By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: May 23, 2012
In 2007, UFV’s student body voted to join the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA). I’m going to go ahead and assume that most of the students that voted in that referendum have now graduated – in fact, I’m going to go ahead and assume that most of the student body currently attending UFV has no idea what CASA does. In all honesty, for the first three years I attended this institution, I had no idea what CASA was either.
In short, CASA is a way for students from universities across Canada to have a common voice in lobbying the government. This really gives a voice to students; CASA currently has 26 university members from coast to coast, and by combining their speaking power into a single unit, they actually get the government to listen. CASA had a hand in the creation of Canada’s Scholarship Tax Credit, the Textbook Tax Credit, and $200 million in student grants. They’ve lobbied to improve the system of student loans within Canada, and have delivered recommendations on the ongoing copyright amendment by the government’s request.
This is a pretty cool thing for UFV to be involved in. By joining the CASA team, we lend our voice and our support to a larger movement, and help bring attention to the problems that students struggle with every day.
This is why I was surprised to find that UFV’s Student Union Society (SUS) decided in their last board meeting to move from full membership in CASA to associate membership. Moving to associate membership means a couple of things: that UFV no longer has a vote within CASA, that we have one year to decide if we are completely in or completely out of CASA, and that our membership fees are lowered.
I can’t help but wonder if it was the lowered fees that was the biggest deciding factor in SUS’s 9-5 vote to drop down to associate membership. In the SUS minutes, those arguing for CASA talk about the connections we’ve built with other universities and the combined impact we’ve had through CASA. Those arguing against CASA note only the fact that last year we paid $21,000 in CASA membership fees.
Dropping down to associate membership theoretically cut those by half—to $10,500—but former VP Kate Nickelchok, who was also a CASA delegate, had negotiated a deal with CASA where UFV could have had half of its fees waived if it remained a full member. The other thing to keep in mind is that as a full member, delegation fees are paid through CASA – as an associate member, they are not. In all likelihood, we’re not saving ourselves a lot of money.
I can understand that SUS is trying to use the money of the student body wisely, but especially take into account that all the membership fees that CASA collects are going towards helping students anyway. Looking at the numbers, it’s easy to think that UFV could save 10 grand in one fell swoop – but the issue isn’t that simple. In reality, once you factor everything in, Nickelchok said that “the difference between full member and associate member is around $2,000 give or take and if we don’t get covered for delegate fees.”
Considering that at the same meeting, SUS approved nearly $2000 in other funding towards various other student associations, I have a hard time believing that this amount of money is going to make a huge difference to the SUS budget in the long run.
In any case, SUS has a year to decide if they want to be a full member of CASA or completely out. Associate membership is not permanent membership; we only have a year to make up our minds. I believe that CASA is an important and active group to be a part of, and I can only hope that SUS—and the student body as a whole—will come to the same conclusion before it’s too late.
