Limiting the scope

http://www.thefulcrum.ca/blogs/blog/41075

Limiting the scope

by Katherine DeClerq

Published: Jan 26

THE NOMINATION PERIOD for the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) elections ended last Friday, and with it the chance for hundreds of students to run for office. These elections offer new students the opportunity to bring their ideas and experience to university life. Unfortunately, our student federation has done nothing to inform students of this important opportunity.

This is a flaw I hoped would be resolved in this year’s elections, but unfortunately, it looks like we are already on our way towards a misinformed and limited running. The student federation didn’t inform U of O students that the election was approaching, ultimately restricting the number of people who are able to run for office.

First of all, students did not receive an email notifying them of the nomination period. In the January SFUO newsletter, the topic of elections could be found in the sixth blurb, and was summarized in three sentences. The website that it linked to simply listed the positions that you could run for and gave an application deadline. There were no job descriptions and no list of qualifications. There were no tweets on Twitter, and the Facebook group had the same limited information as the website.

The lack of information available to students about the positions of both the student executives and the Board of Administration (BOA) representatives creates a barrier for those interested in running. It ensures that only those who have prior knowledge of student politics are able to fill in a nomination form—basically, anyone who is working for the SFUO or the BOA. Our student federation has become a round-robin in which BOA and SFUO staff continuously jump from position to position, leaving no room for new blood.

By doing so, the SFUO is severely limiting the scope of its own union. It is stifling original ideas—the chance for change. I don’t want the same people running our student union every year. I want to see competition—a fight between people who genuinely care about the students’ interests and want to do something radically different.

Of course, this can’t happen now. Nomination period is over. Let’s just hope that those who were able to discover the secret SFUO elections took a risk and applied, regardless of the fact that they didn’t know what they were getting into. The chances of this are slim, but I can hope—can’t I?