In 1998, the century-old and crumbling Varsity Stadium was nearly turned into a hotel in the hands of private developers. With its mind set on keeping the space for students, the university came up with several different plans to rebuild the site. In 2002, the Faculty of Physical Education and Health proposed an elaborate new stadium that would be partly funded by a student levy. The project was rejected by students in a referendum, and FPEH went back to the drawing board.
The current phase of the project was first put before Governing Council in 2005, according to FPEH’s dean Bruce Kidd. The committee that considered the proposal included representatives from the Graduate Students’ Union, University of Toronto Students’ Union, and Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students.
“All their representatives signed the report which included a business model that called for a $10 per term per full-time student fee,” said Masha Sidorova, co-chair of Council for Athletics and Recreation.
The report in question states that: “There will be no student capital levy for Phase 1 and only a modest increase in student operating is proposed (under $10 per term, to begin in 2008-09).”
Fast forward to 2008: none of those student unions have offi- cially endorsed the proposal. “My understanding is that [the signed document is] not binding,” said Rini Ghosh, then-president of UTSU (at the time known as SAC). “Considering our ideological beliefs, I don’t think Howard Tam [SAC’s representative on the project planning committee] would have committed students to pay the extra levy.”
In March 2007, the fee increase was taken to the Council on Student Services, where all the students on the board opposed it. UTSU members maintained that such an increase in fees could not be implemented without being first taken to the students. That was that—or so they thought.
“At the March 2 COSS meeting, we were under the impression that we had to come to a final decision at that meeting,” said UTSU president Andréa Armborst, who was then UTSU’s VP internal and non-voting chair on COSS.
In the meantime, FPEH had raised $24 million to build phase one of the Varsity Centre and the Bubble. Some criticized the university for building the facility without ensuring students would be willing to pay to use it.
“The university’s new strategy is to build something and then use the threat of it being taken away to force us to shoulder the costs of operating it,” said Arts and Science Students’ Union president Ryan Hayes. “You can expect to see the same thing happen with the Centre for High Performance Sport.”
Armborst disagreed. “The FPEH has been very straightforward with us. I don’t believe it’s a threat. The fact that students are having to pay for student space is not something the student union agrees with, but it’s an unfortunate reality,” she said. Armborst added that, while she trusted the FPEH, she was accustomed to taking the university administration’s word with a grain of salt
“Quite often what we hear from the university is contradictory to what actually happens in operational matters,” she said.
While plans for the CHPS are a long way from being finalized, a May 2007 preliminary project proposal presented to the university’s Planning and Budget Committee stipulated that students would pay 75 per cent of the annual $2.8-million operational cost. “We will be asking students to pay for their use,” said Kidd.
Kidd has taken the position that student fees for athletics are a regrettable necessity.
“I wish there could be another model. I wish that the province would fund both capital and operating [costs] for these important programs,” said Kidd, “but I just don’t see that happening.”
