The Memorial University Students’ Union recently went with the CFS template for a students’ union and eliminated the position of President in the students’ union. Effectively removing the leadership of the Union. A student at Memorial comments on their blog:
The proposal was first brought up and championed by current union president, Katherine Giroux-Bougard, whose initials have taken on a connotation much closer to their accidental namesake. KGB is wrapping up her year as president, and is moving on to be the chair of the provincial Canadian Federation of Students. The CFS is the national student lobby organization of which every local student union in Newfoundland and Labrador is a member.
They’ve deserved some criticism lately, because their protest strategies in this province have been inappropriate for our situations. Nationally, the CFS campaigns for lower student tuition. But the main source of student debt at Memorial is living expenses like rent, bills, and food over which the government has no direct control. Our tuition is considerably low, so that doesn’t make up as high a percentage of student debt as in provinces with high tuition, like Ontario, Nova Scotia, and BC. Memorial students and graduates would benefit far better from a more comprehensive debt relief and forgiveness program, or a system of needs-based grants. Yet the national tuition-focussed agenda is exclusively pushed here, where our problems are more complex.
Read it all here: Unlimited Rice Pudding: Managers Don’t Have Power: The Bosses Do