In my three years of running a french club I have met everyone from janitors to the president, from frosh to doctoral candidates to tenured professors. As I prepare to leave this school, I want to make life easier for the so-called student leaders, those of us who run and organize the most undervalued part of U of T campus life—its various clubs and student associations.
Many high-school graduates tell me that they picked a university other than U of T because they were scared of getting lost in the U of T shuffle. Clubs play a foundational role in the development of shared-interest communities, offering tremendous social, academic, and economic opportunities to their membership, provided that their group is engaged and active. They also teach students management skills (better than Rotman), and their members learn how to actually do things. No theory here—we write our own constitutions and sign our own cheques.
How does U of T reward us? By housing us in the most poorly maintained building on campus, the Sussex Clubhouse. This is a building where the paint moulds off the asbestos-filled walls, where the elevator habitually goes into “bouncy mode”, a ghastly thrill ride that leaves many of our African and Arab members looking distinctly more European for the sheer fright it induces. In this building I’ve been bitten by a bat, and fought off a momma raccoon. As far as I’m concerned, they can’t build the new Student Commons fast enough.
Clubs contribute to student life when they are encouraged to operate on campus. Because facilities have such strenuous booking policies, clubs are much more inclined to seek relief at commercial venues. A predictable result ensues: a mass exodus from campus.
That’s because the biggest logistic hurdle we face when hosting events is booking a space. Sure, it’s pretty easy if all you want to do is host a general meeting, but as soon as you want to prepare foods related to your cultural tradition, produce a play, or organize an art show, you have to look outside the Hart House sandbox, and that’s when the problems start surfacing.
Hart House’s food policy restricts clubs from serving food other than from its expensive catering service, or ordering in pizza. And it has to be pizza—the porter’s desk actually opens up the delivery boxes to make sure you aren’t smuggling anything else in. It’s a handy policy if you’re the U of T Italian-Canadian Association; it sucks if you’re representing any other place that didn’t invent pizza. Their pseudo-official policy of only allowing clubs to book two weeks in advance also inhibits our ability to get enough room for our members, or even promote the event.
A larger issue at hand is the way groups are granted recognition by the University. EFUT is a “campus recognized” group, which means we obtain funding from the UTSU, and an office from Student Life. Both of these organizations do great work, and we could not exist without their help. From a club’s standpoint, they differ in one significant way: UTSU is consumed with fighting fees, while Student Life—an administrative department—is wholly blind to that issue.
Complicating matters further is the addition of the federated colleges and their student unions. These colleges operate on discretionary and exclusionary policies specifically meant to isolate them from the rest of campus. Their main method of discrimination is a separate recognition process that makes a student organization reject all other campus recognitions. A “campus recognized” group like the French Club cannot book space with regularity even at SMC, where the French Department is located, because their booking policies are tied to recognition at SMC. The federated colleges have also been known to selectively ban groups for perceived slights like re-arranging chairs or rolling up a carpet.
VUSAC consistently earns a C+, even from its own students, for exclusionary and discriminatory practices. VUSAC seems to be waging a fatwa against anyone not registered at their college. Someone should remind this motley crew of resumé padders that they go to the University of Toronto, just like the rest of us. This behaviour is especially shameful given that Vic has some of the nicest and most unique facilities on campus, but they are chronically underused. When was the last time you saw an event advertised at the Cat’s Eye? Do you even know where the Cat’s Eye is? Exactly.
Putting aside the arduous recognition process, there’s the more grave problem of shadow administrators. These isolated and insulated mid-level admin run their small piece of U of T like a personal fiefdom. They are unelected, unaccountable, and capricious. They play fast and loose with their policies, enforcing them when they feel like it, ignoring them when you butter their bread. They will misrepresent policies to your face, and then change them once you ask for those policies in writing.
My worst experience as president of EFUT involves one such official. I was trying to book a space to do an exhibition, including free wine and cheese for our student and community members. Ten minutes into the preliminary meeting, and this administrator had already decided we weren’t going to do our event, at least not on his turf. He did what admins often do in this circumstance: he invented a policy violation. When I asked him who set the policy, he replied “the Provost” in an attempt to discourage me from pursuing the matter further.
I guess he didn’t think I’d bring it up with the Provost. I did. She laughed away the preposterous suggestion, informing me that I would have better luck with the principal of the college in question, since she had no direct involvement at such a micro level. The principal’s office said I would have better luck speaking to the director of the department. I realized I was just getting the run-around.
They’ll do everything they can to discourage you.
I mentioned earlier that Student Life is unconcerned with student fees, and that’s because they ultimately answer to the administration, and therefore the President’s Office. An active and engaged student populace poses a distinct problem as far as new policies (read: tuition increases) are concerned. I point the blame squarely on the President’s Office simply because having served on CASAS with many of Student Life’s administrators, and interacting with them nearly every day at the Clubhouse, I know them to be good people who want clubs to succeed. Despite the fact that Student Life’s administrators most closely interact with students, they seem to have the least power over our governance. That power rests squarely with the offices of the President, the Provost, and the Vice-Provost.
Whether we’re battling territorial collegiate unions, trying to find the lynchpin in the room booking machine, or defending ourselves against imagined policy items, booking facilities is the most difficult part about hosting on-campus events. As such, clubs and student associations have vacated the premises in favour of commercial pastures.
It is time the university started recognizing clubs for what they are: non-profit entities that encourage social and community investment into our campus.
Stop making our lives so difficult.
Recommendations
100 per cent funding for on-campus events by student clubs and associations. The current funding scheme only allows for 50 per cent of an events cost to be covered, regardless of where it occurs. This simple step would instantly induce the return of an active and vibrant campus.
A reverse-onus initiative from the President’s Office declaring that administrators must now prove why a facility cannot be booked, instead of the current system of unwritten policy hoops. Administrators themselves should approach this process in good faith and should do more to interpret the spirit, and not the letter, of their existing mandates.
Enough with the federated colleges. If Victoria, Trinity, and St. Mike’s want to discriminate against “campus recognized groups” such as EFUT and others, then they should be prohibited from booking facilities anywhere but their own campuses. No more prime and protected boards at Sid Smith, no more intramurals on UC front and back fields. The diploma reads “University of Toronto”, remember that.
