In all honesty, with all of our editorial topics having been fairly heavy this summer, The Ontarion wanted to cap our summer publications with a rant about the World Cup. It was going to be simple. It was going to be funny. It was maybe even going to elicit some sort of an indignant response from an otherwise silent readership. But with something weighing heavily on our minds, we couldn’t, in good conscience, leave a recent development with this year’s CSA unaddressed.

Last year’s news section was constantly following developments as students from the University of Guelph and eventually most of the Central Students Association (CSA) endorsed the decision to discontinue membership in the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). As the year progressed, the story went from a small group of students pushing petitions through, to the CFS, in a grand hindrance to democracy, refusing students the right to determine continued membership, to the CSA fighting in court against the CFS for said right and finally, to students voting overwhelmingly in favour of discontinued membership with the CFS. It was certainly an interesting year, especially when it became clear that despite U of G students voting to leave the CFS, it would be a long road for them to be permitted to eventually leave, if at all.

After the referendum on continued membership in the CFS revealed that a resounding majority of students wished to leave, pro-CFS individuals in the campus community, namely CSA External Affairs commissioner Denise Martins, yelled ‘foul.’ They were suspicious at the high student voter turnout. They suddenly had qualms with the use of online voting in the referendum (despite this being the very method used to elect the current CSA for their positions). And they had sour grapes about the CSA’s decision to endorse the decision to leave the CFS; claiming that the students who voted to leave were largely mislead by their student government.

All signs point to the last grasps of a defeated minority. This becomes problematic, however, when power-playing members of the aforementioned defeated minority are in positions of power. Even more so when, like Martins, they are charged with representing student interest in the CFS arena. Perhaps it was all too much to expect an elected member of the student government to put aside their personal politics and actually represent their constituency.

At the recent CFS AGM, Martins voted, not in the interest of the students who elected her to her position, but in the interest of the CFS; the introduction and adoption of a number of small but problematic bylaws making it all the more difficult for U of G students to leave.

These actions read like someone who has heard the desires of their constituents, presumed them to be expressed in ignorance and has decided that only they know what’s best for the many. 

We at The Ontarion, see that these recent events could get swept under the rug given that they transpired during the summer semester, a time when few students are here to kick up a fuss. It is our hope that, when the majority of students return to the campus, they demand that their democratic voices be taken seriously by the current CSA; that they demand a little credit as informed members of our campus community.

And most of all, it is the hope of The Ontarion, that this time the all members of the CSA executive decides to listen.

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