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gateway February 15th, 2012
Issue No. 22
Volume 102
THE
TH E O F F IC IA L STUDE NT NE WS PA P E R AT TH E UN I V ER S I T Y OF A LBERTA
student fees
BoG will decide which MNIFs need student approval April Hudson
staff reporter @april_hudson The Board of Governors will now have final say in which mandatory non-instructional fees go to student referendum, following an approved motion proposed by university administration at last Friday’s board meeting.
News Feature
student referendum. SU Vice-President (External) Farid Iskandar said the Students’ Union had intended to propose an amendment to the original 2001 motion that was rescinded during the meeting in order to require referendum for all existing fees, as well as any new fees to come, as the 2001 motion only covered
“We wanted to put (the amendment) on the board as a motion, and we wanted to debate both of them. But when we went to university governance, they told us we can’t have two contradicting motions on the same agenda. farid iskandar
VP (external), students’ union
According to a motion from 2001, MNIF increases beyond the Consumer Price Index had to be approved by Students’ Council or a referendum. Alternatively, the motion brought forward by Provost Carl Amrhein last Friday eliminated those requirements and instead included the establishment of a third budgetary committee dedicated to MNIFs called MBAC. This committee would include two Students’ Union representatives and two Graduate Students’ Association representatives on a committee of eight. Amrhein said during the meeting that the MBAC committee will decide on a case-by-case basis which fees are brought to
MNIF increases. However, this amendment would have contradicted Amrhein’s motion to rescind the 2001 decision altogether. “We wanted to put that on the board as a motion, and we wanted to debate both of them,” Iskandar said. “But when we went to university governance, they told us we can’t have two contradicting motions on the same agenda.” Amrhein said at the meeting that this new process does not mean there will not be student referendums on MNIFs, but it gives the BoG final say on when to hold a referendum.
The Gateway investigates reports of poor living conditions in HUB residence
page 10
PLEASE SEE bog PAGE 4
matt hirji
top opinion
BoG ruling robs students of rightful input on fee decisions Alexandria Eldridge editor-in-chief
In what Students’ Union President Rory Tighe rightly called a “step backwards” last Friday, the University of Alberta Board of Governors passed a motion to remove a requirement for student referendum on mandatory noninstructional fee increases. This move effectively silences the voice of students when it
comes to fee increases that they ultimately have to pay for. A bylaw in 2001 previously required that if the BoG wished to increase MNIFs beyond the Consumer Price Index, it would have to be approved by Students’ Council or student referendum. This motion has now been rescinded. Instead, the BoG will opt for student consultation through a newly created MNIF budget advisory committee, which will have two student representatives from the Students’ Union and two from the Graduate Students’ Association on a committee of eight. Together, this committee will advise the BoG on whether or not a fee needs to be
brought to student referendum or whether it can be implemented without further consultation of the student body.
This move effectively silences the voice of students. SU Vice-President (External) Farid Iskandar said that this committee may not make any decisions by vote, meaning that the student representatives will not actually be able to have any real power, and their concerns could easily be pushed to the side. Regardless of what happens on the committee, their role is
only advisory, and the BoG will essentially be able to do whatever it wants, making the committee entirely unnecessary and useless. This doesn’t mean that there will never be another referendum for an MNIF. But it does make it unlikely, and it certainly takes power away from students by giving the committee, and by extension the BoG, the final say on what students must pay. Rather than the final say coming from a vote of the student population, there’s a very real possibility that student voices get completely lost in the shuffle.
PLEASE SEE mnifs PAGE 17