Student Services administrators to discuss students' unions
Bridging Accountability and Autonomy: The Impact of Poor Student Leadership, Management and Accountability within Student SocietiesThough I would disagree with certain assumptions inherent in this description (including the claim that students' unions were originally formed for the mere purpose of "leadership development"), this sounds like a very interesting workshop indeed.
Frank Cappadocia, Director, Centre for Student Community & Leadership Development, York University
Blaine Jensen, Vice President Educational Services, Douglas College, New Westminster, B.C.SASA
As student unions continue to grow, so do the levies they draw from their members and the creation of significant enterprises on campus. These organizations are largely controlled by a handful of young individuals many with little or no financial, business or operational experience.
The development of student societies has gone from a leadership development model to that of big business. In most universities and many colleges student societies’ annual budgets are in excess of $1M and staff will exceed some medium sized businesses. The complexity of business operations are often challenging to those with graduate degrees let alone a second or third year undergraduate student. Yet legislation and other factors have created a situation where “autonomy” has become “unaccountability”. Whether through temptation, personal benefit, naiveté, or sheer negligence, some individuals, and indeed entire councils, have used their funds and positions for purposes beyond the benefit of their membership.
Through the exploration of two actual case studies – one from York University’s Glendon College and the other from Douglas College in B.C. – this session will provide Student Affairs practitioners with an advanced review of what can happen to a student organization when self-interest and benefit override the By-laws, the needs of members and, longer-term the validity of student unions themselves. Session participants will be invited to share their experiences and recommendations through an interactive dialogue following the presentation of the case studies.
(Hat tip: Jeff Friedrich)
3 Comments:
Interesting...a workshop sponsored by a 'Student Services' organisation to demonstrate just how irrelevant and unaccountable student unions really are.
Of course, universities--and their student services branches (which are, let's face it, set up specifically to undermine student unions and their own student services)--are themselves notoriously unaccountable despite their use of vast amounts of public money.
How disingenuous.
To be fair, the kinds of student services that CACUSS mostly deals with are things like enrolment services, financial aid, recruitment, etc. etc. etc.
I would challenge Qwerty to show me the student union that does these things. It's needlessly histrionic to suggest that the services that CACUSS primarily deals with (and I acknowledge that it's not exclusively) were specifically created to undermine student union services.
Which is not to say I don't see this particular session as being somewhat sketchy.
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