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14 March 2003
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uwstudent.org
Federation of Students 
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Committee oversteps mandate
Students' council will receive recommendations on how refundable fees should be structured at its meeting on Sunday. The recommmendations come from a committee re-formed to advise council after the UW PC Campus Association collected signatures. The PCs were attempting to force a referendum to make refundable fees strikable online, which means you could choose not to pay them when you paid your tuition. It would come as no surprise that a committee dominated by representatives from student organizations would recommend that their fees not become strikable online. That is exactly what happened. Although a committee with a similar mandate existed for 14 months without meeting, this latest iteration that was formed in January and has produced its final report. The Advisory Committee on the Collection of Incidental Fees has recommended minor changes to the system and that council oppose a referendum. Students' council and its committees should represent the most important people in the organization, the students. When the committee was formed, besides the members from council, only student organizations got standing at the committee. Even though Lee-Wudrick's right-wing gang collected a significant number of signatures that supported a referendum, no representative from that group was given standing at the committee. It seems contrary to any intent of serving students when groups who express an interest are ignored. It would have been in the best interest of students to find a resolution on the issue to bring the two sides together. Instead there was a committee loaded with organizational interest. The PC Campus Association can easily be seen as having some political interest in opposing the current fee structure. Organizations that collect and benefit from students' fees, however, also have a special interest in supporting structures that protect their revenues. The mandate of the committee was to review the current refund system, examine how referendum procedures would apply and report findings. So making recommendations to council on its position in a possible referendum seems just a little outside the committee's mandate. Most concerns with the referendum procedure the committee raised would be moot if Feds ever got around to updating the referendum process to match the changes made to the election procedure. The appendices do provide some information but the recommendations should be taken with some salt. So, thanks for the appendices, you can keep the report. |