In just over a week’s time, students will have the chance to vote on the continued funding of Radio CKUT and the Quebec Public Interest Research Group at McGill. Yet in a way this is also a referendum on the current opt-out system, and whether it was a mistake to take the opt-out system online in 2007.
The referendum questions ask students to re-approve fees that support QPIRG ($3.75 per student per semester) and CKUT ($4.00) while shifting the responsibility for managing opt outs and refunds to QPIRG and CKUT. Things would more or less return to how they were before 2007, when students could get their money back by physically going to the QPIRG and CKUT offices, which very few students did, mainly because most didn’t know they could.
By the end of 2007, the Students’ Society was working on moving the opt-out system online. But the system that was launched in the Fall 2007 semester wasn’t exactly what SSMU had in mind, as McGill decided to put all opt-outable fees together on Minerva. That same semester the SSMU General Assembly passed a motion opposing the new system and supporting putting campus groups back in charge of their own opt-out processes. Needless to say, McGill ignored the GA motion, and I don’t blame them. The GA cannot possibly be construed as a democratic representation of the student body, and given some of the inane motions passed at GAs it should not be taken seriously. Plus the differences between it and the system envisioned by SSMU (and supported in principle by QPIRG) were not as significant as some would have you believe.
Yes, McGill was a bit crafty when it decided to put all the opt-outs on its own website. But if opt-outs are online, does it really matter where they’re located? Even if they had been on each group’s own website there would have been links to these pages on Minerva. The argument behind putting opt-outs online was that it would make the process more transparent and efficient. There was even support from QPIRG: Ed Hudson, a member of the QPIRG board of directors in 2007 told the Tribune that QPIRG wouldn’t be opposed to the website, and that “We wouldn’t put barriers in [students’] right to opt out.”
QPIRG has always referred to the ability to opt out as a “right”. If students have a right to opt out, then why shouldn’t the process be as straightforward and transparent as possible? QPIRG and CKUT point out that they’ve been hit by the QPIRG Opt-Out campaign, but no one can say that this wasn’t predictable. When the new system went online, SSMU told groups to budget for at least a third less funding than previous years, but even with the opt-out campaign QPIRG and CKUT’s opt-out rates haven’t been that high.
Everyone who opts-out is exercising their right to do so, and the solution isn’t to make it harder, but to budget accordingly and/or raise opt-outable fees through referenda, as QPIRG has done.
Going back to the old way, and making the opt-out process as difficult and furtive as possible, ignores the original problem, dismisses the benefits of an online opt-out system, and is not the right answer to the current situation.
