The results of the CFS referendum are in…. .after rigging the rules and way out spending the NO campaign, the CFS was only able to win by a slim margin. I would like to see how the CFS would do in a fair campaign where spending limits exist (the CFS is allowed to spend thousands of dollars), all expenses must be claimed (the CFS likes to hide expenses), only students campaigning (CFS flys in a lot of full-time staff to campaign full-time but only allow the NO side to have students who have full-time classes and cannot campaign 24/7) and the election board is unbias (unlike the CFS loaded committee which makes some dictatorship “elections” look fair in comparison). As one can see from the results, the CFS does not have a mandate to speak for students. It is too bad that almost 45% of students at U of Sask now have a new student fee that will increase every year. (That is another entry – The CFS increases their fees every single year yet call for Tuition Freezes and Fee Freezes with the hope of clawbacks to those fees. If the CFS is truly about Fee Freezes, why don’t they freeze their fee?)
From www.ussu.ca:
REFERENDUM RESULTS
On October 4-6 of 2005, undergraduate students at the University of Saskatchewan voted in a referendum on membership in the Canadian Federation of Students.
The unofficial CFS Referendum results:
Ballots cast – 3562
Yes votes – 1968 (55.4%)
No votes – 1584 (44.6%)
Spoiled – 10
I have begun to categorize all my entries about student lobbying organizations on one page:
http://www.joeycoleman.ca/archives/categories/student_lobbying/
Check it out for more CFS / CASA and future OUSA entries.
A comment as been added below which points out some interesting things that happened at USSU that should not have happened and how the executive kept the Council pretty much in the dark. It is interesting to note how the CFS rules were never made available and the “rules” changed. CFS has said time and time again that the Election Oversight Committee will have two CFS staffers (who usually campaign for the CFS during the campaign) and two students from the school they are taking over. This time the “rules” changed to two people appointed by the Executive who are not actually students. Interesting to say the least, and in their best doublespeak (man this is more confusing than 1984) they said the rules were actually that the other two would be “USSU Representatives”. The more details that arise, the more that one is amazed at how hard the students of USask had to work to make the “Referendum” a close vote. Clearly, if it had been a fair vote, the CFS would have lost.