A petition asking students whether or not they want a referendum to question the continued membership of the UVic Students’ Society (UVSS) in the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) has been sent to the CFS’ national office in Ottawa.
The group of students who have been organizing the petition and gathering signatures since early September sent notarized copies of the signatures on Oct. 26. The group kept the originals “because of [the CFS’] tendency to lose stuff,” said Jose Barrios, one of the petition’s organizers.
The 108-page petition had 1,972 signatures, 1,892 of which were deemed valid as students attending UVic during the 2009-2010 winter session by UVic’s Acting Registrar Lauren Charlton.
The 1,892 signatures represent 11.4 per cent of UVic’s undergraduate population. In order to request a referendum to deferederate, a petition needs to have the support of 10 per cent of undergraduate students.
A letter of notarization and a letter acting as the official notice of a call to referendum are included with the signatures. The package will be served to the CFS national office by a bailiff later this week. Barrios said that the group chose to get a bailiff to serve the papers instead of sending them by mail so that there will be no question over whether or not the CFS received the package.
“We’re following their rules to the tee to make sure they don’t stop the democratic process on a technicality,” said Barrios.
Still, he’s not convinced that the CFS will allow a referendum without a fight.
“I’m sure something’s going to happen,” said Barrios, noting that in past referendum attempts, the CFS has lost documents. “They’ll just pull it out of their hat.”
Once the CFS receives the package they will have 90 days to acknowledge it. When that happens, CFS will have 60-90 days to schedule the referendum.
UVic is just one of several schools across Canada currently attempting to call a referendum questioning their students’ societies continued membership in the CFS.
Barrios, who is in contact with petition organizers at other schools, says that the CFS has already received 10 petition packages requesting referendums and that they will receive an additional three this week. As of press time, CFS was not available to confirm that 10 petitions had been received.
Though Barrios is excited by the progress the petition has made, he says that there are ways to avoid a referendum.
“We’re willing to reconsider the petition because we want the CFS to be effective. We’re still hopeful the reforms will pass,” said Barrios, referring to the package released by the CFS’ Quebec branch CFS-Q earlier this month.
The package consisted of three parts and called for major changes to be made to the organization. When it was announced that there would be a reform package coming forward, CFS-Q received a letter from the CFS’ lawyer saying that they were no longer a part of CFS because they had caused damage to the organization.