So, York University finally has a new student council after 18 months without a change. Too bad-they may have been better off without one. A brief earful of the sorry saga that got them to this point is reason enough to wash one’s hands of the very concept of “student leadership.”
In their November 27 election (held after the original vote planned for last March was postponed), a group named Progress Not Politics (PNP) won 26 of 32 seats, including all four executive positions on council, which come with a salary of $20,000 each. PNP ostensibly campaigned on a platform of improving student services, but their main issue was targeting the incumbents on council (the York Federation of Students, or YFS), which they felt were using the student government to further their own pet causes, namely the pro-Palestinian cause.
As in all politics, there’s another side to the story-PNP leader and YFS president-elect Paul Cooper just happens to be president of York’s Young Zionist Partnership, a pro-Israeli campus group that also supports PNP. It doesn’t end there-the requisite flinging of mud began when some of the losing YSF incumbents filed a complaint with the chief election officer alleging that the PNP had exceeded campaign spending limits. A Dec. 4 hearing cleared the PNP, but the YFS refused to accept the decision and refused to leave office. In the end, the university’s administration had to step in to resolve the situation, withholding student levy funding until they finally decided to ratify the vote last week.
Got all that? While the York case is particularly convoluted, this sort of dysfunction is systemic in student government-it’s like an unending film loop showing the same bad movie over and over again. When’s the last time you heard of a student council at a university working together efficiently to solve students’ problems and deliver the services they need? Instead, these self-absorbed politician-wannabes end up acting like spoiled children, arguing over completely inane procedural or partisan issues that have nothing to do with the task at hand (which, by the way, is supposed to be acting as good representatives of the students on their campuses). At York, what it boiled down to was that the adults had to break up the squabbling kids. Embarrassing.
York clearly has its own issues to deal with when it comes to the thorny Middle East issue (we certainly don’t need another Concordia-style situation here in Ontario), but putting that factor aside, student leaders there and on other campuses need to do a major rethink if they’re to make student government dynamic instead of disappointing. When the student councils at most of the universities and colleges in the GTA came together to push the TTC to offer a reduced-rate Metropass to post-secondary students, they met with resistance for years, but they stayed united and pressed their point until they were finally heard, and now you can save a few dollars by buying that cheaper pass at your student council office.
Just imagine what else student representatives could do if they stopped fighting with each other long enough to really put their heads together. Where were our university leaders during the recent public budget discussions spearheaded by new mayor David Miller, for example? It’s the student population that has the most at stake in the direction this city is headed in the next few years, yet where was our voice when it counted?
Many students run for office because they genuinely want to be part of their campus community and think they can make a difference. It’s definitely tough in the face of widespread apathy (most students don’t even bother to vote in their school elections) and encroaching bureaucracy, but it’s looking more and more like some people are there just to further their own interests. Perhaps they’ve got their eye on a future in politics, which would explain a lot about the current state of affairs.
