Clubs and Associations (C&A) at UFV are a mess. Changes earlier this year to the Student Union Society’s (SUS) policies regarding C&A has made it difficult, confusing, and impractical to become a registered club.
Clubs foster a sense of unique community on campus dictated directly by the unique interests of student groups that cannot be emulated by university or society-run groups. Every year, U-Join demonstrates this, with a collection of hopeful upcoming clubs and associations promoting their groups. This year saw the promotion of a new debate club and television show “book club” club.
In February, SUS changed their Fund Request Policy which governs how and why a C&A can request funding. C&A can only be approved for two funding requests per fiscal year (though they can make as many as they want) and receive up to $500 per request.
Based on other documentation and an email sent out to C&A when the changes were made, the intent of the policy change appears to be that C&A can only use SUS funding for fundraising initiatives. This is not mentioned in the Fund Request Policy except in the Q&A section that states: “These funds are allocated for events, not items.”
The Fund Request Procedure does reference the Fund Request Policy though, saying to look there for a definition of “fundraising initiative.” There is no mention of “fundraising” and only one, entirely unrelated mention of “initiative” in the policy, which provides little clarity.
Let’s break it down.
It is strongly implied that C&A should be running fundraisers to raise money to run their events. Students pay a fee to SUS, who puts money aside to fund C&A fundraisers, where C&A ask for more money from students so they can run actual club events.
This is, of course, if there is funding available to give. Until students passed a referendum increasing funding to SUS, there was no money budgeted for C&A in the 2019-20 budget. There was, however, increases to full-time wage for some SUS managers and executives and the creation of two new positions.
At the AGM where the budget was presented, former SUS vice-president internal Jaleen Mackay said they “had to cut from somewhere.” Their priority was wages; this is understandable, but clearly demonstrates the lack of value the Society sees in its clubs.
The referendum passed and $15,000 was allotted to “student-run programming,” a far cry from the $20,000 budgeted in 2017/18 and $56,500 in 2016/17.
Previously SUS has claimed the purpose of the changes was to promote accountability for both the SUS and C&A. What is actually happening is students are jumping through hoops to ***maybe receive the funding that the student body has already given them through fees paid to SUS. A board game club could purchase all their inventory with $500, and happily start their first event as a game tournament instead of a cry for more money from already broke students.
SUS’s fourth section of its mandate, its main purpose for being, is “to promote artistic, literary, educational, intellectual, social, and charitable activities for the benefit of its members and others, and not to own, operate, or manage a social club.”
The current attitude towards C&A and the changes to the policies are not in line with SUS’s mandate. The policies need to be reassessed in order to better facilitate C&A and help them develop and prosper on campus.
