“Governing Council shame on you. Who the hell elected you?” This chant, often heard at U of T protests, shows some nerve on student unions’ part, given that every year something mars their election process.
As reported in Monday’s issue of The Varsity (see Feb. 23, “UTSU directors talk election business”), some members of the University of Toronto Students’ Union Elections and Referenda Committee can’t be bothered to show up to meetings. Furthermore, UTSU executives who sit on the ERC see no point in creating a separate group to watch over this process.
Yet voter turnout in last year’s UTSU election was a paltry 13 per cent. How are other parties at the negotiating table supposed to take student demands seriously?
The solutions to these problems are surprisingly simple. Putting aside the politics of the campaign, what U of T students really need is an electoral system they can rely on. A positive first step would be for the union to show some faith in students. It also needs to face the facts about its estimation in the eyes of the people it’s supposed to represent. (Read: most students could care less about UTSU.)
Full disclosure: The Varsity attempted to plan an all-candidates debate. Talks broke down after many concessions when the Chief Returning Officer absolutely refused to allow a student to moderate the debate—even if the student would partner with the CRO’s selected moderator, who didn’t go to school here.
I note this because it exemplifies the misconception held by UTSU execs regarding how much this election means to students, and the same lack of regard for students’ abilities to remain neutral when holding potential union execs to account. The CRO, Lydia Treadwell, worried that “union members”—in other words, average students—could not be trusted to remain impartial. But how many students consider themselves members of UTSU, much less take sides?
Students deserve, and can do better. Here’s a few suggestions for how to revamp the process:
Firstly, the elections committee should have its own website, separate from UTSU’s. The elections committee should receive fees from the union, but it must have control over its own finances. Its activities should include being the sole advertiser of UTSU election notices, devloping advertising such as posters to encourage students to vote, and costs from its independently-held debate. All of these activities should be independent from the union.
Secondly, the elections committee should not contain anyone directly involved with the union, and by “directly involved” I don’t mean its so-called “members.” UTSU’s got it backwards: the current system has the most interested parties choosing the person whose job it is to be impartial. That committee has chosen a CRO whose main draw is the fact that she isn’t a member of the union, even though the vast majority of the union’s members are indifferent to elections to the point of not voting.
As usual at U of T, at the meeting where the CRO was ratified there was no transparency about who the other candidates for the position were. No information has been disclosed about Treadwell, other than that she is not a U of T student, not affiliated with any club or college, and has never held an elected university position. Treadwell’s name didn’t float into the ERC out of nowhere. At the very least, I want to know who nominated her.
Thirdly, the CRO should be selected in early September, because a CRO may be needed at any time of the year—not just for end-of-year elections. The selection of the CRO may still rest with UTSU execs and directors, but the process should be extensive and transparent, including a nomination period where the merits of candidates are publicly vetted by the UTSU, and questioned by student media.
The CRO should select their own elections committee. According to Scrivener, the reason this year’s ERC was so rushed picking a CRO was because of difficulties coordinating schedules. This problem is understandable—members of the present ERC have other responsibilities with the union. If members of the elections committee did not have their attention so divided, things would run a lot more smoothly.
As a separate entity, the committee would have some teeth in scheduling election dates. The first week of nominations would not have to occur during Reading Week, when no one is on campus. Most importantly, such a committee would behave neutrally—something that the current ERC, based on its membership, can make no claims to. With a more transparent selection process, no one on the committee could risk being partial, because that would be immediate cause for dismissal.
If the U of T administration were to propose a fairer election system, the unions involved would decry it as Simcoe Hall’s attempt to wrest further control from students—even though it’s in the students’ best interest. In December of last year, VP and Provost Cheryl Misak was forced to disband the Advisory Committee on Democratic Processes in Student Government after several student unions refused to participate.
After all, a politician by any other name still clings to what power they’ve managed to attain, and UTSU executives could have something to lose from a fairer system that encouraged participation and alternative voices.
If UTSU wants to prove that they’re not just a bunch of NDP candidates-in-waiting, they’ll put some power back in the hands of the people they represent.
But then, who the hell elected them?
