Quiet down children

Ok, I’ve been trying to not write this for days and it keeps getting both harder to avoid and harder to write.  The topic is UBC AMS politics.  This is why its hard to write, because campus politics has a way of making sometimes hokey municipal politics look like a grand ideal of civil debate.  UBC campus politics seems to have an endless layer upon layer of intrigue going back year after year.  It’s hard to avoid because this blog is ostensibly about democracy and UBC students.  What could be a more apt topic than a political scandal involving the AMS President sending a letter to the UN asking for an investigation into “human rights violations” on UBC campus?

Seems relevant.  So why is it I can’t seem to pick a side?

Point, the first.

Last fall I asked Blake Frederick not to step down in the wake of his first scandal.  That scandal, SlateGate?,  happened before he was even confirmed president in a complaint that he was running as part of a banned slate.  Well now Mr. Frederick and Tim Chu, the VP External,  are both being asked to step down again.  This time however, it is by the AMS council in a unanimous censure of his letter to the UN.  As you have no doubt heard already (check here, here, here and here is you want the full scope of disgust, misunderstanding, facts and support), those “human rights violations” regard the increasingly high tuition fees at UBC which, they argue, are in contravention of the international convenent of human rights of which Canada is a signatory.

I didn’t want Frederick to step down because he was the best winnable choice for president who might vigorously help to get the AMS behind the campaign to pass the referendum on proportional representation.  Despite the best efforts of FairVoteUBC the AMS council did not endorse BC-STV and as we all know it failed to pass provincewide, achieving only 40% support.  Remember, correlation does not imply causation, just saying...

So, Frederick’s argument that the AMS council is not exactly interested in making any kind of statements, even when it is in favour of perfectly rational proposals such as BC-STV which was widely supported by young people and would benefit students disproportionately to many other groups (pun intended).

But…

That brings me to my second point.  This proposal, to ask the UN to investigate BC for “human rights violations” due to rising tuition fees is not an obviously rational and effective proposal.  It’s not clear it makes any sense, it demeans the notion of human rights and it’s not clear that it will be effective.  Oh, scratch that, it is clear because SFU did the same thing 5 years ago and never heard a peep from the UN. Its just a bit silly really.

Third point, Frederick and Chu sent this request to the UN, without getting approval of the AMS council.  They have since apologized, but not really. Their argument is that the council isn’t activist enough and that their attempt to impeach him is an attempt by a small group of students to overthrough the democratic will of UBC students.

Arguing that you needed to go around the rules government because the government wasn’t doing things the way you want isn’t what elected presidents say, its what dictators say.  So I was surprised Frederick made that argument.  Arguing that the president’s 6% of the campus population vote tally is more legitimate than the small band of AMS councillors, who are also elected, is not very compelling.

So what’s my conclusion? Should Frederick resign? It looks like 2 strikes against Frederick and 1 strike against the AMS council.  But I’m enough of a Bayesian to think there’s a whole lot I still don’t know about all this, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to.

So my advice to Frederick, Chu, the other execs and the AMS council: grow up and start talking to each other, put your personality battles aside or step aside if you can’t handle it.  Also, step back and get some perspective here, we all want to change the world for the better, how can you best improve the lives of the students you claim to represent?

Mark Crowley

Want to write for FairVoteUBC?

Do you believe in democracy?  Do you feel the voice of students at UBC and voters across the city, province and country are not being represented because of institutional problems with our voting and political systems?

If you said yes and you are interested in campus politics and like writing then get in touch with us! We need writers!  (email to fairvoteubc  at symbol gmail dot symbol com )

Last year FairVoteUBC was a voice for progressive change in our voting system working to get proportional voting passed for voting on campus and organizing to support the BC-STV referendum.  Read through our past posts to get a sense of what we’re about.  If you agreee with some of what we said last year you could be one of our writers this year.  If you are accepted as a writer you will have total freedom for your own articles.  The hope is that we can get a few people to cover the upcoming AMS elections on campus and other democratic deficit issues concerning students.

If we can then we could enter the VFM competition for next year.  For our election coverage last year we received $700 but we also won the regular, smaller VFMs for several months before election season.

FairVoteUBC is an ally to other fairvote organizations such as FairVoteBC and Fair Vote Canada but is not officially a member or constrained by those organizations.

Please let us know if you are interested.

Mark Crowley – FairVoteUBC Webmaster

Getting out of that funk.

Reposting from my blog about UBC Professor Michael Byers’ proposal for how to the NDP and Liberals could get our democracy out of the funk it’s in with a little creative thinking.

And they’re off!

Its that time of year again, the kids are buying their supplies, the buses are filling up, the lectures are starting, the private jets are being booked and painted…that’s right, its time for another federal election!  What did you think I was talking about, yes school is starting too I suppose.

UBC is starting to fire up and soon it will be swarming with young people excited about learning …   Statistically they will probably be even less excited about a federal election.  Many young people are disconnected and cynical about our democracy.  This is understandable given the very disappointing result of the last BC election.  I don’t mean the party result, I’ll stay neutral about that, I mean the BC-STV referendum result.  Young people overwhelmingly supported switching BC’s electoral system to a proportional one that would have more fairly represented the wishes of the electorate.  Unfortunately, their parents believed the fear mongering and voted it down giving only 40% support when 60% was needed.

It’s easy to become depressed about changing the world when you can’t even make a sensible change to your own province.  There has been lots of discussion of what went wrong with that campaign but the truth is, in one sense, it doesn’t matter why it failed.  We need to keep trying to change our democracy, to improve it, to move it into the 21st century where we, all of us at UBC especially, will spend the bulk of our lives.  We live in a 21st century democracy with a 19th Century electoral process.  There are many ways it can be fixed, and all of us who want change need to work together for some change regardless of the details.  Any progress is progress.

So this year at UBC, we at the FairVoteUBC club will be asking you to put aside apathy and cynicism about democracy.  About politics sure, but not democracy.  We’ll likely be having a federal election before we even have our first term exams.  Then in the the spring we’ll have a campus election.  Last year we used a proportional system for the first time on campus, Condorcet ranked voting. Will we do so again this year, can we do even better? Can we use an STV style system to show everyone that we were not happy with the referendum result?  Can we send a louder message to Vancouver, to Victoria, to Ottawa?  Can we demand that the politicians who will be coming to woo us on this campus make electoral reform a top priority?

We need your help to find out.  We need your ideas. We need your energy. Let us know if you’ll join us (face/twit). And we’ll let you know where to find us on campus soon.

Parliament reaches web 2.0…well, sort of

A fantastic new site has just appeared in the wilds of the Social Media-sphere, Parliament2. The site is not run by parliament (booo, parliament) but is brought to you by the makers of PoliTwitter and Blogging Canadians. It lets Canadians propose, discuss and rank any priorities important to them.  The hopeis to send a message to parliament about what Canadians value and let the people actually discuss topics of interest and weigh the pros and cons.  Its democracy for the social media age, I strongly encourage you to go take a look. Its currently still very new so now is the time to make a mark in this new community.

For #fairvoters, the “Proportional representation and fairness in voting” priority is currently ranked 15, surely we can take it higher.

Grad Student Society Support for Iran Students

Reposted email sent out to UBC students

Graduate Student Society stands with its Iranian Students at UBC and
would like to give its sincere condolence to the loss of the students
who lost their lives during the protest in Iran. We recognize that many
of our graduate students may have family, friendship, professional and
research ties in the region. If you require assistance or support in
light of this difficult situation, Graduate Student Society has an
Advocacy cell which can be contacted.

Ph 604-822-3173
Mrigank Sharma
VP Academic & External
vpexternal@gss.ubc.ca
(604) 822-3173

What Next for Electoral Reform in BC? They need to hear from you!

From the people at Fair Vote BC:

Thank you for your support of BC-STV and electoral reform in the referendum last month. We are all disappointed that we did not win. However, as reform is still essential, we are picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off, and moving on.

We want your ideas at the June Conference

Post Referendum : Next Steps

I re-posted a scathing yet painfully true analysis by Benoit, a volunteer from North Van, on my other blog as well as some of my own ideas of what went wrong.

But we all need hope and we need to all stick together and figure out what comes next,  especially for the online masses who are so incredibly behind reform.  So, if you aren’t willing to admit defeat, then you can do a few things right now:

1. Join Fair Vote Canada if you haven’t already
2. Join these facebook groups to show your support and discuss the next steps for change :
   • Canadians for Democratic Change
   • Fair Vote Canada
   • Electoral Reform in Canada
3. If you’re really keen want and have a social media footprint you want to leverage for this cause join the discussion on this wiki.

And above all, don’t lose hope, and don’t let people tell you that now its decided for all time because people don’t want change.  That’s not what they were asked!

Mark Crowley

Post Referendum Thoughts

Below are merely some of my (Bruce Krayenhoff’s) opinions on the 2009 BC-STV referendum and the future of electoral reform

The New Dawn of Democratic Reform in Canada

The referendum to bring in a new age of democracy in BC failed last night, the battle, lost.  As we wake up this morning we must realize that the war is not over, it has only just begun for many of us.

Thousands of people across BC and Canada have been woken up to the need for change in the past year.  I had never been involved in politics until last fall when the arguments about the Coalition awoke me to the widespread lack of understanding of our democracy.  Now I have experienced first hand with many others how hard it is to bring about change.

But change is needed.

From the artificial choice between two parties in BC to the continuing minority trials in Ottawa to the growing attention on vote swapping it is clear that our democracy is broken and voters know it. Dispersed voices, such as the Greens are not heard.  Concentrated voices such as the Bloc are heard beyond their actual strength.  Everywhere, voter turnout is lower than ever before and the choices presented to the voter seem more and more meaningless.

So brace yourself, and take a look at the official results:
http://results.elections.bc.ca/REF-2009-001.html

(make sure you look at which cities voted, the areas with the most volunteers, Victoria and Vancouver, did much better. One next step could be to get those city councils to institute STV for municipal elections)

Even StudentVote, which gives high school and elementary students the opportunity to practice voting didn’t do much better. Young people generally support reform more than older people but these students still did not have nearly enough support to pass the reform:

http://www.studentvote.ca/bc/results2009/index.php

To make you feel a bit better, or maybe worse, take a look at these results of how this election might have turned out if we’d been using STV.

Someday soon, the media, the politicians and the Canadian public will connect these dots and realize change is needed. Now our job is to continue working to make that happen.

I have been so honoured to work with and have been deeply impressed by all of the people I have met while volunteering to campaign for STV.  The response online was especially robust but even on the street I can remember the dozens of people who had that lightbulb of hope go off right in front of me.  And of course many people gave money to help the campaign, I wasn’t involved in that but it was essential to get the level of visibility we did achieve.  Thank you to everyone who helped in any way. We did a good thing, and now it seems it was just one  battle of many to come.  But we shall not surrender.

If you aren’t willing to admit defeat either, then you can do two things right now

1. Join Fair Vote Canada if you haven’t already
2. Join this facebook group : Canadians for Democratic Change to keep the discussion going and let the politicians and the media know what Canadian voters demand out of democracy and their representatives.