The administration has decided not to recognise the mandates of two recent student referenda, conducted last fall by elections-SSMU concerning McGill’s branch of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG), and CKUT, McGill’s student radio station. The result may be that the referenda are revised and repeated later this semester.
The referenda called for a funding renewal, and a change to both organization’s opt-out systems. Instead of the current online opt-out system available on Minerva, the referenda sought to reinstate the pre-2007 system where people wishing to opt out could only do so in person at the organizations’ offices. Defending its decision to ignore these student mandates in an email to the Tribune, the administration cited “a lack of clarity” due to QPIRG and CKUT “including several issues in one question,” on the referenda ballots.
The administration will not be popular among many students for this decision, especially coming at a time when tensions between the student body and the administration are still strained from the events of Nov. 10. However, we believe the administration’s decision was understandable. When the questions were being put to McGill students back in November, the Tribune voiced a similar complaint, arguing that the referenda were “merging two issues that ought to remain separate,” warning that “even with a strong student mandate, there is no guarantee that the McGill administration will act on QPIRG and CKUT’s requests.” Even Kira Page, a member of QPIRG’s board of directors, in an interview with the Tribune, stated that QPIRG “expected this sort of response from the administration.”
We chose to argue from this stance because we felt that both referendum questions dealt with not only the very survival of each organisation, but also the nature of their funding. These are mutually exclusive issues. Even with the fractionally smaller intake provided by the online opt-out system QPIRG still has a projected intake of $157, 000 this academic year (cited from Oct. 31). The Tribune does not believe that kind of money is an insufficient yearly sum for an organisation like QPIRG to survive on. The question of survival and the question of opt out systems are therefore separate issues. By conflating them, both organisations broke the rules of the SSMU constitution, which states in article 25.2 that “Each referendum question shall deal with one, and only one, issue.” As they did not, the results—however high the turnout—do not represent a legitimate mandate.
It should be pointed out the administration’s decision is not necessarily bad news for QPIRG and CKUT. The offline opt-out system they proposed would have been impractical and did not allow students to maintain their anonymity when opting out. If either organisation still wants to take their opt-out system off Minerva, they should pose a question which asks for just that, not entwine it with questions about survival. If negotiations are not possible between QPIRG and the administration to ensure the funding part of the referendum can still go through, and if another set of referenda are required later on in the semester to sort out the issue, the Tribune recommends both organisations deal directly with the issue of funding. The Tribune believes that both CKUT and QPIRG deserve funding; they each provide valuable services to the McGill community as a whole. If a question is posed clearly, with a resounding and unambiguous mandate, it will not be possible for the administration to ignore.
