UVSS approves funding for CFS referendum ‘no’ campaign

Kailey Willetts
The Martlet
(University of Victoria)
VICTORIA (CUP) – As students at the University of Victoria (UVic) prepare to cast ballots in the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) membership referendum March 29 to 31, the school’s students’ society will be funding the “no” side of the campaign.
The students’ society passed a motion March 14 to give $750 to the “no” side’s referendum campaign to separate from the Canadian student union.
“Basically the ‘no’ side is a UVic student grassroots movement, while the ‘yes’ side is a corporate-sponsored movement with a tremendous budget,” director-at-large José Barrios, who seconded the motion, wrote in an email interview.
“The Referendum Oversight Committee (ROC) is the body that develops all the rules and approves all campaign materials for the referendum,” explained society chair James Coccola. “So anything that wants to go up for one side or the other has to go through the ROC. They will then decide if it’s within the rules. If it is, they’ll approve it. If it’s not, they’ll reject it.”
Coccola says the regulations set in place by the ROC will govern how the $750 is spent.
“It’ll be like any other club,” he explained. “Money will only be given out if they’ve produced receipts or documentation for all of their funds. So it’s not like they’re getting a $750 cheque from the UVSS [University of Victoria Students’ Society].”
Coccola says the ROC may implement a spending cap to curb additional spending on both sides of the referendum debate – something that hasn’t been the case for every CFS membership referendum.
“On some of them, yes, on some of them, no,” he said. “We are going to be discussing it as an ROC, but we haven’t really had time to sit down and fully get into that yet.”
Many students’ society directors mentioned at the board meeting they felt that $1,000 would be a good spending cap.