A motion was brought forward to the UVSS Board meeting on June 21 to form an ad hoc commitee with the purpose of looking at potential changes to the structure of the UVSS. This is potentially the biggest issue that will come before the board this year, with the possible exception of the CFS referendum issue. The last time the structure of the board was changed was in 1996. The motion was eventually tabled until next meeting to give time gather more information, but it is not too early to talk about the issues here.
In my discussions with various board members, there are three key issues that people want to focus on: Changing the way we elect our board members; Changing the representation on the board to possibly a model that better represents each faculty; and Making more executive directors with more specific responsibilities and less hours. I have heard arguments both for and against each of these propositions and will lay them out here. Before I do, however, I want it to be known that many of these arguments both for and against are not necessarily my own, but of those of people that I have talked to. The purpose of laying them out in this fashion is to, hopefully, create a discussion around these arguments so that some of us can use this discussion to come to a position on these issues.
Changing the Way We Elect Board Members
The argument for this is that we use the antiquated first-past-the-post system which is tailor-made for a two party/slate system and creates tensions between the two sides. This past election was very indicative of these symptoms where it was essentially two slates running against each other and only people from those two slates ended up being elected. And while members of this board have been very civil and so far willing to work with each other, last years board was incredibly divisive down slate lines. The argument is that if the voting system is changed to something like STV or AV, it will reduce those tensions and create a more friendly working environment on the board and allow for a better diversity of voices.
The argument against changing the way we elect our board members is that students really don't know much about the people they are electing, especially for the director at large positions. We already get to vote for 11 people, and asking to rank the votes or do anything more complex than just picking 11 people would be asking too much of the students. How would we rank people from one to eleven if we only know perhaps three of the names and the rest we just are voting by slate? Already it's intimidating looking at the list and having to choose 11 people, asking students for more than this would be unrealistic.
Changing the Board to Become More Faculty Representative.
The argument for this is that some faculties are vastly under-represented on the board while other faculties are vastly over-represented. Our current board is a great example of this. There are no students from the engineering faculty on the board, and only one each from the sciences and commerce faculties. Meanwhile, the board is made up of mostly people from the social sciences faculty, with the majority of those being political science students. I will outline the potential solutions to this problem, then I will follow up with an argument against why any changes at all are needed.
Solution #1:
Make it so the board has to have the same proportionate makeup as students make up the faculties at UVic. To clarify, if UVic is made up of 25% science students, 25% engineering students, 25% social science students, and 25% humanities students (sorry to any faculties I left out), then the board should be made up of the same proportions. This would give each faculty their proportionate voice on the board.
Solution #2:
Make it so the board has at least one representative from each faculty. This way each faculty would have UVSS representation, while allowing for people that come from more competitive faculties to have less diminished chance of getting elected than under the first solution.
Solution #3:
Assign a faculty to each board member. That board member would then consult with their assigned faculty to let them know what is going on at the board level and listen to concerns of the faculty to bring them back to the board.
The arguments against solutions #1 and #2 are almost the same. The first argument is that by making it so all faculties have to be represented, the elections would be much less competitive in some faculties, while in other faculties there could be many people who really want to be on the board but can't get elected due to being in a very competitive faculty. This could lead to the people that got onto the board easily not taking their job as seriously and not doing as good of a job as currently. This issue is especially compounded in solution #1.
Another argument is where do you stop? Some faculties are under-represented, so you make sure they're represented. But people who live in University residence are also under-represented, with maybe one on the current board. International students are also under-represented, again with maybe one on the current board. What about students who play World of Warcraft? Do they have adequate representation? The point is there is some group that will always be without automatic representation. Under the current system, there is nothing stopping someone that is really interested in getting their viewpoint represented from running in elections and getting on the board. It is better to have people who really want to be on the board get elected than to mandate people to be on it that don't necessarily have an interest in being there.
The third argument against solutions #1 and #2 is an extension of the previous argument. There is a reason that there are a lot of political science students on the board. The board of directors and the elections are very political, and it is natural that political science students would be the most interested in that. By limiting the participation of that faculty in running for director positions, we would be limiting the opportunity of those who are arguably the most interested in doing those jobs from being able to run for them.
As for solution #3, I just thought it up as I was writing this, so i haven't really thought about the arguments against it yet, though I'm sure others will be able to do that for me. The strength I see in it is it doesn't create limits on who can get elected to the board, but it does make sure that each faculty does have a voice on the board.
Maybe an argument against it would be that if you are going to have someone act as a representative for a faculty, why not have that person be a member of that faculty?
A counter-argument to this would be that just because someone is a member of a faculty, doesn't mean they actually consult with that faculty to find out the views of other people within their faculty. By creating an appointed representative for a faculty that is mandated to consult with their appointed faculty, you are ensuring that the representative is actually hearing about the concerns of the faculty they are assigned to represent.
Creating More Executive Positions With More Specific Mandates and Less Hours
The argument for this is currently, the jobs for each of the executives is too broad, and there is too much work for each one of them to be able to do a really good job. By creating more positions it would allow the executives to be more focused in what they have to do and relieve some of the stress associated with be overburdened by too many things. I'm afraid I can't explain it better than this, and I hope someone else can do a better job than I can here.
The argument against this is it will cost more. Hours would be reduced, but I wouldn't anticipate them being reduced enough to financially counter-balance the addition of new positions. The solution wouldn't make sense if this were the case, as there would be the same amount of work to do in the same amount of hours as currently, just more people doing it. Another issue would be, where do you put the new executives? There is only so much office space and new offices would have to found for each new executive.
So this is all I've got. I have laid out all of the issues that I know of, and given the arguments on both sides of the issue to the best of my ability. However, I am not one of the people that brought any of these issues forward, so my hope that people who done much more thinking on them than I have can elaborate on the issues here and even let us know if there are any other issues that may be on the agenda, and hopefully we can get a good discussion going on this!
Rob McDonald
Fair Vote Canada: This site is purposed with trying to change the voting system in Canada to better reflect the population. It educates people on the different voting systems and the benefits of more proportional representation. The specific page I have linked to outlines the different voting systems that may be proposed to change the way we elect our board.
A person who couldn't post on here sent me this facebook message. Sure enough someone has found an argument for my solution #3. Here it is for everyone to read.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with option three is that it would be paying lip service to the idea of faculty representation without actually changing much in the way of involvement.
There is a line between the arts (social sciences, humanities, etc) and the sciences and applied sciences. Few arts students are actually able to relate to engineers and scientists, and to be honest, if a board member claims to represent a faculty without actually knowing and understanding the culture of that faculty, it can even be somewhat insulting.
A faculty rep system wouldn't work unless the rep can relate to the students in the faculty, and unless the students in the faculty can relate to the rep.
For example: an average women's studies student will not be able to truly understand the culture in engineering and the wants/needs of its students, and vice versa.
My favoured system would be as follows:
9 faculty reps (one for each undergraduate faculty)
4 directors at large
Advantages?
- We'd only have to expand the board by two seats (up to 13 volunteer directors from 11)
- the faculties would be given proper representation
- the political scientists can fill their boots with the 4 DAL positions
and my personal favourite:
- slates would be forced to appeal to a greater variety of students by fielding candidates in multiple faculties instead of focusing their entire campaigns in one or two departments
Nice post Rob. Nice to have a balanced perspective out there! A couple comments:
ReplyDeleteI am unsure what problem the STV voting system solves. You mention that this years board is only compromised of two slates, but this is just one year. There have been many years where independents or smaller slates have been elected. Last year is a good example of this. I think your arguments against STV are very strong and I think it would be very silly to change the system to STV as it would just make the process more difficult for students.
I really liked solution #3. I think it would be a great way to get more engagement in the UVSS and have more defined roles for directors. I would also encourage people to see if there are any other groups out there that currently are not being represented and should be. International students for example...
Lastly, before making any changes to the executive I would STRONGLY STRONGLY encourage the decision-makers on this issue to consult with a broad range of people, especially past executives as they would have the most insight into the challenges, pros, cons, etc.
Thanks again Rob!
After thinking about it for a night, I am now going to put my own opinion out there and defend the solution #3.
ReplyDeleteThe argument against that solution is essentially that a representative can't relate to a faculty unless they are actually part of that faculty.
I disagree with this simply because, as I lined out in the solution, the representative would be mandated to consult with members of the faculty they are supposed to represent. The argument is correct in stating that someone from one faculty doesn't know how people from another faculty thinks, but through consistent communication with their faculty, the person can learn how the members of the faculty think and bring that back to the board. It would be very easy for a faculty to give their representative written communications to bring to the board, so if that representative wasn't adequately representing their faculty it could be made known very quickly.
I have to say, any measure that would limit people's ability to get elected does not like a good idea to me. That is why I favour the solution #3 in that it gives faculty representation without limiting who can get elected.
Another thing I hope would develop would be that through engagement with the faculty rep, it will expose more people to the workings of the UVSS and inspire a larger variety of people to run for director positions. That way we could have more people representing the faculties that they come from without limiting who can get elected, which is my ideal.
I also want to echo the comment of yes we can. This is something I forgot to say in my original post. My hope is that as many people as possible are involved in the ad hoc committee as possible. We need to consult with people from all parts of the student body. If just the usual suspects show up, I would be very hesitant to make any changes, because I don't think they would be representative of the desires of the entire student body. So that being said, when the ad hoc starts up, I hope everyone comes to it!
I like the idea of a representative assigned to a faculty, however I see it being to difficult to administer and to enforce. For example the social science faculty has 7 departments (I think), and I would assume the same number of student groups. This would be improbable for all of these groups and the faculty representative to get together. Also some departments have less structured groups that would be more problematic to meet with fairly.
ReplyDeleteI think a more practical approach would be a proportionate number of board members elected from each faculty. You are responsible to your electorate for reelection but are not required to meet with groups.