On Friday, February 9th, the Trent Central Student Association (TCSA) held a “virtual social”—titled “Beat the Hypocrisy, Let’s Talk Policy”—for students to ask questions about proposed changes to the Association’s Policies & Procedures and By-Laws, which will be put to the membership for approval at their upcoming February 14th Semi-Annual General Meeting (SAGM).

Besides the Association Staff and Directors present to answer questions, Arthur staff were the only persons in attendance.

While many proposed changes were brought forward, most of them being attempts to make language more consistent with the Association’s present operation, items of particular note related to a series of proposals to change the way the Associations oversees elections—specifically its handling of referenda pertaining to the amendment or removal of fees for Levy Groups.

Said proposed changes are detailed across two separate documents, one detailing the proposed changes to the Association’s Policy Resolutions, and another to their By-Laws.

Policy Resolutions Affirm a Course of Outspoken Inaction

The Association’s Policy Resolutions are a series of preambulatory clauses describing social structures and phenomena including—but not limited to—Settler Colonialism, Class Size, Discrimination, Harassment, and Oppression, Exam Periods, Divestment From Fossil Fuels, and Occupational Health & Safety. 

A series of operating clauses pursuant to these items articulate the institutional position of the Association, for example, “Trent University must not schedule more than 3 exam periods per day,” or “The TCSA supports the elimination of all nuclear weapons as a step towards global peace.”

These resolutions have functionally little bearing on the day-to-day operations of the Association, and amount to little more than lists of things the Association nominally supports or opposes. These are, in turn, intended to inform the decision making and organizational processes of the Association, though in the absence of tangible direct action from the organization on such issues as Housing Security or Fossil Fuel Divestment, prove largely relegated to attempts to “urge,” “condemn,” and otherwise compel the university to (in the strongest possible terms) to effect change in said areas of their own volition.

It’s interesting to note that despite Association President Aimee Anctil’s assertions at the December 3rd Board Meeting that Boycott/Divest/Sanction (BDS) policy was intended to be included in the redrafted Policing & Militarization section of the Association’s Operating Resolutions, no mention is made of it in the present draft.

BDS policy has been a source of controversy at campuses across the country, though Trent especially has its share of history with the movement. At a January 2015 Annual General Meeting, the TCSA repealed existing BDS policy targetting the state of Israel following a pressure campaign from the group Trent4Israel. They were the first Canadian university to do so.

Then TCSA President, Brandon Freer, would resign in the aftermath of the campaign after conversations were leaked between himself and Trent4Israel’s president, Corey LeBlanc, plotting to allegedly “take over” the TCSA. LeBlanc would go on to run a controversy-steeped bid for TCSA President.

No substantial efforts have been made, by any subsequent administration, to reintroduce BDS policy since it was repealed in 2015. Even now, eight years after the fact, the language employed in the propose resolution changes indicts only broad characterizations of “Genocide” and “Apartheid,” rather than identifying the conduct of specific states and measures (to the effect of BDS) to divest the Association from them. 

Given the present Executive’s breach of current BDS recommendations amid the ongoing attacks by the State of Israel on the Gaza Strip—which raised backlash amongst the student body—it’s perhaps fair to question, how far the Association has come in the past eight years, and whether the proposed Operating Resolution changes amount to anything more than lip service.

By-Laws Bring Big Changes to Levy Referenda Without Due Consultation

The Association’s By-Laws, meanwhile, strictly detail the processes by which the Association is to conduct business and operate and can only be amended by a two-thirds majority vote at the Association’s Spring General Meeting, which is scheduled for Wednesday, February 14th, at 18:00 this year.

Though they make up less than a third of the Association’s Policy Book, they are of vital importance to the procedural sanctity of the organization, as well as the other groups which make up the Trent University levy ecosystem whose levy fees are subject to the Association’s rules on referenda.

Levy groups, such as Arthur, Trent Radio, and so on, are independent—and sometimes independently provincially incorporated—organizations which collect a levy fee from undergraduate students enrolled in more than 1.5 credits each semester. Each of these groups are governed by their own internal policy, as well as being members of the levy council—which brings together representatives of all levy fee recipients to resolve disputes, debate levy-wide policy, and act as a union in their collective interests.

Despite being independent of the university, the TCSA, and one another, levy fee recipients are collectively represented as signatories to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the levy council, Trent University, and the university’s three undergraduate student associations. While it is definitionally a levy group to equal standing of all other members of the levy council, the TCSA is deputized to oversee the referenda processes which govern the creation, allocation, and possible disbandment of their levy funds.

While the initial changes focused on such things as clarifying imprecise language, removing defunct position titles, codifying the role of the speaker, and changing service fee increases to be tied to the Consumer Price Index, changes to the terms of referenda on levy fees made up the bulk of the Association’s proposed changes to its By-Laws.

While a member of the Association’s Board of Directors told Arthur that TCSA Directors were presented the proposed policy and by-law changes on January 25th—in keeping with the Association's present by-laws—no mention of them was made at the February 9th meeting of the levy council, which convened just one hour before the Association’s “Let’s Talk Policy” event.

During that meeting, levy fee recipients—including the Trent Central Student Association—voted to formally approve the MOU between them and the university, which stipulates that “The TCSA, TDSA and TGSA are responsible for communicating proposed and approved changes to their By-Laws related to levy fees with other parties described under this agreement.”

While the MOU is officially set to take effect in September of 2024, it’s perhaps significant that the Association elected to ignore the provisions as had been nominally agreed in good faith by all those involved.

When reached for comment by Arthur, levy council representatives said the Association had not communicated any proposed changes prior to the February 9th meeting.

The existing Trent University Peterborough Undergraduate Levy Policy—the document the MOU is slated to replace—states that "Proposed changes to TCSA by-laws which would affect referendum rules and groups receiving levy fees will be brought to the Levy Council’s attention when the proposals are brought to the TCSA Board, in the spirit of communication and consultation."

Among the proposed changes to the Association’s By-Laws is an amendment proposing that the signature requirement for a petition to be presented to the Association’s Board of Directors be reduced from 10% to 5% of the student body.

This decision reflects a recommendation from former Association Resource Manager, Matthew Seaby, who was re-hired by the Association on a contract basis last year to perform an “external review” of the Association’s Electoral Conduct during their 2023 Spring General Election after extensive irregularities with the Association’s electoral process were identified surrounding an attempt to petition Arthur’s levy fee, which was subsequently brought before the levy council.

In his external review of the election, Seaby noted that “the whole petition was problematic,” and detailed a number of “issues which were brought forward in [his] report.” Ultimately, Seaby concluded at the time that the actions of the instigators and electoral officers “conflict[ed] with the Association’s rules regarding petitions,” and that “The petition not being on the ballot, ultimately, was the correct outcome.”

By consequence, Seaby provided a list of recommendations to ameliorate the Association’s electoral process, and ensure similar circumstances would not occur in future. Specifically, he proposed an overhaul of the by-laws which would see the Association lower the threshold at which a petition would be considered to 5%.

Seaby described the 10% requirement as “onerous,” and argued that it “creates a significant requirement where students are now expected to collect over 1000 signatures just to ask a referendum question.” Though he recommended decreasing the minimum threshold at the time, he equally suggested increasing the threshold at which a petition becomes binding on the Association to 15% as a counterbalance measure. 

The latter change is not reflected in this year’s proposed By-Law amendments.

What this change means, functionally, is that petitions boasting half the number of student signatures than previously required could be put to the ballot come the Spring elections, a significant change to the way in which Levy fees have traditionally been determined.

While the present threshold which determines the legitimacy of a petition to amend an existing group’s levy fee is not a small one (given enrollment figures for the 2023/24 academic year it presents more than 1000 students) the threshold exists precisely to reflect the integral importance of levy fees to the groups who depend on them as a tentpole of their financial liquidity—and, in turn, of said groups to the community at large.

Rather than a proportionate decrease to maintain a semi-consistent threshold for referendum petitions, the proposed change from 10% to 5% consensus on petitions represents hundreds fewer students consulted on the matter. What is being presented as an attempt to combat onerous procedurality could equally be seen as a reflection of longstanding apathy to student politics, and a corresponding stagnation of engagement therein.

Bleak examples of what can happen when such provisions do not exist include the October 2023 University of Ottawa Student’s Union (UOSU), which saw students vote to remove campus radio station CHUO’s $4.99 per term stipend, effectively stripping an organization with more than fourty years of history of its primary source of funding. 

In an interview with CBC’s Ottawa Morning, CHUO Manager Grant Stein revealed that a question can be put to referendum before UOSU by any one student. “That’s all it takes—one.”

The referendum was passed with 7.7% voter turnout from the uOttawa student body, which counted more than 46700 students enrolled at the beginning of the 2023 academic year. CHUO says they were given notice one day before the question appeared on the ballot.

Back at Trent, the proposed changes would defer the burden of responsibility onto the instigator of a petition to reach out to the group who’s fee would be subject to referendum. If applicable, reads the amendment, “instigators should confirm that the existing levy group which the petition

concerns has been contacted.” The clause notes, however, that “Not doing so does not invalidate the requirement to give notice to the Association.”

Death By a Thousand Policy Amendments

Taken as a whole, the TCSA’s superficially small proposed changes to their by-laws amount to a substantial change in the political order of the levy ecosystem, whose ramifications have yet to be properly examined or ascertained. 

Moreover, that this change should come without the due consultation required by a document which the Association themselves approved mere minutes before publicly presenting these amendments as more or less a given conspires to paint the TCSA as either supremely incompetent to the point of ignorance of the policy they had just signed, or else willfully conspiring to force policy through before they would be required to do so.

These changes, after all—while being presented solely by the TCSA for consideration at their general meeting—will have incalculably far-reaching implications for all of the campus groups and communities who rely on student engagement not only for their funding, but for their long-term stability as community institutions.

The willingness on the part of the Association to circumvent the levy council on this matter is troubling, to say the least. Moreover, when talking about matters of policy, it would seem hypocritical to not consult those groups who will invariably be affected by said changes or provide them a forum through which to engage the student body about their possible impacts.

Trent students, after all, are hardly being fed a balanced account should levy groups not be permitted to voice their concerns in an instance when policy is being proposed which might drastically change their integrity as organizations. The average student attending an SAGM on the promise of free donuts is doubtful to understand the intricacies of referendum policies steeped in years of precedence—especially given not a single student outside of the TCSA’s board attended the event with the express purpose of informing them about such.

As engagement in student politics continues to atrophy, maintaining even the appearance of popular consensus becomes a never ending exercise in moving the goalposts. Changing the rules of the game mid-play brings its own series of implications, however, and in this instance raises the question of whether we are merely seeing the same issues of due process repeat themselves for a second time.