{"id":16480,"date":"2018-10-10T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16480"},"modified":"2018-10-24T13:19:15","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T20:19:15","slug":"camosun-college-student-society-gears-up-for-fall-student-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/10\/10\/camosun-college-student-society-gears-up-for-fall-student-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun College Student Society gears up for fall student elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: The CCSS elections have been extended until noon on Thursday, October 25.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) fall student elections are happening from Monday, October 22 to Wednesday, October 24. Aside from the candidates for the CCSS board of governors, the election ballots will include two referendum questions.<\/p>\n

The CCSS board of directors approved a motion on August 13 to hold a referendum on whether or not Camosun students should be members of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA). The ballot will also have a referendum question about what to do with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) membership fees that the CCSS has continued to collect following the CFS\u2019 June 9 decision to expel all BC member locals, including the CCSS, from the CFS. Every Camosun student paid roughly $9 in CFS fees between June and September; students now have a say in what they want that money to go toward. The CCSS is asking if students would approve of the money going to a CCSS campaigns and advocacy fund, for now. At some point before December 31, 2019, the amount that was being collected from Camosun students for CFS fees will go to the British Columbia Federation of Students, which is raising its fee by the same amount that Camosun students were paying the CFS.<\/p>\n

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A student votes at a previous student society election (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CCSS executive director Michel Turcotte says if students don\u2019t want their money to go to the CCSS campaigns and advocacy fund, the money will likely go straight to the BCFS. The CCSS would use the campaigns and advocacy fund for campaign- and advocacy-related activities and, potentially, to pay CASA fees. As outlined in the referendum question, if the CCSS joins CASA, students would not start paying CASA membership fees until January 1, 2020.<\/p>\n

Turcotte adds that not all students necessarily know what is going on with the situations with the CFS, the BCFS, and CASA, so for context, there will be some preamble to the two questions asked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cStudents may not quite understand that they are being faced with this choice because we are no longer a member of a federal lobbying group, and that it\u2019s likely in the interest of colleges to lobby federally,\u201d says Turcotte.<\/p>\n

The number of initiatives and funding mechanisms that are controlled by the federal government that relate to post-secondary education, says Turcotte, is something that a lot of students also might not quite understand, either.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cStudent loans, and student grants, and things like that are all regulated and paid for federally,\u201d says Turcotte, \u201ceven though education is within the provincial sphere of responsibilities under the [Canadian] constitution. To ignore the federal arena is not something that would be in students\u2019 interests.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Second year University Transfer student Charlotte Close grew up in a household where her whole family voted; she says she intends to vote in the CCSS election when the polls open.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re important to get the full student perspective of the college and not just the upper people,\u201d says Close. \u201cA girl in my history class is involved in that; she and I were talking about it, so she\u2019s convinced me.\u201d<\/p>\n

First-year Mental Health and Addictions student Rachel Spall says it\u2019s important that students vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe it\u2019s important to have a word and a say,\u201d says Spall, adding that she has not looked into the voting process but will vote if she becomes more informed. \u201cBut I probably won\u2019t if I\u2019m ignorant to the information. I got the email [from the CCSS, about voting], I just haven\u2019t really looked at it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

First-year Criminal Justice student Oliver Sherring says voting in student elections is kind of like voting in any election.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the power to make things the way you want them to be, and that may seem kind of selfish, but it\u2019s up to you to decide how you want to spend your time at college, because it is probably the most important time in a young person\u2019s life,\u201d says Sherring.<\/p>\n

Voting isn\u2019t the only way to speak up about student issues. CCSS external executive Fillette Umulisa says it is important for students to become involved with the CCSS by running in the elections. Although the student society is made up of both students and non-student staff members, the majority are students; they help make everything the CCSS does possible. Umulisa says students are the backbone of the CCSS.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople should know that the Camosun College Student Society is only going to exist if students run in the elections,\u201d says Umulisa. \u201cIf students want to bring change to Camosun throughout their time here at the college, they need to get involved with the student society, and they need to run.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update: The CCSS elections have been extended until noon on Thursday, October 25. The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) fall student elections are happening from Monday, October 22 to Wednesday, October 24. Aside from the candidates for the CCSS board of governors, the election ballots will include two referendum questions. The CCSS board of directors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-october-10-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16480"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16627,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16480\/revisions\/16627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}