A fairly long rant about this issue. For the curious, I want out. More after the jump.

Unless you have been living under a rock (or if you don’t go to SFU), you are probably aware of the upcoming election where in addition to voting for our new student society executive, we will have two referendum questions:

1. Are you in favour of maintaining membership in the Canadian Federation of Students? (Yes/No)
2. If the Simon Fraser Student Society ceases to be a member of the Canadian Federation of Students, do you agree that the former CFS membership fees of $7.64 per semester for full time students and $3.82 for part-time students should be redirected into a Society Development Fund which will result in no overall fee increase for students?” (Yes/No)

This referendum has our campuses, particularly Burnaby campus for obvious reasons, plastered with not only campaign posters of candidates wanting to be a part of student politics, but also posters of those in the Yes and No campaigns on the CFS question. Despite a referendum a year ago, where a majority of people who care enough about this school voted to leave the CFS, those jerks say that it was non-binding and that we did not follow proper procedure.

Fair enough. Now here’s the real thing. And it is really getting annoying and I’ve had enough of the plastering of our campus with their bullshit.

Let’s take a look at just what the CFS has done for us and how effective they have been.

To tell you the truth, I never heard of the CFS until I started getting involved with student groups on campus like the CSSS. I never really saw what they have done for SFU students. All I know is that I pay a few dollars that contributes to the $430,000 or so that goes to the CFS for the various “good things” they do for us.

What would these good things be then? Various things like Travel CUTS, StudentPhones, Homes4Students.ca, UFile, the International Student Identity Card, and more!

Campaigners for the pro-CFS side claim that if we leave, we lose access to these wonderful things. However, non-member schools like UBC, who is a member of the Canadian Alliace of Student Associations (CASA), gets these services as well.

That’s not all though! Campaign materials state that the CFS was instrumental in getting us the U-Pass. If that’s the case, how come CFS-member schools in the Lower Mainland like Kwantlen don’t get a U-Pass? The bigger question here would be how come UBC ended up with a U-Pass as well?

And tuition? How come my tuition isn’t getting any cheaper? The biggest thing for any student is how much they need to pay for their education. In my first semester at SFU in Fall 2003, I paid $1724.22 for four courses (if we do the math, it’s $431.06 a course). Just this past summer (the last semester I did a full-time course load), I paid $1452.44 for just three courses (or $484.15 a course). Now to be fair, CMPT 200/300/400 level courses are a bit more expensive, but for that semester, I only took one CMPT course, and according to the Undergraduate Fees page on the Student Services website, it is only a difference of $7.60 per unit or $22.80 for a three-credit CMPT course. How did my tuition cost jump up by over $50 a course?

Speaking of cost of education, how come there aren’t any subsidies on the textbooks we use? Do you realize just how much money we need to burn just to buy those friggin things? Where’s the support of this “over 500,000 student strong” group to get people to cut the cost of textbooks? Apparently they are working on eliminating the GST on textbooks, but really, you should be more vocal about the things you do for students.

Which brings me to my next point. What the hell does the various social issues have to do with students? The CFS is supposed to be a group of students doing things in the best interests of students, no? Then why do we see social issues that are not exactly related to students and education supported by the CFS? To give you an idea of just how far stretching they are in terms of campaigning and lobbying for things outside of student issues:

• Raising the minimum wage to $10: A social issue on minimum wage, which has nothing to do with students.
• We Ride, a transit campaign: Student-organized campaign to get better transit. Since students do take transit, this at least has something to do with students. I have issues with transit in Vancouver, but just calling for a reduction of fares while also asking for more bus services is kind of contradictory. Getting a single bus running would not only need you to buy a new bus, but you will also need to pay for bus maintenance, driver’s wages (which are kind of high thanks to the union), and fuel. It’s not cheap to run a bus. Why don’t you people go and actually work for Coast Mountain Bus Company to make it possible somewhat? They are looking for bus operators.
• No Means No: Awareness campaign on sexual crimes like date rape, sexual assault, rape, and so on. Yes, it’s for a good cause and all, but it has nothing to do with students, and like.
• Where’s the Justice?: An awareness campaign on the racism against aboriginal people/First Nations/”Indians and support for aboriginal rights.

If we can’t even make politicians think about the students and give universities more funding, why are we going into all these other social issues? I don’t think we gave the CFS money to lobby for other issues outside of student issues.

This brings me to one of the biggest issues. How are they even accountable to us? Spending our money some some of these things that have nothing to do with students, getting those IAmCFS posters printed and placed must cost quite a bit of money, especially with those at Skytrain stations, which cost the most out of all the possible options for advertising on transit, according to folks at work who recently put out ads for the SFU-Zhejiang University Dual Degree Program on Skytrains and buses.

Speaking of the posters, how come I don’t recognize any of those people? Oh wait.. that’s right. They’re paid actors. They aren’t even SFU students. All of the anti-CFS posters, which parodies the IAmCFS posters contain an opinion on why the person on it, an actual student at Simon Fraser University like Phil Boutros, a fellow Computing Science student, whose poster just came out this week. Compare that to random actor guy standing near something at SFU with their open palm saying “I am CFS” and a generic blurb at the bottom saying something along the lines of “At my university/college, I am a member of the CFS and we get (blah)”.

But while we’re on the topic of people who aren’t SFU students (or students at all for that matter) posing as students, what about those guys on the Yes campaign? Them with their “Vote YES CFS” buttons. Do you even recognize these people? I sure don’t (well, most of them anyway; the few I would recognize are those running for office who also happen to be pro-CFS).

Fellow Computing Science students Kerry and Jenn encountered a pro-CFS person come into our common room in ASB 9802. Here’s the exchange that pretty much happened.

Kerry: So where are you from?

CFS Person: (somewhere in Ontario)

Kerry: Who paid for you to get here?

CFS Person: The student union.

Kerry: Which student union?

CFS Person: The student union.

That back and forth pretty much goes on for around 10 minutes until the CFS campaigner said that the CFS paid for them to be here.

If their “volunteers” can’t even be honest with us, students who paid $430,000 for them to use on whatever they want, how can we expect the CFS to do the same for us? And these volunteers aren’t all that responsible either.

Just on Tuesday, I got a half-day off work so I can finish my CMPT 475 take home midterm (I’ve been busy with a lot of other stuff, so I never really had time to work on it – bite me). I was at the Renaissance Coffee location, typing away on my laptop by the glass coffee table near the fireplace when these two people, a guy and a girl, with the “Vote YES CFS” pins came in and sat down. Listening away at my music, I pretty much ignored them. They had an energy drink with them and during the course of their time there, had a tea each and were reading various newspapers, perhaps getting up to speed on the campus issues. When they left, they just left their garbage there. It was ridiculous and a very irresponsible action. If you are reading this, I have news for you. Just because this isn’t your university campus doesn’t mean you can be a fucking pig and not clean up after yourselves. Clean up your shit! Your mother isn’t here to clean up for you.

I have not been talked to by any of these guys yet, but when that time comes, I’ll be giving them a piece of my mind. Their entire campaign to keep us in the CFS seems like a waste of money, flying people in from all across the country just to get us to stay in their useless organization.

But wait.. there’s more! Remember that fiasco in 2006 that led to the impeachment of all six SFSS directors in the Common Sense slate? It turns out that at least one of those people, namely Shawn Hunsdale, was involved with the CFS and that Hunsdale was not even eligible to run because he was not a student anymore (he was RTW-ed)! What is up with the CFS trying to get into the politics of their member’s student unions? Are they really that interested in our politics? Should they even be involved in the political structure of member schools’ student unions?

I think not. I think that this is a time for us to stand up and tell it to them to their face that we do not want them meddling in our affairs anymore. If any of them even try to talk to me, I’ll be frank with them and pretty much ask them questions on why they think they should be on our campus, telling them how to vote. Students from other post-secondary institutions have absolutely no right to tell or influence how we will vote when the referendum happens alongside of the student union elections. If we want out of the CFS, then we will vote no to the first question; the inverse is true as well.

So when you go to the polls next week on March 18, 19, and 20 (and I sincerely hope that you, the reader, does do so), vote for No to the CFS question and get us out of this money wasting, unaccountable, ineffective, and corrupt student association known as the CFS.

But don’t take my word on it. Do some research and decide for yourself which way you will vote. Below are some links to some relevant sites.

Despite being on the No side, I like being as objective as I can, since knowing both sides of any disagreement is important. Therefore, below is a collection of various relevant links to various sites that have information on both sides of the debate, as well as the official sites for both sides of the campaign.

• We Want Out – the official site for the No campaign
• Vote YES CFS – the official site for the Yes campaign
• Online video of the debate on the CFS question held on March 13, 2008 starting at 4 PM
• On the effectiveness of students working together
  • British example shows CFS can work (The Peak, February 4, 2008)
  • CFS does not equal NUS (The Peak, February 11, 2008)
  • CFS scores huge grant victory (The Peak, March 3, 2008)
  • Still not convinced (The Peak, March 10, 2008)
• On potentially controversial actions
  • Controversy erupts after secret CFS documents made public (The Peak, February 11, 2008)
  • Lawyers from CFS request public apology from KSA (The Peak, February 18, 2008)

Note: if you have more links related to the issue, please share them in comments.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 1:47 am and is filed under Rants, School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.