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13 November 2003
uwRyan.com This website is meant to provide value to UW student by delivering information. Please provide feedback on what I write as well as give me suggestions of topics to cover. You can send e-mail to me to ryan[at]uwryan[dot]com.
uwstudent.org
Federation of Students 
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Feds secrecy hurts us and it hurts them
The Feds executive is supposed to serve the students, their members who hold ultimate authority in the federation. Current and past executives have not adequately served us by keeping information away from public view. If we are unable to find out what our own student government is doing, then how will we be able to provide input, ideas, and direction to our representatives, leaders and our Federation. And how will we know whether they, the executive and the organization are performing Feds exec might argue that information is released when requested, but how can the information whose existence is unknown be requested and if the information is not known how is that different than a secret? While Feds are required to keep certain classes of information concealed — be it under law, policies or in order to better serve students — these are rare situations, whose restricted access should still be justified. This dearth of public information is harmful to the successful operation of Feds. First, future Feds executives are in the current student body; hiding current information from them ensures the ignorance of leaders to come. Second, Feds continually butt against the wall of disinterested constituents. How can students begin to care about that which they do not know about? Third, by informing students, Feds can capitalize on their talents. In trying to find solutions for the challenges of the organization, no one should be so egotistical to believe that a group of four former students are smarter, more knowledgeable or more creative than a body of thousands of scholars. We can see this problem in specific instances over the past year. Three of these are the secrecy surrounding the Tim Hortons’ negotiations, the self-serving review of the SLC management agreement and the secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding various Feds’ finances. Upon being reminded to announce that council would decide which coffee shop to include in the Ground Zero space, Feds president said that it was right for council to decide. What has changed from last June, when the executive rejected essentially the same Tim Hortons proposal, without even alerting members of the student population students’ council or even the Feds board of directors? Past exec say that they tried to get a Tim Hortons in Ground Zero but we only heard about it recently. Former vp internal Mike Kerrigan commented in the Imprint forum in July on early dealings with Food Services on Tim Hortons. Former vp administration and finance Chris DiLullo commented on uwstudent.org that he spoke with Food Services in May 2002. Students heard about these attempts more than a year later. When Imprint news editor Kim Mackhan wrote about Food Services approaching Feds with another Tim Hortons’ proposal, current vice president administration and finance Dave Capper would not give her a copy of the proposal. She had to instead receive the document from Food Services. It was only when Imprint published the information about the proposal and the Feds exec’s rejection of it, that members of the Feds directors, student councillors and the student body ever knew of the proposal. Feds exec and university administrators had renegotiated the agreement on management of the SLC last March. Some sections of the agreement favoured both Feds and UW but they, however, were not in the best interest of undergraduates. In the new agreement, they guaranteed zero rent to Feds and to Brubakers. This puts the financial burden of operating the SLC on fee-paying students and other tenants including student organizations. Students nor students’ council were not informed of this change. Most will hear of it here for the first time. Financial information was kept away from students. Financial information in which we fund through the non-refundable Feds fees that we pay each academic term. The report from the Feds Structural Budget Problems Committee clearly states, “Students have been unaware of the problems outlined in this report because we have not reported against our budget.” This refers only to the budget for the service side, no information on the business budgets or actuals are given. They are not even presented to council, the body to which Edey refers as “the highest decision making body of Feds.” This partially changed in July, when Capper fulfilled arts co-op councillor Jesse Helmer’s request for figures of business revenue. When this information was released, the serious problem of student fees being used to subsidise the Feds businesses was exposed, which prompted the formation of the committee to investigate. I admit they are not at zero. Some information is provided on request and students are allowed input on some things. There have been some improvements and anomalies in openness that are a credit to those few. The executive’s hoarding of information only hurts the Feds in the end and, more importantly, limits the value that students receive for their contributions. |
Below are references to the series of letters and op-eds starting with and following this peice.
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