UMSU CRO should resign
CARSON JEREMA STAFF
Caitlin Brown, the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) for the upcoming UMSU election, should resign and the vote should be postponed. While I have no quarrel with Brown per se, the CRO is supposed to oversee the election in an unbiased manner, and Brown’s past involvement with the Canadian Federation of Students calls her ability to act impartially into question.
Brown, who is a former University of Winnipeg Students’ Association vice-president (student services), has close political ties with former UMSU president Amanda Aziz, demonstrated by the fact that she served as CFS-MB representative to the Winnipeg Labour Council while Aziz was the CFS-MB national representative.
Brown’s initial appointment as CRO in November 2005, on the recommendation of a selections committee that Aziz sat on exofficio, came shortly after the U of M voted for full membership in CFS. And shortly after that, Aziz was elected to her current role as CFS national chairperson. Former Aziz campaign manager Garry Sran handily won the 2006 election that Brown oversaw.
Considering these facts, we should question whether Aziz’s obvious personal stake in CFS and Brown’s previous involvement in the organization affected the CRO selection process. Can Brown serve objectively when Sran, a former campaign manager of someone she has a clear political affiliation with, is seeking reelection? Was she able to serve objectively last year when he first stood for office? Moreover, Sran, who is running unopposed in next week’s vote, sat on the committee that saw Brown rehired for this year. I am not questioning her competence, but I believe that these political reasons played a significant role in Brown’s selection.
When I criticized Brown’s appointment last year, because of the close relationship between UMSU and the UWSA, letters poured in demanding I apologize for my blasphemy. Fair process is, I guess, whatever UMSU deems it to be. We know that Aziz’s part in recruiting UMSU to the CFS mostly likely helped her win the post of national chairperson. She now enjoys a salary of around $40,000, lofty by students’- union standards, and presides imperially over each and every paying CFS peon.
Controversial appointments of those affiliated with the CFS have raised a number of eyebrows in recent years. The president of the Continuing Education Students’ Association at Ryerson (CESAR), Jeremy Salter, was recently hired as the general manager, a full-time salaried position, for the York Federation of Students. An interesting appointment especially considering that Salter served as the CRO at York, CFS local 68, last year, while actively pushing for CESAR to join CFS. Other controversial appointments include the Ryerson Students’ Union, where successive chairs of the CFS national graduate caucus have worked as the CRO for the past two years. As student media spend resources crying foul, these appointments detract from debate surrounding the merits of student union candidates.
Also, Salter is on the board of directors of an organization called the Canadian Academic Roundtable (CART). Caitlin Brown also sits on this board. CART is a component of the Canadian Conference of Student Associations (CCSA), officially incorporated in 2005 by Amanda Aziz and others heavily involved in the CFS. The conference was held jointly by UMSU and the UWSA in 2004 and Brown and Aziz would have worked together. All of this is just further evidence that the CRO selections committee cannot claim that Brown is truly “independent,” even by a generous interpretation of the word.
To reiterate and, if for no other reason but to signal that UMSU is interested in elections that are fair and democratic, it would be best if Brown resigned. And followed by her resignation there should be an amendment to the UMSU bylaws removing the president from the CRO selections committee. Or, failing that, a clause added that considers an alternative structure for when the president is in a personal conflict of interest, as Aziz was last year and Sran especially was this year. If this cannot be done in time, Sran should voluntarily remove himself from the selection of a new CRO.
An independent CRO would be one with no personal or political involvement with student politicians from UMSU or any other student association. Preferably this would be someone with previous experience working at, for example, Elections Canada.
A truly outside and independent CRO could remove doubt that campaign violations are being dealt with in an objective manner. Allegations frequently arise that the provincial components of CFS provide support for particular candidates. These allegations of support have come from Simon Fraser University, Memorial University and a number of other CFS schools. For example, Derrick Harder a current executive at SFU wrote in the SFU campus paper, the Peak about the involvement of CFS-BC in his 2003 campaign.
Students need to be assured that outside campaigners such as non-UMSU members of the CFS-MB executive do not interfere in the election either overtly or clandestinely, and given her political history Brown is hardly the person to provide that assurance. A new CRO could signal to potential candidates that the outcome of the vote might not be as predetermined, thus encouraging them to run.
However, I have no delusions that any of this will happen. My ramblings, I suspect, will likely be little more than wasted ink, as my inbox fills with angry letters from UMSU supporters and others shrug and mutter “What do you expect?” For UMSU’s part, a process that was undeniably fair and democratic could remove doubt that elections, contested or not, are more than coronations.
