News

Provocative referenda dominate UBC election

By David Proctor

The University of British Columbia’s student union, the Alma Mater Society, announced the results of its election last week. Last year’s board, plagued by scandal in the months approaching the election, has been replaced by a more conservative group of students.

The winner of the AMS presidency was Bijan Ahmadian, a third-year MBA/Law student who sat on the UBC senate for three years and the board of governors for two. His campaign revolved around promises to repair the weakening ties between the AMS and UBC administration; in a post-election interview with The Ubyssey, he condemned the previous board for “constantly sabotaging students. . . . It came to the point when the UBC president had to write a letter to the AMS Council, and pretty much openly say, ‘We do not have a constructive relationship’.”

The previous board had been hit by a succession of scandals, mostly centering around former president Blake Frederick. The main issue arose when Frederick, along with former vice president external Tim Chu, submitted a human rights complaint to the UN alleging that the B.C. and federal governments were neglecting their obligations under the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights by failing to reduce tuition rates. Furious that the complaint had been submitted without a vote of AMS council, many students and other members of the AMS executive secured the complaint’s retraction, but not before $6,000 had been paid to the Pivot Legal Society to file the complaint on behalf of the AMS.

When Frederick and Chu rejected demands for their resignations, impeachment proceedings started, but were quickly halted when it became clear that impeachment by a vote of council would violate B.C. law.

Several referenda conducted simultaneously with the election were created in direct response to the scandal. Referenda seeking to empower student council to impeach its own members and to impeach Tim Chu both failed; although the impeachment attempts would only have reduced the terms of the affected officers by two weeks, they were seen as symbolic attempts at punishment.

Two additional referenda were created in response to the scandal, but did not end with the election. The referendum seeking to impeach Frederick was initially reported to have succeeded, but was later announced to be a miscount. Meanwhile, the referendum question created by Frederick, which read, “Should the AMS actively lobby for reduced tuition fees and increased government funding?” was revealed to have reached quorum and became the sole successful referendum question.

“These [referendum] results show that although a number of students disagree with my approach, they agree that their student union should stand up for lower tuition,” Frederick told The Ubyssey.

Another controversial referendum asked if voters supported the creation of an annual $5 “engagement levy” that would be refundable to a student if they voted in that year’s AMS election. This motion, which was criticized for encouraging students with no knowledge or interest in student politics to vote at random, was soundly defeated.

The 2010 AMS election had a voter turnout of 14.9 per cent, the highest absolute figure the organization has enjoyed since 1986. The figure is more than three times greater than the average voter turnout in the SFSS’s most recent by-election.