proceed at least to a brief summary of my proposed changes and leave their thoughts.

The Peak Publications Society will be holding a Special General Meeting in the Convocation Mall on February 25, where the final draft of the new constitution will come up for voting. If everyone who reads this brings 10 friends, we should easily surpass our 1,504-member target. In the more realistic case that we miss that goal, we will vote anyway in order to demonstrate the will of the membership, and we will seek other avenues for change, possibly including a referendum.

Replacing a constitution is a big job, and an important one. While I’ve done most of the heavy lifting so far, it would be profoundly wrong of me to insist on all of my ideas without considering the contributions of other members. Expressions of support are welcomed, but dissent is urgently needed.

We all have the opportunity to make The Peak the best student newspaper it can be. This constitution is intended to stand for decades, and if you see a problem with what’s being proposed, now is the time to speak up.