Why would you want a fair referendum that you might lose?
The Canadian Federation of Students has voted down another attempt to reform the CFS that would have been a push in right direction, and encouraged the federation to be the fair democratic grassroots organization it claims to be.
The motion, voted on at the group’s semi-annual general meeting, would have imposed the same spending limit on the CFS side as is imposed on the non-CFS side of a membership referendum.
Here’s a quote from the new York Federation of Students president on page 5 of The Fulcrum’s summer edition:
“As far as we’re concerned, in any referendum situation the No side
has an [inherent] advantage because they can break the rules as much as they want without any type of consequence,” said York Federation of Students President Krisna Saravanamuttu, who voted against the motion.
I have a question for Saravanamuttu: Why is this justification for not creating a rule to create fairness between opposing sides in a referendum? If the problem is that the rule isn’t being followed, does this mean we should not have rules in the first place?
Kudos to the graduate students at Concordia for voting in favour of the motion. The CFS has great potential in theory but has sold its soul in favour of power and money, but thankfully, there are some left that still see what could be.