By Kim Burgess

When I started at SFU in January 2009, there were whispers of a student union building — undefined, and uncertain, but the possibility did exist. It was something that the student society was thinking about, but nothing was anywhere near to a decision. Then three weeks ago, seemingly out of nowhere, comes the Build SFU initiative, with architectural plans, a funding outline, and a stadium all set up and in place. The news of a SUB for SFU is not unwelcome, however I have two major problems with the Build SFU project as it stands now: a lack of student consultation and the stadium.

The list of documents on the Build SFU website would lead you to believe that a comprehensive study has previously been conducted by the SFSS in regards to a new building. A review of these documents shows that this is not the case. The 2008 student consultation by past president Joe Paling spoke to approximately six students and asked the single question of (and I quote) “What kind of stuff do y’all want to see in a SUB?”

The 2009 food services consultation focused exclusively on a SUB building placed in Convo Mall, not in the athletics building, and this holds true again for the preliminary architectural sketches from Bing Thom Associates. Space committee meeting minutes from 2008 to 2010 are linked online, but have restricted access (something that doesn’t fill one with confidence for a transparent process). The consultation that was supposedly conducted by the current board has never been released.

Finally, the Build SFU site does provide a link to a comprehensive consultation process — one used by UBC’s Alma Mater Society.

The UBC process involved a student advisory committee to oversee consultation, a preliminary consultation of over 1,000 students, and more than a month of themed consultations as to what should go into the space — before any architectural drawings were created. It is easy to see how the current board has drawn inspiration from the UBC plan — the referendum and the tiered funding structure. The giant piece of the puzzle that the SFSS is missing is student consultation.

Build SFU is not a consultation process — it is about creating buy-in for the project as it stands now. Students are being asked what they would like to see included in the building, sure, but are not being asked what their priorities are. The current process will only generate a list for organizers to pick and choose from. A web survey that visitors to the Think Tank are being encourage to fill out, called “What do YOU want in your student union building”, contains nine questions — five of which are focused on collecting demographic data. Of the remaining four, three ask specifically about your interactions with the Build SFU brand — have you gone into the Think Tank and visited the website?  What did you think?  The final question gets around to asking your opinion: “Any comments? Ideas?  Suggestions?  Jokes?”  The SFSS may have been talking about the project for long time, but they haven’t been talking to students. For anyone to say that they ‘just know’ what students need is paternalism at its worst.

The major thing missing from this review of past SUB documents has been any mention whatsoever of a stadium. The stadium does make a brief appearance in the 2010 Burnaby Mountain Development Plan — prepared for the university, not the student society. This brings up the major question of why the student society is planning to pay for the building of a new sports stadium instead of the university?  A brief search through the student society website shows that clubs centering around sports and recreation are not administered through the student society at all — they are specifically directed to the SFU recreation department.

Call it SFU federalism if you will, but the separation of power between the university and the student society is very specific. The SFSS covers all matters wherein students govern themselves: clubs, department student unions, issues, and advocacy. The university governs everything else. While students do have input into university governance, final decisions and responsibilities lie with the university. This is the case with athletics and recreation — funding, facilities, teams, and equipment.

Having the student society build a new stadium creates a dangerous precedent at SFU by making students responsible for the construction of amenities. The student society didn’t pay to have the track refurbished last year and they didn’t pay to redo the Southwest AQ washrooms. What happens when there is a need for more space in the library?  Will the SFSS fund that too?

I have decided to vote ‘no’ on the Build SFU referendum question. This does not make me a scrooge, or a Debbie Downer; this is not the equivalent of me taking my ball and going home. I support the idea of a student union building — more space for study and for clubs is something that I believe is needed at SFU. But without consultation, and without the removal of the stadium I cannot support moving forward at this time. The SFSS executive should take a cue from the university in this matter and seek to engage the student body in a meaningful way.

Voting ‘no’ on this referendum will not kill the SUB. Voting ‘no’ will send the message that SFU students deserve to be consulted extensively before we hand over $65 million for a project that is outside the scope of the SFSS’s responsibilities. This referendum is the first time that SFU students have been asked how they feel about the SUB — and I am voting ‘no’ to show the executive that I deserve a proper consultation.

By Benedict Reiners

The SFSS is having its elections this week, with voting taking place online from March 20 to 22, and by now, most candidates are in the swing of their campaigns, telling everyone they support this or oppose that. However, despite this fervor in campaigning, many first-years are left asking what good it is to know someone’s platform when one doesn’t know the actual roles of the positions which each is aiming to fill?

The entire electoral system in the SFSS seems oriented to those who already know the workings of the SFSS and its operations, or in other words, not first-years. Though candidates have been quick enough to point out their platforms, however vague, there has been very little effort to inform each student of the roles that will be taken on by each position, no matter who gets elected to them.

Though one can find the job description of each role online, if one looks for a while on either the SFSS website or the site for the SFSS elections, the SFSS and those running for office therein have not partaken in any significant endeavor to make these known, with candidates instead focusing their attentions to making posters to put all over campus, or videos on YouTube.

This forces first-year students to look at each candidate’s platforms without the aid of contextual knowledge of each race’s position. This is something that should be seen as detrimental to the operations of the SFSS, and would be in its own best interest to address.

In fact, this is particularly the case because it not only creates first-years who don’t know the process in which they are participating, but creates a new series of second-years who won’t know the process next year. If we want to make sure that more students are voting in the future, the SFSS needs to make better efforts in the future to engage first-years. One way in which this can be done is by addressing more issues currently pertinent to first years.

One example of how this is not being done is the current debates over the finances of the Highland Pub. Although the finances of the SFSS are relevant to all students, the fact that the debates are centering over those of the pub largely excludes many first years from any significant interest, as most are still underage. This means that any changes that are made to the operation of the pub will not have an immediate effect on many first years, a significant limit to any enthusiasm they could muster towards the matter.

Furthermore, a fairly small amount of attention seems to have been paid to informing students on the impact that the student union building (SUB) and its related costs will have on those of us still in our first year here at SFU. The project will add significant costs to tuition for students at SFU, something which will be most pronounced for first-years, who, of current students, will be forced to pay the most. However, most attention seems to have been paid towards selling the project to students, rather than educating, which was admittedly mildly predictable, with the information sessions being put on by the SFSS, the organization responsible for the project. The SFSS should commit to not only listening to students, but also to ensuring that they are fully informed on the issue in order to formulate educated opinions, based in knowledge of what the project will mean for both them and for SFU.

It’s time that the candidates recognize that student elections are only truly open when people voting know the implications of their votes, and that comes with education. Let’s hope the candidates we elect this week recognize the difference between education and handing out campaign posters.

By Juan Tolentino

I thought I would have been content observing this year’s SFSS election cycle from the sidelines, satisfied that the general tenor of the campaign would be beneficial to the student community as a whole. However, recent developments have prompted me to speak out about an alarming entity that has burst into the political scene, like a beast lying in wait in the fog.

Most of you by now have seen the posters of a new slate called Renew SFU, which serves out ready-made slogans about “diversity” and “going to the students”. Such sloganeering would not be so bad (and in fact pretty standard) if they didn’t paper over some very ugly aspects of what it is they really stand for: a reversion to the outdated left-wing politics of the previous decades that has so hampered our society’s ability to function the past.

Renew SFU claims to value diversity of opinion. That’s a very strange claim to make when one comprises a slate, the very existence of which implies some kind of coherence (dare I say, unity) of views and ideology. Furthermore, if Renew were really as diverse as it claims to be, it would draw on students from many different sectors of the university.

In reality, it seems that most of their political base is found within the Sociology and Anthropology Student Union and the Labour Studies Student Union, which, if SFU’s data is up to date, represent less than 300 declared majors (In contrast, the student unions who support Build SFU, a favourite target of Renew, represent over 4,000 declared majors).

Renew SFU says that the Build SFU project was forced upon students from the top down by an unaccountable board of directors. My first reaction to this is to wonder whether they are talking about the actual SFSS or merely a fantasy version they have concocted in their minds. The board of directors is, in fact, the most accountable governing body in the whole SFSS, since the entire undergraduate student population elects them. Certainly, they are more accountable than 11th-year undergrads like the labour studies forum representative who, by the very nature of his appointment, only serves the particular interests of a small portion of the larger student community.

In fact, if you actually bother to read the SFSS constitution (which I have, several times), you will note that the board is, by law and by fact, the sole representative of the interests of all SFU undergraduates. Perhaps Renew’s ‘progressive’ ideals are too rarefied to be committed to a legal document.

Renew SFU claims that it will rebuild trust in our student institutions. I wonder how they are supposed to do that, given who they are and what they represent. Renew SFU is not representative of the members of the SFSS but are, in fact, a small clique of activists with homogenous views that are unhappy with the daring, bold trend of having regular, apolitical students (which comprise the vast majority of undergrads) take charge of an institution in which they, the privileged “progressive” class, have long had a stranglehold.

They believe that experience in radical activism that the vast majority of students do not care about counts as solid credentials in university relations. They don’t seem to bother with standards concerning conflict of interest: witness how their IRO candidate proudly declares his previous employment with Out on Campus, which is run by the SFSS. Somehow I don’t think having an employer representative with such blatantly close ties to his employees is going to work out too well for student interests.

They don’t even seem keen on basic logic: their treasurer candidate cleverly puts forward his arts education and commitment to “avoid blaming workers” as being superior to “business-minded” approaches, since apparently cow-towing to union interests is so much more important than making sure students as getting the most from their fees.

Despite first impressions, I have no particular delight in penning such a negative screed about a particular group of people, but I feel that it is necessary given what is at stake: independent, capable, ideology-free governance in a form of government that sees so little of it.

So, I say again: don’t vote for radical politics. Don’t vote for false ‘progressivism’ as opposed to the real progress we have made in the past few years. Don’t vote for Renew, and keep the SFSS yours.

By Ryan McLaughlin

I generally agree that, as Trudeau famously proclaimed, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Most know this simple rule as ‘different strokes for different folks’. After all, what right do we have to tell people with unusual desires what is fine for them to do in the privacy of their own homes?  With that being said, even I am sometimes aghast at what some sickos get up to.

Increasingly, an unusual fetish has become popular among students at SFU and elsewhere called financial masochism. This is where students get some sort of inexplicable sexual kick out of arguing that tuition fees are at the right level. Much like Goldilocks, these twisted individuals derive pleasure out of a middle ground where tuition fees are not too high and not too low, but just right. Some even go so far as to say that tuition fees aren’t high enough. I am aware that it is the style of the day to argue against your own economic interest, but I think it’s clear that this has gone too far. Someone needs to tell these folks just how dangerous their lifestyle choices really are — they might actually convince someone of something.

Imagine a great big Venn diagram — you know, the one that looks like boobs. On the left boob you have “Things that are good for society.” In this category you have stuff like building a giant Slip ‘n Slide through downtown Vancouver, mandating a 20-hour work week, or adding the right of a weekly visit to Happy Time Exotic Massage down on Hastings in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. On the right boob you have “Things that are good for the economy”. In there is stuff like outlawing recycling (punishable by death), mandating an 80-hour work week, and turning the elderly into Soylent Green to feed the 12-year-old Guatemalan labourers in our Nike factories. Then, right in the middle where the boobs overlap, there is a special place where all kinds of wonderful things exist. This is that location where things are miraculously both good for society and good for economy. In that cleavage lays the prize: reduced tuition fees. Society benefits from lower tuition because people who deserve to get an education can. The economy benefits from the existence of skilled doctors and lawyers and astro-physicists and people who got an arts degree.

Unfortunately, over the last few decades, we’ve been doing not that. While public funding accounted for 84 per cent of university operating budgets in 1977, it now accounts for just 57 per cent. Over the same period, tuition fees have risen from 14 per cent of operating funding for colleges and universities to over 34 per cent. It’s hard to believe, but there was once a time when student fees were simply an afterthought to Canadian students.

As fees for university have increased, the necessity of university has as well. Sympathizers for high tuition fees often claim that it is only the government’s job to ensure a basic education from kindergarten through grade 12, but this promise used to mean a lot more than it does now. Being educated to grade 12 was once all that a person needed to exist in society, but this is simply not the case anymore. The promise of a ‘basic’ education, quite frankly, is no longer fulfilled only with a high school diploma; it probably includes a largely unfunded bachelor’s degree as well.

No one is saying everyone should get to go to university, after all, someone has to cook my McNuggets. However, the test for who should get to go to university shouldn’t be how wealthy your parents are, it should be, well, a test. If you get good enough grades, you should get to go to university no matter what. If you do poorly on your exams, it shouldn’t matter how much money you have, you should not be allowed in the doors of any Canadian institution lest you infect the intellectual purity of the place with your stupid.

What young financial masochists fail to realize is that if students don’t fight for their share of the pie in society, someone else will take it. Students could learn a lot from the old, for example. The government recently flirted with the idea of raising the retirement age and every old person’s head simultaneously exploded. Maybe if students made a bit more of a fuss about stuff, we could get some wealth redistributed in our direction for once.