Finding the positive

Making nice in a nasty engineering referendum

KERRI WOLOSZYN STAFF

Last week, on March 6 and 7, engineering students voted in favour of a fee increase of 38 per cent. The fee increase is only for engineering students and will generate $1 million annually for the program. The extra money is meant to fix laboratories and pay for more teaching assistants. It is also meant to help with bursary programs for students who cannot afford to continue in the program. The vote now has to go through the university’s Board of Governors to become official.

According to the referendum results, there was a 58 per cent voter turnout and 64 per cent voted in favour of the increase. As interesting as this may be, even more interesting was what went on before the voting started.

The two distinct camps of “yes” and “no” became embroiled in a heated battle. Various campaign teams sprung up like Engineers Against Tuition Hikes (EATHikes) on the “no” side and Save Engineering on the “yes” side.

In the March 6 issue of the Winnipeg Free Press, it was reported that before voting began, there was an extremely strong emotional response to both sides of the issue. Some students claimed that posters had been ripped down and that they had been emotionally abused. Some students criticized both UMSU and the engineering faculty for becoming too involved in the issue.

Despite the reported aggressive nature of some people involved in campaigning, there are positives to be seen in what happened last week. When I ventured down to the new (and very expensive) engineering building during the last hour of the last day of voting, I was surprised to see that there were only a handful of students at the booths. A few students would trickle up to the voting station every so often but there was not the throng of voters that I expected. There were no posters anywhere to be seen. No one seemed especially impassioned or enraged. Everyone was behaving quite civilly.

The only thing that seemed out of place was a Global Television crew interviewing someone, presumably a student, in front of the booths. The few students I spoke with had predictably differing opinions about the issue. Some students were very much on the “yes” side, saying that they had seen the shabby state of laboratories first-hand. They also complained about the lack of competence in their professors.

Another student who said he was on the “no” side claimed that one of his friends had been bullied by some “yes” proponents.

One commonality among the students I talked to, however, was that they all felt that the referendum was important. Strange that so soon after the relatively uneventful UMSU election, students would become so involved in a debate on both sides.

Whether or not UMSU or the faculty staff should have become openly or subtly involved seems unimportant now that voting is completed and the ballots have been counted. What is exciting is that people were excited and interested with what was going on in their university.

Despite the negative actions that took place during the referendum, it is inspiring that students took note of what was going on around them. It was inspiring that this happened in a university, a place that is meant, among other things, to inspire.

Kerri Woloszyn has a degree in films studies and is the Manitoban’s roving reporter.