"Building On" official students' union resources

A slate running in these elections to the University of Manitoba Students' Union (UMSU) executive has its website hosted on the UMSU server itself, possibly in violation of UMSU By-Laws governing elections.

Check out:

• http://www.buildingon.ca/
• http://buildingon.umsu.ca/

Building On, a five-person executive slate headed by incumbent President Garry Sran, has covertly hosted its website on the official UMSU domain name. If you go to www.buildingon.ca - the domain that they want you to visit - and hover your mouse over any one of the links on the left side of the website, then you can see a link to an UMSU-hosted page. However, because buildingon.ca simply hosts buildingon.umsu.ca through HTML Frames, the casual browser may miss this fact.

This is no slate of amateurs:

• Garry Sran (candidate for President) is the incumbent President, and local representative to the CFS-Manitoba Executive;
• Amanda Jonson (candidate for VP External) is currently the VP Internal of UMSU;
• Mike Einarson (candidate for VP Internal) is currently a member of UMSU Council;
• Rachel Heinrichs (candidate for VP Advocacy) is currently the CFS-Manitoba Treasurer and has been involved in many UMSU committees; and
  
• Marlo Ostrow (candidate for VP Student Services) has been involved in many UMSU committees and other activities.

Surely the candidates must be familiar with UMSU Bylaw 1007, section 6, which states:

Campaigning is restricted to Members of the Union, and no one who is not a Member of the Union shall campaign. No candidate, campaign manager, or volunteer may campaign:
a. in a business or service owned or operated by the Union;
b. in a University library; or
c. in a classroom during a class period without first obtaining permission from the instructor responsible for the class, or from the Dean of the Faculty (or Director of the School) in question.

Presumably the UMSU website is a "service operated by the Union." UMSU Bylaw 1000 (3) (b) further defines the word "campaign" as including "any planned or organized act by or on behalf of any candidate or registered side which is calculated to gain support for the vote."

Great moments in constitutional drafting

While I was reviewing the websites of students' unions in BC, I came across a most interesting Constitution of the Selkirk Students' Association. Have a look in particular at paragraphs 4 and 6:

ANNUAL REVIEW
4. The Union shall be required to exercise an annual mandatory review, along with a full-membership referendum in order to join or remain in any external organization that requires monetary fees. This clause is unalterable.

DISSOLUTION
5. Upon the winding up or dissolution of the Union, any assets remaining after the satisfaction of its debts and liabilities shall be given or transferred to such Canadian organization or organizations promoting objectives similar to those set out in paragraph 2 herein, as may be decided by the members of the Association at the time of winding up or dissolution. This clause is unalterable.

CANADIAN FEDERATION OF STUDENTS
6. For all purposes, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Canadian Federation of Students -Services and the Canadian Federation of Students – British Columbia Component shall not be considered external organizations. This clause is unalterable.

Election Roundup - British Columbia

• Alma Mater Society of UBC: Results are here. Jeff Friedrich is President; Brendon Goodmurphy is VP Academic and University Affairs; Sarah Naiman is VP Administration; Matthew Naylor is VP External; and Brittany Tyson is VP Finance. All are independents, as slates are banned. The Ubyssey reported on the landslide victory of President Friedrich, while commenting on the continuing problem of low voter turnout. The trial run of Voter-Funded Media produced some rather mixed results; for example, candidates spend significantly more time responding to questions from the media (both established and new), thus spending less time campaigning.

• Graduate Student Society of UBC: A by-election is happening for the President of the students' union. Nominations close February 26, and voting takes place March 5-12. GSS Notes (the students' union's email newsletter) for February 5, 2007 states that elections for the four other executive positions were taking place, so I am assuming that nobody bothered to run for President....

• UBCSU-Okanagan: neither the UBC Okanagan students' union website nor the student newspaper's website have any information on the upcoming election. Under the bylaws (PDF), "the general election for the board of directors positions shall take place no later than March 31st of any given year."
  
  
• BCIT Student Association elections will take place "between the last school week of March and the last school week of April" according to the Bylaws (PDF). The elections will be conducted by VP Administration & Finance Todd Embley, in accordance with those bylaws.... (No offense meant to Mr. Embley, but I don't think highly of elections being run by elected students' union executives.)
  
  
• The Camosun College Student Society runs its elections in the fall. Fall 2006 results are available here.
  
  
• A motion to hold a by-election this April will be considered by the Council of the Kwantlen Student Association this Wednesday.
  
  
• The Langara Voice reports that "Langara [College] students have trickled to the polls to elect the students' union executive council, and, once again, the whole process has been met with a resounding yawn." 248 students voted, or 4% of the total population. (Interestingly, this article quotes External Affairs coordinator candidate Kira Daley, part of the "Langara 2.")
  
  
• The 'Elections' page of the Malaspina Students' Union website has not been updated since the Spring 2005 election....
  
  
• Northern Undergraduate Student Society (UNBC): Elections are finished; turnout appears to be rather low. The student newspaper hasn't posted new issues online since March 2006....
  
  
• The Simon Fraser Student Society is holding its annual election March 20-22. Nominations close March 5. (Source: Facebook.)
  
  
• Trinity Western University Student Association: elections are finished and results are in. Only two out of five executive positions were contested (President and VP Student Relations).
  
  
• I'm pretty confident that the elections to the University of Victoria Students' Society will be pretty interesting this year... but so far, no new news.
  

(Stay tuned for an Election Roundup from other provinces!)

No competition in Ryerson Students' Union election

It looks as though the controversial appointment of Eric Newstadt as Chief Returning Officer of the Ryerson Students' Union will be largely irrelevent. Only one slate of executive candidates is running in this year's general election, consisting of two incumbent executives (Nora Loreto and Chris Drew) and two board members (Heather Kere and Ibrahim Snobar), running under the banner "Ryerson Students United." Although The Eyeopener has encouraged students to vote "No" in the ensuing Yes/No vote, it seems likely that all four candidates will win.

National Day of Action 2007

(That me on the left!)

The rally and impromptu march in Vancouver, though smaller than in 2004, still managed to produce quite a strong response. Our march through the streets of downtown Vancouver only covered half of the road; cars still ran on the other half, and many of them honked in support of us. The student press covered the National Day of Action very comprehensively (Langara, Lakehead, Concordia, etc.) and the mainstream media also took notice.

However, I think that the simple message "Students wants tuition fees reduced" won't really resonate if the pundits like Ian King respond by stating "Yeah, but it's a bad idea." King's stance - that the government should increase the provincial grant program - was actually stated in the speeches that preceded the march, but this was drowned out in the storm of "Reduce Tuition Fees" posters.

Previous blog entry removed

My previous blog entry, "Ryerson Students' Union appoints Eric Newstadt as Chief Returning Officer," has been removed, following my receipt of a demand letter [PDF] from counsel for the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). I removed this blog entry after noting that The Eyeopener had itself removed the article that I referenced, presumably after receiving a similar letter. The article made certain statements concerning the CFS that The Eyeopener was presumably unable to prove. Under Canadian law, the burden of proof of the truthfulness of an allegedly defamatory statement lies with the publisher of the statement in question.

Accordingly, I should make a correction to a statement that I made in that blog entry. Referring to the 2003 elections at Simon Fraser University, I referred to an article in The Peak by Derrick Harder. I should have stated: "Derrick Harder wrote about his participation in a CFS-BC-backed slate at Simon Fraser University in The Peak last November." To my knowledge, the CFS had no involvement whatsoever in that election.

Likewise, in 2002, the posters for the "Access All-Stars" slate at Simon Fraser University were designed on CFS-BC computers, in the CFS-BC provincial office, during CFS-BC office hours. And the persons who were giving the Access All-Stars candidates campaign advice were employees of CFS-BC. Again, to my knowledge, the CFS had no involvement whatsoever in that election.