The fee that undergraduate students pay to the MSU each year will not be going up next year.

The Student Representative Assembly voted, almost unanimously, to freeze the fee at its current level of $122.61 per student after MSU Vice-President (Finance) Jeffrey Doucet presented the freeze to the Assembly.

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Doucet felt that the current amount of money the MSU collects from each student is enough. The SRA agreed.

“I felt it would be inappropriate to ask students for more money than we need,” he said.

He continued, “Essentially, I made the recommendation to the assembly and they voted to pass it.”

The MSU has a substantial cash reserve which, of course, calls into question the student fees charged to every undergraduate. Despite the excess, Doucet said the freeze was still a better option than a cut.

“The freeze allows is to maintain current levels of services. If we were to look into cutting the fee, we would have to determine which services we felt were no longer providing adequate value to McMaster undergrads,” he said.

 

Patrick Kim
The Silhouette

TwelvEighty has been approved for a new $7,000 permanent drape system, with the goal of improving its dining and catering services.

The SRA passed the motion brought forth by VP (Finance) Jeffrey Doucet with a near unanimous vote on Feb. 9. The proposal involves a permanent installation of a retractable pipe and drape system that will separate the restaurant from the open dance floor.

Kaley Stuart, TwelvEighty’s Service Manager, said that this will be the largest addition to TwelvEighty since she took the reigns of the restaurant.

“We’re pretty excited about it, because when we’re open as a restaurant we can just keep that area divided and make the restaurant feel less massive,” she said.

The cost is expected to cover both the purchase of the drapes as well as the installation being done by AVTEK. The drapes will be black and will employ roller gliders to retract quickly and allow staff to set up and take away the drapes easily.

Campus events at TwelvEighty currently require drapes to be manually set up to partition the event from the restaurant. Stuart explained that each event requires anywhere from six to eight hours to set up the partitions.

“Instead of us paying the wages for somebody to come in and put the pipe and drape up every single time, it will be a permanent fixture that can be pulled out and pulled back,” she said.

The drape walls will also have built-in noise insulation, which will help TwelvEighty expand its catering service, which recently released its latest menu.

According to Doucet, this will “address the awkward dynamic that there is at TwelvEighty right now when there is a catered event operating during restaurant hours.”

“The lack of a physical barrier ruins the intimacy of the catered event, and more importantly, it allows sound to travel from the restaurant to the catered event,” he said

While the drape walls will be pulled back for club nights and other social events held at TwelvEighty, the drapes are otherwise expected to become a permanent addition to the setting of the restaurant. Drawing from the use of similar drapes at previous events, Doucet stated, “We have received very positive feedback about how it looks.”

In addition to providing a more intimate setting for events, Stuart also described the possibility of the space becoming a casual study and eating location for students to use.

“Once the area is sealed off, then the rest of the week it can be used for pretty much anything…  The more people we get in and out of our doors, the more useful we are to the student population.”

The drape wall is planned to be installed by the end of March.

Despite last term’s vote by the SRA that MSU members would no longer pay part-time fees during summer sessions, the McMaster Association of Part-time Students has plans to continue collecting these fees anyway. The two organizations are now at odds with each other in terms of what will happen with student fees this upcoming summer.

A December media release from MAPS opposed the MSU’s stance and outlined preliminary plans for a “summer advocacy program” based on survey results as a suitable way to spend summer student funds.

MAPS president Andrew Smith said the program “will be designed to identify aspects of the summer academic term that may be changed to improve the student experience of our members.” Smith suggested this will specifically entail comparing the summer session with the fall/winter term, course availability and comparisons to other universities.

Some aspects of the media release, however, don’t hold water under further scrutiny.

MAPS claimed, “Between the date of this agreement (1986) and last year, the MSU decided that their membership lasts for twelve months of the year (they decided this unilaterally). They say because of this, full-time students should not have to pay student fees if they take courses during the summer, and they want this change to happen for this May.”

In actuality, the MSU amended their bylaws at an SRA meeting in 1988, clarifying their 12-month membership. Kyle Johansen, MAPS' executive director from July to December 2013 was at that 1988 meeting as an SRA Social Sciences representative and spoke in favour of the amendment, suggesting that “full” be added regarding MSU membership holders in order to be clearer.

Another claim by MAPS that the University might not be able to “identify MSU versus MAPS students during summer session registration” was also refuted in recent conversations the Silhouette had with the Office of the Registrar.

Additionally, after reiterating that the original MSU-MAPS agreement always intended for MSU members to be reimbursed for summer fees, the release goes on to say that in May 2014, “To temporarily deal with the MSU's demands, at least for this year, MAPS would refund summer student fees to MSU members, upon request.”

Jeffrey Doucet, VP (Finance) of the MSU, disagrees with MAPS’ ability to collect such fees.

“Collecting the fee would be effectively ignoring the MSU’s governance mechanism,” he said. “It was the SRA that empowered MAPS to first collect the fee and now the SRA no longer views the fee as legitimate," Doucet said.

It is unclear as to why, historically, MSU members have not sought – or, perhaps, known that they could seek – reimbursement of summer session fees.

“MAPS has no record of the MSU ever exercising that option,” Smith said.

At the time of the Sept. 29, 2013 meeting in which the SRA voted unanimously to break from the 1986 agreement, MSU President David said repeated attempts had been made for eight months to meet with MAPS and renegotiate the agreement.

“We’ve done everything we could to negotiate in good faith,” Campbell said. He described unilaterally breaking from the agreement as “our only option.”

The University's administration is unclear in terms of how the two organizations will resolve the conflict. Associate VP (Students and Learning) Sean Van Koughnett said, “There is no specific process to determine the final outcome of this situation, but rather, the outcome will be determined over the next two months in large part through any further discussions between the two student organizations and based on the wishes of our students.”

 

 

 

 

For two summers during my undergrad, I worked at an office in the Hamilton downtown core. I took the bus from Westdale Village every morning, and rode the HSR home every afternoon. And every day, I resented having to pay for a service I used endlessly for a small flat-fee during the regular school year.

Call me entitled; in many ways, that’s an accurate description of my attitude towards the absence of a summer bus pass. But when McMaster graduate students have a year-round agreement with the HSR and the summer pass is only available to Mac undergraduates enrolled in summer classes (and still only saves students $16 a month), my disappointment in the current MSU agreement is warranted.

Now that the MSU-HSR contract is up for renegotiation before renewal, I hope to see some changes.

David Campbell (MSU President) and Jeffrey Doucet (MSU VP Finance) have been pushing hard on the student transit issue since August, and an announcement regarding a new agreement is expected for next week. Major points the new agreement is expected to address include summer service and expanded hours of service through campus to cater to late-night student activity.

I hope the powers-that-be sit up and take notice of the argument that summer and late-night service is important not only to student life enhancement but also to stimulating the Hamilton economy.

Graduate rentention in a city notorious for appearing heavily unattractive to prospective McMaster students, and for those students then staying within the “campus bubble” while at school, is an important issue for the City to address.

One step towards keeping educated, energetic grads in the city is to make Hamilton more welcoming when they are students, be that encouraging them to stay and work through the summers or to simply explore the city at all hours.

Hopefully the new MSU-HSR agreement reflects students needs and the potential students have for rejuvenating the Steel City.

 

Jeffrey Doucet
MSU VP (Finance)

As many stirring campaigns have tried to address, the intersection of young people and politics is not at a high point. In the last two federal elections, voter turnout amongst 18-24 year-olds has hovered around 40 per cent, which I think is pretty pathetic. But while this is an issue frequently addressed, what is lesser-discussed but equally problematic is the harmful role that youth can play when they do engage in politics.

You would think that youth who are engaged in the political process would be the solution, but I think they are not. Young partisans – youth who are strong supporters of one political party – are making politics toxic, and driving their peers away from the political process.

Canadians are frustrated with political parties that simplify complex problems, painting their opponents as incompetent individuals with bad intentions. We are frustrated because we are an educated population, and election slogans that read, “my opponent is the worst” don’t motivate educated people to vote. These poor tactics are driving young people away from the voting booth, and young partisans deserve to shoulder some blame.

To be fair, young partisans are not the root of this problem, but they aid and abet as they deliver the party message to the public. Youth do not design election platforms or campaign strategies, but they mobilize them. Youth are the volunteers that work tirelessly during election campaigns, knocking on doors, passing out flyers, and delivering the message to the voter. This is where these young people are failing their peers; they aren’t pushing back against political authority.

We are the most educated generation ever. We are receiving world-class education that teaches us to think critically and challenge the status quo. We know that answers to complex problems are not often simple solutions that can be broken down into 140 characters, or 15-second sound bites.

Yet, while well intentioned, far too many of my peers’ involvement with the political process is merely to follow marching orders rather than to contribute critically and effectively to the party of their choosing. This kind of engagement with our political system is damaging and has led to a parliament where criticizing your leader in public is seen as a sign of weakness, rather than an act of courage.

I think it is fair to say that the political leaders of all three leading parties in Canada are pushing forward policy that does not capture the intelligence and thought of their young political volunteers.

Canadian politics are in a sorry state, and Canadians will continue to not show up at the ballot box until our youth hold political parties to a higher standard. Let’s push back against the assumption in Canadian politics that if you sign up for a political party, you support every single decision made by political leadership.

Advocate based on issues that are important to you, and let’s push to make political parties a reflection of our generation.

 

Nominations for next year's McMaster Students Union vice-presidents were opened at Sunday's SRA meeting, and six students, all of whom were either on the Assembly or in attendance, were nominated.

Anna D’Angela and Justin Korolyk were nominated for Vice-President (Administration). Lisa Bifano and Spencer Graham were nominated for Vice-President (Education). Jeffrey Doucet and Marc Lamoureux were nominated for Vice-President (Finance).

Maria Daniel was also nominated to be next year's MSU Speaker at the meeting.

Two other nominations were made, though somewhat facetiously, as current VP (Finance) Jeff Wyngaarden nominated current VP (Education) Huzaifa Saeed for VP (Finance), and Saeed returned the favour by nominating Wyngaarden for VP (Education).

The SRA will elect the MSU's 2013-14 set of VPs, who will join president-elect David Campbell on the MSU Board of Directors, at its April 7 meeting. It will be the first meeting of the newly elected Student Representative Assembly.

The MSU Speaker, Simon Gooding-Townsend, hesitated before taking the nominations. While it's customary for nominations to be opened ahead of time, names are not typically submitted until the meeting at which the VPs are elected. The incoming SRA now has two weeks of officially knowing the names of at least some of the candidates, though it's not unusual for candidates to speak to members ahead of being nominated on election day.

More students may be nominated between now and the April 7 meeting, or at the meeting itself.

Earlier in the meeting, there was discussion over how MSU VP elections would work this year. While that will ultimately be up to the next SRA, the current members were preparing their recommendation. A proposal came forward to split elections over two meeting; candidates would give presentations on April 7, and elections would be held on April 14 at a separate meeting. The proposal was voted down.

Also debated was a closed-session discussion period, during which SRA members could discuss the candidates in privacy, without observers or candidates in the room. While this has been a part of the election process in past years, it didn't happen last year. The SRA decided to not recommend a closed-session discussion period in the elections again this year over concerns that it would cause groupthink and cattiness to drive the election.

The video of Sunday's 6.5-hour long meeting is below. View the agenda items here.

Part 1:

Part 2: