U of W student association director resigns, citing conflicting ideologies

‘CFS has an eerie amount of authority’: King

JENELLE PETRINCHUK STAFF

Devin King, director of education on the University of Winnipeg Students’ Association (UWSA) board of directors, resigned last week due to personal apprehensions about the “top-down mentality” of UWSA and in turn, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).

“I realized that in my role as Director, I was not truly serving the will of the student population,” he wrote in his letter of resignation. “In many ways, I feel that the UWSA is not either.”

King was elected a director to the UWSA board, a representative body of elected students similar to UMSU council, for the 2006-07 term.

UWSA president Kate Sjoberg said she thinks King has interpreted the organization falsely in his letter.

“At the end of the day, it’s students who are the UWSA, students who are the Canadian Federation of Students. We’re all members of both organizations and there are many forums for people to express the way they feel about what’s going on,” she said.

When speaking with the Manitoban, King stated there were many small things that eventually led to his resignation, but they all stemmed from the basis of CFS having too much power over the students’ association, while the voice of the general student body was not being heard.

He wrote in his letter that the executives often knew more than the directors of the association, partly because they have worked within the group for so long. In addition, he wrote that CFS had “an eerie amount of authority in the organization,” taking away from his own ability to make a difference.

King explained that he felt his role as director often meant that he attend meetings for the sole purpose of supporting the executive’s motions and ideas instead of being able to speak for the students he represented.

“At the UWSA, directors seem really sidelined. We don’t seem to be there for any real reason other than to support the executive, who are in turn supporting CFS,” he said.

“The executive is, arguably, in bed with CFS.”

King both stated in the interview and in his letter that the same problems concerning power and a top-heavy executive have been mentioned by some about the University of Manitoba Students’ Union (UMSU).

“[UMSU] shows up at our meetings with a CFS agenda as well and that is scary to me,” commented King.

He explained that students had often approached him and said how they were tired of hearing “the monotonous chant of ‘lower tuition fees.’”

Both UMSU and UWSA have tuition-heavy campaigns with specialized focuses on tuition fees, government funding, international student fees and ancillary fees. UWSA, local 8 of CFS, has been a member of the Federation since its creation in 1981, while UMSU, local 103, has been a member since 2005.

King wrote that he “often felt that, as a Director, our own ideas were minor in comparison to the pre-planned campaigns that have occurred over several years.”

“Devin had multiple opportunities to contribute to planning those campaigns and executing them,” said Sjoberg in response to King’s comments in his letter, “both in formal meetings of the UWSA and in meetings that I would have, just you know, talking to him, like, in general conversations.

“I take exception to him implying that he didn’t have those opportunities,” she said.

King is a fourth-year education student at the U of W, who admitted that before he began working with UWSA at the beginning of the 2006-07 school year he didn’t know much about the association. This is largely what concerns him in terms of the general student body.

“When I’ve spoken with students, they [say] they don’t know what we do, and that’s one of the main problems with the UWSA. We’ve kind of lost the focus of what student interest is,” he said, “and that’s dangerous when you’re representing the students.”

While King mentioned in his letter how he feels he has failed education students, he also states that he at least tried to act on their behalf, while the UWSA was too caught up in campaigns to pay attention.

“It’s the ideology and of course it’s politics,” he said about the problem, adding there is no specific person on the board that he blames and said he enjoyed working with the individuals involved with the association.

“I can no longer personally support an organization which is so consolidated in such a few individuals; an organization which, I would argue, has lost touch with the majority of student interests,” King concluded in his letter.

”I think Devin was engaged in exactly what his job was supposed to be. He did a great job and I think it’s too bad that he chose to make this decision,” said Sjoberg.

King submitted his letter of resignation on Saturday, Feb. 24. It has not yet been recognized by the board at the UWSA and will not be until they hold a meeting next week.

Klara Labady also resigned from the position of office administrator at the UWSA over the weekend. Nothing of her resignation has been officially released.