By Jeff McCann

We have spent the better part of this term of office talking about student space. We know we don’t have enough of this, that, or the other thing. So then what do undergraduate students care about? I believe it to be a massive mix of things, meaning SFU needs lots of different spaces to meet students’ needs. We know we need a SUB, we know students want a SUB, we’ve had surveys and consultations to double check and triple check, yet there are suddenly reservations.

It seems like two concerns exist about Build SFU: first,some are surprised that the SFSS has ever talked about a SUB, and second is the price tag.

The surprise bit has much to do with the word ‘consultation,’ which is a meaningless word after being thrown around recklessly at forum meetings.

So let’s talk about consultation. Have you ever noticed that the second floor of the library is always packed? How about the worn down couches at the top of the stairs near C9001? I don’t know who sits there but they are always full. And those couches are brutal; we all know this but we just chalk it up to another thing that sucks about SFU.

Did I need to launch a massive survey to tell me that those worn down ugly couches are always being used? Or that the dance clubs are practicing in the cafeteria, or that the second floor is always packed, or that it sucks to watch a game from the grassy hill? No. I just showed up and looked around. But in 2011 and 2012 we did two massive surveys, with email exposure and lucrative prizes to make sure students were consulted. Not to mention 40 hours a week of consultation in the Think Tank from now and for the next five years through the design and building phases that will continue to occur.

As a matter of fact, since 2006, the undergraduate student body as a whole has been consulted.  Does that mean you? Maybe not. You may have ignored the last email survey in 2011, or didn’t stop to talk to somebody with a clipboard in 2009. You may have been at a different post-secondary school in 2007, or maybe even in high school in 2006. So, consultation has happened. It has been rigorous and we are at the end of stage one which means it is time for this question to be on the ballot.

The price tag is the second thing people have talked about. Buildings cost money. Some students have asked me if I considered asking the alumni for money. Do you think I would rather this building be free or student funded? Free, of course! We have considered every possible access to funding but it just isn’t out there. If it is out there, we will happily accept it and it will go directly to the principal (rather than interest), meaning students will pay less. In the grand scheme of your $30,000 education would you rather not be frustrated daily with the lack of facilities? We simply cannot count on a handout from our parents anymore, so instead we’re moving out and paying rent.

The Build SFU proposal will hit the ground running because we have the shell of the building to work with.  We can save money by having both the SUB and stadium in the same location, and everybody wins. We have a new place for orientation, for concerts, or other student events.  It’s sustainable in an inventive way by recycling a building, and it will be LEED Gold certified. It will have all the student space we need, and it will be a bright and open extracurricular hub for campus.

So I propose we change the conversation away from that other stuff and make it really simple for everybody. If you think that the next 10 generations of students should suffer doing five laps of the library to find a place to sit, then vote ‘no’.

If, when you came to SFU, you wished there was more study space, meeting rooms, lounge space, food options, dance studios, safe spaces, and some real community at SFU, vote ‘yes’.

That’s all it comes down to. You may feel one way or another about consultation, or the price tag, or that it snowed last week, but that has absolutely nothing to do with voting ‘yes’ for more student space, or ‘no’ for a forever lame SFU.

I say vote yes to the student union building, and yes to reinventing the campus community.

By Gustavo Destro

For those of us living in a country such as Canada, with guarantees of civil liberties, freedom, and a liberal democratic process, the idea of life in a place with few freedoms and no ability to choose our leaders is alien to most. Because of this, events such as the Arab Spring come with a sense of inevitability, as though such struggles for democracy should exist wherever despotism is in power, and that it is simply a matter of time before the whole world becomes democratic like Canada. After all, who would choose to live under an undemocratic regime when they could fight for more rights and freedoms?

The reality is that such assumptions are too shortsighted, for no other reason than that the perfect system for one country may be incompatible in another, let alone wanted by its people. Even the idea of our Canadian system, where a party with a majority has almost absolute power on a country’s governance, is thought to not have enough accountability to our neighbors to the south.

The problem becomes more complicated when one takes into account the state of democracies around the world. As I wrote in my last column, the number of full democracies — free, non-corrupt systems that follow any ‘western’ liberal democratic model — are diminishing, all the while, the number of authoritarian regimes is on the rise. What makes the idea of a fully democratic world even more far-fetched is the fact that many of these authoritarian governments are doing just fine.

In Saudi Arabia, democratization is but a pipe dream, not only because the ruling family is so entrenched into government, but also because much of the population do not wish to see change. The economy is running well, people are mostly happy, and many feel there is no need for change. Though there are sections of the population calling for it — mostly women and religious minorities — the strength of the al-Saud family makes it so the changes come from the top, rather than create instability at the grassroots level.

Even in a nation such as Russia (which is apparently yearning for change), change is just as unlikely to come anytime soon. Putting aside the fact that elections in Russia are not free or fair according to many independent election watchers, the grim reality is that any opposition to Vladimir Putin’s United Russia is too disorganized and poorly funded to mount a meaningful challenge. More importantly, for as many people who take to the streets against Putin, there are likely just as many -— if not more — who would not like to see him go; these are not only the oligarchs and the rich businessmen, but many ordinary Russians who remember the chaos of the early ‘90s when Russia attempted to become fully democratic and almost slid into civil war. For them, stability – economic or otherwise – may be more important than the ability to choose who sits inside the Kremlin walls.

Democratization is not an easy process. Tunisia had it easy, Egypt and Libya are struggling to establish it, and Syrians are learning the hard way how difficult it is to rid one’s country of a tyrant. Absolute power not only corrupts, it addicts, and those in power will do whatever they need to in order to stay there.

By Lauren McCarthy

In last week’s issue of The Peak¸ regular contributor Cedric Chen wrote an opinions piece discussing an unnamed SFU club’s upcoming campaign to receive student levy funding. It is clear to anyone following the upcoming election that this unnamed group is, in fact, Schools Building Schools. While we typically enjoy Chen’s insight on SFU issues, his recent article does not display his usual tact and contains misinformation that requires clarification.

Schools Building Schools (SBS) is a federally registered organization founded by SFU students and alumni who are passionate about global change and youth empowerment through technical education. SBS is asking for full time students to contribute $1 per semester ($0.50 for part time students) in the way of a student-fee levy, to provide infrastructure for vocational schools in Uganda that are desperately needed for current and future students to meet their educational potential.

Our first point of contention is in regards to Chen’s claim that we will be imposing this levy “whether [students] like it or not.” In the past three months, 30-plus Schools Building Schools volunteers at SFU have collected almost 2,000 student signatures supporting the levy being brought to referendum. The support and words of affirmation that we have received from the diverse group of students that we spoke with was overwhelmingly positive. In addition we received a favourable vote from 20 out of 23 forum members (a combination of departmental student unions and SFSS board representatives). Furthermore, on March 20 to 22 all students will have the opportunity to vote and determine whether or not this motion is one that is supported by the majority of the SFU student body. If the referendum does pass with a majority vote, and the levy is added to student fees, all students will have the option of opting out and having their $1 or $.50 refunded.

The misleading portion of Chen’s article was his statement that the aforementioned opt out clause had been rejected by Schools Building Schools and by the SFSS forum. This is not accurate. In fact, the motion to add the clause to the referendum question was made and passed by the student forum. Chen attended and voted in favour of the measure himself. It is also worth noting that Chen was one of two sponsors of the opt-out vote motion. As it stands there is a second part to the referendum question, asking students to vote on whether or not an opt-out clause should be instituted. The official wording of the levy question and opt out option is available on the SFSS elections website.

The final point worth addressing from Chen’s letter is his concern that the causes of many organizations bring no benefit to SFU or the SFU community. We contest the notion that SFU would not be benefitting from this initiative and recommend to students that it is imperative to look beyond ourselves and, as President Petter has suggested, “engage the world.” This initiative provides SFU with the opportunity to go beyond student politics and make an investment in education that will undoubtedly contribute to the fight against cyclical poverty.

Through this initiative we are directly engaging with communities beyond our borders, which we argue is in fact adding value to the SFU community. We are asking you, the students of SFU, to think globally and act locally to empower underprivileged youth through technical education.

Again, this is a decision to be made entirely by the students of SFU. Our only request is that members of the student body vote online from March 20 to 22 to support initiatives consistent with their own values, and not someone else’s.

By Kelly Thoreson

In last week’s opinions piece [“The SUB is a scam”, February 27], author Joel Warren refers to the current SFSS board as “self-interested and ideologically-aligned”. This is not the first time that the phrase ‘ideological’ has been thrown around as a dirty word at SFU. ‘Ideological’ was an attack extensively used against the current SFSS board during the recent lockout of their staff, and it has also been fuel in the past for those that opposed organizations like SFPIRG or The Peak.

The issue of the lockout, and now the SUB, are good examples to illustrate that we are an ideologically divided campus. There is, as Warren would put it, the ‘progressive-minded’ on the one side, and what I would like to call the ‘fiscally-minded’ on the other — otherwise known as the political left and right, respectively. This divide is likely fostered by the tension between the ‘radical campus’ academic departments that remain at SFU and the inclusion of more ‘practical’ departments — such as business. Then there is also the majority of SFU students who fall somewhere in the middle (and even more that don’t follow the issues of student politics).

At SFU, if you appear to be so much as leaning towards one of these political mindsets, then you run the risk of alienating the other end of the spectrum and welcoming attacks of being branded as ‘ideological’. CJSF, the campus radio station, for instance rebranded its Peak advertisements from “Your social justice + indie music station” to “Your arts & culture + experimental music station” after then-arts editor Clinton Hallahan published an editorial about how the words “social justice” were alienating due to their political implications. Similarly, Ryan Beedie (of Beedie School of Business) started an alternative campus publication during his undergraduate career to allegedly counter The Peak’s then-alignment with the political left.

‘Ideological’, to me, is an empty attack. All it means is that you recognize that your beliefs are different from someone else’s — because ideology only becomes a problem when there are disagreements. It does not signify anything inherently wrong with a person or organization, just their difference. Plus, ideology is fluid. For instance, the SFSS’s ideological leaning is likely to change with each election and turnover of board members. The issue, I suppose, comes from when an organization is supposed to represent you and your beliefs.

Furthermore, I think that it is unfair to somehow blame the current board for being “ideologically-aligned”, as Warren has. We all had an opportunity to run in the elections last March, and we were all provided the opportunity to vote. Regardless of whether the current board is actually “ideologically-aligned” or not, we put those people into power; if you want a more diverse board, then you should elect one. This idea follows for all campus organizations: The Peak, SFPIRG, and CJSF — among others — all have an elected board of directors that students can get involved with, and all clubs and DSUs have elected leadership positions as well.

As Warren has argued, more people involved in decision-making might naturally create more diversity in student politics. However, it also might not, and it could even be detrimental to decision-making to have so many ‘cooks in the kitchen’. Instead, I think that it would be much more effective to encourage more students to get involved with on-campus organizations in order to create a larger and more diverse pool of candidates to choose from come election time.

If doing the actual grunt-work of running a campus organization doesn’t appeal to you, there are still other options. Student politics is no different from any other politics, and in a democracy, it is difficult to please everybody. However, you still have your voice. If the SFSS board, or any other organization you pay student fees into, isn’t representing you, then you should let them know in a way that is constructive. Go to their office, write an editorial in The Peak, and attend meetings — do anything. Just, please, do not throw the word ‘ideological’ around like it actually means something.