Every year when elections for the UVic Students’ Society Board of Directors rolls around, students are faced with a big question: what the heck does the UVSS do, and why should I give a crap? Most students have no idea what the UVSS does and, as a result, voter turnout usually hovers somewhere between an abysmal five to 15 per cent.
Besides managing a sizable budget generated through student fees and overseeing the business operations of the Student Union Building, the UVSS has an important function: they appoint student representatives to university committees.
UVic is full of committees. There are committees to review university policies, committees to develop new Internet services and committees to hire department chairs and faculty deans. Whenever UVic needs a student to sit on a committee, they go to the UVSS board. That makes sense; we elect students to the UVSS board to conduct business on our behalf.
The problem is, the UVSS doesn’t always appoint students to committees in a responsible manner.
The board accepts nominations for students interested in participating, and then votes on which nominee to put on the committee. While that may sound reasonable, there are significant flaws with this process.
Committee vacancies aren’t advertised to students. Technically, students could view the agenda for UVSS meetings ahead of time to see if there are any committee vacancies being voted on that interest them — except the UVSS doesn’t overtly post their agendas before meetings. Even the Martlet, which regularly covers UVSS meetings, has to request an agenda before each meeting to find out what’s coming up.
By not advertising committee vacancies, the UVSS is essentially restricting student representation to only those who know someone on the UVSS board, or are on the board themselves. Some committee seats even sit empty for months because their vacancies aren’t advertised.
Sometimes, the UVSS will consult the university or a course union for nominations to a committee, but that’s not always the case. For example, when a student was needed to sit on a committee to hire a chair for the political science department, the UVSS could have gone to the Undergraduate Politics Society (UPS) to get nominees. But rather than let political science students vote on a nominee through the UPS, the board voted on nominees themselves — so it’s no surprise they elected a UVSS executive board member to the committee, rather than the choice of political science students.
UVSS chair Caitlin Meggs told the Martlet that the UVSS board is in a better position to choose students to sit on committees because the board is elected by students, whereas some course unions are not elected. However, unelected course unions are the exception rather than the rule, and the university’s 40-plus course unions are more in touch with their department’s student body than the UVSS is.
Having student voices on university committees is important. Committees that hire deans and departmental chairs are responsible for significant decisions, and it is essential that vacancies are chosen democratically. Instead, the UVSS deals with committee vacancies behind a cloak of secrecy.
There is a simple solution.
Committee vacancies can be advertised on the UVSS website, on a bulletin board in the SUB and in the Martlet. Heck, the UVSS could even post agendas of its meetings online, so students can find out what will happen at upcoming meetings.
Perhaps it could even post minutes after meetings, so that students can find out what happened. Right now, the UVSS doesn’t have any agendas or meetings on its website. That kind of secrecy is not how a democratic organization should operate.
It’s time that the UVSS stop acting in a bubble. Students should know when a committee that affects them has a vacancy, and the UVSS shouldn’t assume they know better. It’s time to step up to the plate of democracy.
I find this claim dubious and overblown. I've sat on several university committees over the past years, and typically the UVSS informs course union members of them through the Course Union council, email or in person. Most things in the UVSS could be advertised better, true, but really, how much crap do we want to be bombarded with.
But once again, the Martlet has totally missed the real story. What this issue really comes down to is faculty unwillingness to have students sit on committees and rubber stamp a decision, that far from being made in the committee, is being made in the faculty lounge. If a student wants to make a positive contribution to a committee, they are going to have to network significantly across their faculty, canvassing both professors and fellow students for their opinions. That's a lot of legwork that most students aren't willing to do.
If students are unhappy with the UVSS's handling of the committee process, course unions have ALWAYS possessed the ability to take control of the process and work out their own arrangement with faculty, rubber-stamped by the UVSS. That option is always on the table, since really the UVSS doesn't get that offer from students, since really, it's very rare that a department committee will have any interest from the students or encouragement from the profs. In the cases where though two stars have aligned in the past, as I have been a party to, the UVSS is always there to say, "sure, okay, it's not our business." Maybe it shouldn't be, but let's not blame it on the wrong people.
Actually Dylan, The poli sci department was extremely inclusive of us, and came to us for our opinions, and were generally confused why the UPS is not part of the process. The UPS enjoys a very cordial relationship with the department and has a place in both regular faculty hiring and tenure research hiring. They in this case had to follow University policy to go to the UVSS for the candidate. For it is set up like this for in the absence of a course union, students are still part of the process. What I think the article points to is a missing link between the UVSS and the course unions. As Eddy said "miscommunication" between the two groups.
Furthermore the Poli Sci department both pushed for student involvement, including a sample lecture on the Candidates future, vision for the department and direction. It was List-served, classroom pushed by the UPS as well as word of mouth and posters. Therefore we did advertise the events put on by the department to attract outside student involvement. Therefore it was sad to see a lack of, and confusing sets of information come from the UVSS. Further more, since agenda's are not posted before the meetings, we were not even able to ensure representation at the meeting.
So pretty much to wrap this up, even with our opinions very kindly being considered by our current chair, and other members on the committee, we did not have a voting part of the process, nor were able to attend the committee meetings. Further, after the appointment despite being invited by the President of the UPS and being insured that she would, Christine failed to attend any of the 4 meetings (which are published on our website of when and where) before the process had concluded to share our thoughts with her, or to get questions from us for the candidate.
And this is only the most recent example.
In talking about faculty involvement, I never once referenced the PoliSci department, which I've always taken as a model for functional faculty-student relations, but was talking about trends that are common across the UVic campus. The effect of student apathy, is that sooner or later the messages just stop being passed along. The PoliSci students behind this article might well remember that even though they might have one of the most active and vibrant groups (infighting FTW!) on campus, they only represent a small fraction of the student body.
But I'm shocked and appalled at both parties. You want to do something, you talk to all the parties involved, which yes, includes the UVSS. I find it hard to believe that it would not have been passed straight through, had you simply asked. Course unions shouldn't be sitting around waiting for the director of academics to come around and pat them on the head to say it's all going to be alright. That's not going to work no matter who's in the office. If you did have the information from the faculty, you need to bust in to the UVSS office and say "look we're having this committee, the course union wants to send a representative, we'll put someone forward for you to vote on." There's really nothing the UVSS reps can say in argument to that.
But I'd say it seems that fault lies with Eddie and Christine too, because if there was a committee opening that they were informed about they should have done as UVSS boards before them had done and communicated with the course union in question rather than just appointing themselves.
And Christine certainly should realize that the role of student reps to department committees exists ONLY so that the students of THAT department are represented in faculty. If you aren't going to be make that connection, you shouldn't put your name forward. Frankly, I don't think executives of the student society shouldn't be putting their name forward for department committees unless there is absolutely no one willing from that department. In the case of PoliSci, I think we all know that's not in the cards.
And I categorically disagree with Caitlin's statement about the board being in a better position to elect student representatives to department meetings. The UVSS is never going to be representative of the internal politics within individual departments, nor should it be. The spirit from which the UVSS gained control over committee appointments was in order to protect the rights of students to represent themselves within their faculty.
I've been writing in Chinese too much. That double-negated sentence (you mean it doesn't make it stronger in English?) should read: "Frankly, I think executives of the student society shouldn't be putting their name forward for department committees unless there is absolutely no one willing from that department."
"The PoliSci students behind this article might well remember that even though they might have one of the most active and vibrant groups (infighting FTW!) on campus, they only represent a small fraction of the student body."
Tsk tsk, Dylan. Do you actually think I'd let a bunch of poli sci students dictate what I write? "Interviewed" in this article may be a better choice of words :P
There are definately issues other than just this one case. The biggest issue, I think, is the agenda not being widely available (like, say, online?). Another big issue is that most students don't know these committees exist when, frankly, maybe they should. Lots of students like to get involved with all sorts of things but a lot probably don't know how.
Haha P.S. I just realized I'm a moron and this is the editorial and not my article on the same topic.
Whoops.
So I shall just say this. Martlet Editorials are voted on by Martlet staff at weekly Friday meetings. Everyone is welcome to attend, make suggestions, and see how editorials come to life :-)
The Martlet also reserves the right to use comments in the newspaper.