The Peak

Give the CFS a chance

By Aman Bains

I’m sorry to see that the principles of journalism are slipping in our student newspaper. Last week’s “news roundup” [“SFU news roundup” January 7, 2008] was billed as an update for students on what happened over the break. In reality it gave a one-sided opinion about current campus issues.

It is true that there will be a referendum to decide whether we leave the Canadian Federation of Students or not, but this is not news, it was decided in September. This article was simply a vehicle for executive members of the SFSS to spin their isolationist plans for SFU students.

We were told that the CFS only spends money to get students to continue to be members of the organization. Anyone who has signed the CFS’s petition to improve public transit service, seen the transit and environmental sustainability posters of the CFS, or is wearing a “reduce tuition fees” or “grants not loans” button clearly knows this accusation to be false. Federation campaigns are about putting pressure on government decision-makers to make our lives as students better. Meanwhile, the only visible campaign of the SFSS around campus is its misguided campaign to leave the CFS. Because the SFSS doesn’t seem to do campaigns unless they are negative campaigns, they naturally wouldn’t want to acknowledge the work other people are doing to advocate for students.

In the article, Joe Paling and Derrick Harder also made the assertion that the SFSS will run better if students are not members of the CFS. The hidden agenda is that they want to get rid of the $15 per year CFS membership fee so that they can then raise the $80 per year SFSS membership fee to $95 per year, a completely unnecessary gouging of students that is much better spent pooled with the 500,000 members of the CFS to get high-quality national and provincial campaigns and services.

Many of us who are actively working to support continued membership in the CFS do not want to be spending our time campaigning during a referendum on membership in March. We want to continue campaigning for better public transit service and funding, lower U-Pass fees, reduced tuition fees, more funding for higher-quality university education, and all the other issues that are important to SFU students. Unfortunately, we have no choice, as the Executive of the SFSS is trying to take our voice away on the provincial and national issues that effect us as SFU students.

It is that national and provincial representation that is the crux of this issue. The vast majority of post-secondary education policy is made at the provincial and federal level. Notwithstanding the bluster of the SFSS Executive, SFU students know that we don’t have a hope advocating for students alone. The CFS represents students across the country and can leverage those numbers to influence decision makers in every provincial and federal constituency in the country. All the SFSS can do is meet with the few MPs and MLAs in the region. If we separate, we have lost our influence at other universities and colleges and in communities around the province. We are far more powerful in the CFS than we are looking in from the cold.