February 16, 2010 Opinions

editorial

Reading the fine print

by Diego Pelaez-Gaetz

Concordia’s months-long process to defederate from the Canadian Federation of Students hit another unexpected snag this past week. The CFS’s long history of bullying tactics has proven useful over the years, but this time, the CFS has turned to threats of legal action to prevent our school from ever leaving the fold.

At their November assembly, an alteration in the CFS’s bylaws changed the rules in the midst of a national defederation drive. As a result, we now need to pony up our outstanding fees to the CFS at least six weeks before we can even hold a referendum about leaving the organization. The CFS also did not give a reason why this new bylaw would be applied retroactively to outstanding fees.

Despite the justifications of former Concordia Student Union president Keyana Kashfi, it’s hard to believe that we really owe the CFS the $1 million-plus that the national student lobby group has accused us of, on the part of—again—retroactive application of rules.

Even if the CFS’s justifications are valid, it’s entirely unclear where the exact figure of $1,033,278.76 came from. Why would the CFS suddenly realize in mid-2009—during the hotly contested turnover of CSU control and the end of the “Evolution, Not Revolution/New Evolution/Blue Evolution/Experience/Blue Unity/Or-ange Unity” dynasty—that we owe them the equivalent of the CSU’s yearly operating budget (although the claim is they’re now demanding two-thirds of it)? Shouldn’t they have been a little more chafed by that fact prior to Concordia moving to defederate?

Surely there is a number cruncher on the well-paid staff of the CFS that has arrived at this figure from a variety of factors and variables, but it’s fuzzy as to whether these mathematical justifications are based on fact.

The only proof students have that we actually owe the CFS more than a million dollars is the word of our former president. According to Kashfi, she would not have signed the agreement to pay the CFS this money if it wasn’t true. Although she claims to be smart enough to realize the repercussions of signing a false document, Kashfi might be unknowingly caught in the crossfire of a CFS-CSU shootout.

Sorry, but with the amount of embezzlement and controversy our union has been involved with over the past decade, we’re going to need more than the word of a former CSU president before we fork over the money for the overpaid salaries of a woefully out-of-touch student lobby group.

With the Arts and Science Federation of Associations elections this week, this issue becomes even more important. With one of the slates running Charles Brenchley, a former employee of CFS’s Quebec branch as president—the same guy who left a trail of missing money at his various jobs, including his tenure as president of the Dawson Student Union—students need to be vigilant in fighting the influence of the CFS on our campus.

The bottom line is that the burden of proof for this exorbitant demand lies with the CFS. Concordia appears to have paid their dues from 1999-00 until 2008-09. The paperwork shows the CSU paid approximately $200,000 a year to go towards... well, we’re not entirely sure. Overpriced agendas? Trips to hockey games?

The CSU is in an unenviable position right now, with the massing legal forces of the CFS setting their targeting laser on the corner of de Maisonneuve and Mackay. Here’s hoping the CSU is undeterred by this bush-league intimidation ploy and continues to fight for what Concordia students voted for by the thousands: to remove ourselves from the clutches of the CFS.

—Diego Pelaez Gaetz,
Opinions editor