The University of Toronto Students’ Union ran a full-page advertisement in Monday’s Varsity, urging people to vote on the fate of the proposed Varsity Centre levy in an upcoming plebiscite. What they did not mention is that the UTSU election would accompany the plebiscite vote. This is no mistake, but a symptom of an unnerving trend in UTSU politics. The current Progress/Unite government has gone to great lengths to create a political malaise on campus, allowing a tiny group to dominate a generation of student government elections. Considering this year’s UTSU election is nothing more than a formality, it is impressive that the current politicos found a way to make the unopposed race for office totally illegitimate.
Running alongside the health plan, dental plan, and UTSU Orientation Day, the values entrenched in UTSU’s mandate concern a fair, open, and publicized race each year for the annual student council elections. If this public trust is broken, then students of the University of Toronto have every right to civil disobedience by way of withholding their student fees from UTSU. Unfortunately, this move would harshly punish the blameless clubs and levy groups that UTSU provides funding for. Still, students cannot allow UTSU to hold the health of campus organizations hostage for the sake of maintaining power.
Sure, we’ve seen ads for the “Unite” slate. But we haven’t seen any ads for the election itself. The current UTSU government expects students to glean information about the election from their candidates’ posters, fostering the impression that Unite and UTSU are the same entity. Is that the type of democracy we expect? By not publicizing the election, failing to mention it in ads for the Varsity Centre plebiscite, or even posting election notices on the UTSU website, the current student council has shown nothing less than contempt for the U of T student body, snarling at the very idea that they should go through the motions of anything as quaint as a fair election.
This isn’t simply a matter of UTSU passing a plan to use $20 million to build a student centre after receiving support from approximately 5 per cent of the student body. This isn’t concerned with student the resources used to support divisive propositions like Israeli Apartheid Week. This isn’t even about UTSU trying to pass a motion to charge every single St. George campus student $480 (with no opt-outs) for a marginal discount on less than a full year of Metropasses. This is about something much bigger—the fundamental rights of students to a government they deserve.
