In my continual efforts to air my grievance about the upcoming SFU graduate student referendum over funding to the student newspaper, The Peak, I have a few more pieces of (mis?)information.
I left off having asked the president of the GSS why the question is phrased in the negative (“Do you agree that the Society discontinue collecting…”) to which he replied:
Hi Ian,
It was decided that we would use the same referendum question as the 2007 referendum that asked the same question. This question is identical to that one.
I hope that clears it up.
Josh
However, such questions tend to be documented and the GSS, being a relatively open organization, has all of its minutes on its website for the perusal. A quick search finds two references to this 2007 referendum. The first, in September 2007 [pdf] states:
11. New business
a. Referendum endorsement
MOVED that council endorse “yes” votes for referendum questions on membership fees and levies for the Society’s general membership fee, capital levy, health & benefit plan levy, UPass levy, Peak fee, SFPIRG fee, CJSF fee, Student Refugee Program fee, and First Nations Student Association fee.
…
CARRIED (Schroeder opposed)
And the results are reported in the February 2009 AGM [pdf] (see page 15/16):
October 2007: Referendum to set all initial membership fees of the Gss, including… Peak fee… Council endorsed a “yes” vote for all of these fees. Polling occurred online on October 29th and 30th. Between 584 and 591 votes were cast for each referendum question and all referendum questions passed.
Both of these quotes imply to me that the referendum of 2007 was not worded the same as this current one at all. I’ve sent these notes and the questions they raise back to Joshua Newman, in dwindling hopes of discovering much more from him.
Meanwhile, my council rep reported to me that most of the council discussion revolved around whether to have a referendum, and 40% of council was against any Peak referendum. Also, one of my friends on Facebook has taken to this issue too and reports from her rep a similar vote but “quite a bit of discussion regarding the wording” occurred.
While I’m pessimistic that this question will be changed, I think some noise needs to be heard so we can demand better from our council and that people realize that they need to read the questions before instinctively voting yes (especially if they read “Do you agree… the Peak funding”).
On the positive, I will have another article in the Peak on Monday that deals explicitly with this referendum, however I didn’t indulge the phrasing issue so my conclusion was to endorse voting to continue funding the Peak.
