On March 29, the Ontario government unveiled guidelines for universities to follow in order to comply with the “Student Choice Initiative” policy, which allows students to opt out of paying ancillary fees.
According to the document, students will be allowed to opt out of fees that are allocated towards clubs, student organizations and programs that do not fall into the government’s criteria for essential fees.
Services considered “essential” in the guidelines include “athletics and recreation, career services, student buildings, health and counselling, academic support, student ID cards, student achievement and records, financial aid offices, and campus safety programs.”
As such, much remains unclear about what the student opt-out fee mandate means for the funding of MSU clubs and services next year.
Sean Van Koughnett, McMaster associate vice-president (Students and Learning) and dean of students, confirmed that the opting out process will occur online through the Mosaic system and be part of the regular tuition payment process in September.
McMaster Students Union vice president (Finance) Scott Robinson is working on a final memo to submit to the university student fees committee, outlining exactly what services the MSU wants to deem “essential.”
The government has given each institution the autonomy to determine what falls under the “essential” categories, but there will be penalties if universities are deemed non-compliant with the SCI come this upcoming fall.
“We've been working closely with the university to determine as many of our fees as possible as essential fees,” Robinson said. “The priority for me again has been that students voted at large that we should have a mandatory MSU fee.”
Complicating the budget submission is the fact that the union will not know how much they will receive in student fees until September.
Robinson is basing the official operating budget on the estimate that 35 per cent of students will opt out of non-essential student fees.
At this point, the framework is such that students will be able to choose which “non-essential” individual MSU services to opt out of, but club funding will fall under one fee item.
A source of funding that will help mitigate the loss of student fees is a ‘significant’ MSU reserve fund, which Robinson said has enough to keep the MSU running for two and a half years.
“Things like funding decreases and scale-backs are being planned right now for the budget, but it isn’t like we’re in total doomsday,” Robinson said. “How much money goes towards things will shift, but the MSU is still in a financially safe place to operate.”
The reserve fund will be used primarily to help fund services and clubs.
Robinson says there will not be ‘significant cuts’ planned for student-run services such as the Pride Community Centre and the Food Collective Centre.
The MSU executive board continues to advocate against the SCI.
MSU vice president (Education) Stephanie Bertolo said she and the board have met with nine Conservative and New Democratic Party MPPs so far.
“We don’t want the Student Choice initiative to go forward. That’s our ideal scenario,” Bertolo said. “We’ve asked if they do move forward with the Student Choice Initiative, to delay it a year, because it’s such a crunched timeline.”
Robinson will be submitting the 2019-2020 operating budget to the Student Representative Assembly for approval at the SRA meeting on April 14.
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By: Alex Bryant
Many students at McMaster University are furious over the recent changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program. Our student unions, which are some of the best tools we have to collectively resist changes like these, are also under attack.
The Ontario government will soon deem some ancillary fees “unnecessary.” Given the extreme cost of education at Ontario colleges and universities, students are likely to feel strong-armed into opting out of these fees.
While student-run groups and services funded through direct ancillary fees play an important role in students’ lives, we should expect the government to use this framework to attack student unions by making union dues optional.
Doing so poses an existential threat to the McMaster Students Union, the Graduate Students Association and, by extension, campus groups and services under their umbrella.
Legislation in Quebec and British Columbia protects some student unions from attacks of this kind, but no such legislation exists in Ontario. Students must collectively resist this attack on student unions but also recognize that defending the existence of these organizations does not require defending the actions of current or past student leaders.
This government has its sights set on student unions because our organizations have for decades played a key role in fights for change at the governmental, institutional and community level. This is not because our unions are over-run with political reactionaries, but because the work of student unions naturally cultivates political community between students of differing backgrounds.
When we join union-based clubs or benefit from related services, we also have the opportunity to critically engage with our peers over shared struggles and recognize our ability to overcome these struggles together. When we allocate union resources to student-led projects, we choose to build a community where everyone can have enough food to eat, openly love who they want to love, safely walk alone at night and relax by having a great party.
This critical recognition of our shared experience is also the basis of student unions’ advocacy for students’ diverse interests, and as central locations for organized opposition to the origins of our shared struggles — tuition fees, for example — alongside others outside of our campus community.
Unfortunately, conservative politicians tend to defend the grounds for the struggles we face by protecting the interests of those who benefit most from the status quo. Hence why conservative politicians and campus conservatives have long attacked student unions and related groups.
Long after students choose to found their unions, the processes of direct democracy of the general assemblies and referenda used to set union due rates, and members’ participation in the allocation of this funding through votes on budgets and representative bodies, reflect that student unions are fundamentally for students and our interests.
We may wish voter turnout were required to be higher, disagree with some of the campaigns and policies adopted by the organizations our union funds, or something similar. We should hold fast to these legitimate criticisms, engage with our peers about them and demand change where those leading our unions have genuinely failed us.
If our demands are ignored, we may rightfully escalate our actions until they are implemented just as we will do with the provincial government. However, criticizing the work of our unions and related organizations is importantly different from attempting to eliminate these organizations, which is what the provincial government seeks.
Hoping finally to accomplish their thinly-veiled goal of destroying student organizing, the provincial government has even abused our critical examination of our peers’ work in order to support an existential threat to our unions.
I've heard from so many students who are tired of paying excessive fees, only to see them wasted and abused.
That's why we're giving students the power to choose to pay for the campus services they actually use.https://t.co/XYC8G4jaZ0
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) January 26, 2019
We must forcefully resist this rhetoric and this attack. We must protect our student organizations as a whole by keeping in the foreground their foundational importance to our ability to organize, and by doubling-down on our commitment to support the collection of union dues.
Especially under the current government, students across Ontario must work together to become educated about the struggles facing our peers, build skills, organize, resist and stand in solidarity with others doing the same — student unions continue to be one of our best tools for doing so.
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