BUSU puts another half-million-dollar-per-year fee to referendum— this October
The new referendum: The Student Engagement levy is a $100 fee to be charged to each first-year student at Brock University. It was initiated by BUSU executives in July by sending it to a committee and then confirmed at the Sept 12, 2018 meeting. (the same meeting where BUSAC eliminated bylaw 401 which governed the conduct of referendums, replacing it with a new bylaw 400, but that’s not what this story is about.)
The documents were posted online on Sept 17:
The memorandum of understanding states that the fee “may increase annually up to 5%, subject to approval from the BUSU Board of Directors.”
So this would be $450,000 a year, which they say two-thirds would be spent on O-Week. BUSU president Aidan Hibma explained how the fee would benefit “Diversification of programming” on Sept 12:
Among the benefits is “Bigger concerts” and “Slip n slides”. Click here to read the PDF of Hibma’s presentation
“It would eliminate the sale of VIB packages in turn making their first interaction with the student union not one where we’re attempting to sell them something…. I don’t think that, personally I don’t think that is that type of image we want to give off as student union. We want to show them the benefits of coming the Brock, what they can access…Without having to say “you need to buy this right now”, Hibma said at the July 29 meeting.
“We don’t have a stable budget [so] we when we try to book our o-week artists, we don’t really know what range of artists we can enter into, because we haven’t made our [VIB] sales yet”.
This fee is just the beginning. VPSS Joyce Khouzam said, “it makes sense to build it up, build it with momentum”, confirming what Hibma said July 29 that BUSU plans another fee in later years of $25 for “upper year” programming.
There was one executive who dissented from the motion to put the fee to referendum: VPEA Peter Henen spent five minutes questioning the morality of the fee: He noted that the levy has no sunset clause, no opt-out and that the fee doesn’t directly affect the voters.
“Why not charge the fee to all current students? My guess is because it is easier for students to vote yes on something they aren’t paying for.”
Henen, alone, voted no to the motion.
This fee very closely resembles prior attempts by BUSU to boost their Programming Budget. In 2014, a $32/credit fee was defeated. It had been proposed as $120/first year, but changed when council deemed that unfair at the time. In 2016, a $100 Programming fee for first years also narrowly lost.
Then, as now, the practice of extracting a fee from first years to subsidize programming is normalized by the policies of other university student fees.
This $450K/yr fee comes just six months after BUSU failed to secure a $480k fee for The Student Justice Centre. The SJC is in the final year of its sunset clause, so it is reasonable to expect it to return to referendum later this year.
BUSU president Hibma will lead the Yes campaign for the Student Engagement levy.
The deadline for submitting an application for a No Campaign is Oct. 5. BUSU has not yet announced the fee or posted relevant documentation. Contact cro@brockbusu.ca
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