Meow everyone. My fangs are being sharpened as I wrote this because once again, my student union is denying funding to students , GRAD students , but yet , the3y found money to fund a freakin Harry Potter club . Hey RSU, were the hell are your priorities . Here is a link to the story:
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But wait, there is MORE read this from the President of the counsel and his reply to the draconian student unions idea of where their priorities lay:
I am writing this letter after attending one of the most defining moments that I have witnessed at the RSU level. The board of directors, led by the its executives refused to help graduate students with funding that they are entitled to.
Graduate students are members of the RSU and pay the required membership fee.
As the graduate chairperson, and along with my fellow graduate executive members, we have been solely elected by graduate students to serve their interests on the RSU.
The graduate executive received clear direction from representatives of the more than 2000 members that we are lacking funding especially when it comes to travel grant funding and that we needed the RSU executives and the board to help us with that, partly through our membership fees that we pay them.
At a board meeting today, executives along with board members clearly discriminated against graduate committee members who sit on this fund granting body and did not allow them to apply for grants just because they decided to serve other graduate students. The claim was that their was a conflict of interest situation if one these members applied.
Even though there was an amendment that would have resolved that, and even though there is precedence in that other committees in the RSU(student groups and course union) operate with this potential conflict of interest, the executives in the meeting along with some board members decided that graduate students should not be encouraged to sit on this committee and graduate students should resolve their financial problems using advocacy rather than depending on their students union.
In this same meeting, we approved funding for a Harry Potter club and a Yoga club.
The priorities of the RSU are clear to graduate students: we will not cooperate with your graduate executive committee to help you with your financial stress due to the rising costs of your academic endevours.
If you have a special interest club, we can definitely use the vagueness of the RSU policies to help you get funding.
I speak for myself and the Graduate Executive committee. We were insulted to be laughed at as representatives when we were pleading for the rights of graduate students to get services and funding
We were insulted to hear the laughter from VP of Education and her telling us that the solution is advocacy and hoping that one day we will get tuition relief.
We were insulted that VP of Operations would allege that graduate student committees have the potential to operate in a ” sketchy” manner.
We were insulted that the board would not give us graduate students the relief of using funds that were dedicated to our events and dedicate them to higher learning initiatives in the form of grants.
We will make sure that the whole university knows that as graduate students we deserve better representation.
As graduate students, we need a separate body that understands our needs and can represent our needs that is separate completely from the RSU.
We need our own Graduate Student Union that is dedicated solely to graduate students which will respect us in a dignified manner.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Thank you
Osman Hamid Graduate Chairperson 2011-2012
So my question to CUPE and their draconian leadership , what the hell are you doing to do about the fact that students who pay huge money as grad students, also are FORCED to pay RSU fees, but they will get NOTHING . Then to make matters worse, your pathetic drones simply laugh at those who want accountability . What is the other pathetic joke of anorganization called the CFS going for these grad students . NOTHING
So the question as to why this is going on is a simple one. The student elections are and have always been won by CFS slates, however, the GRAD student counsel was won by NON-CFS friendly slates. This is clearly an act of reprisal by the student union and the CFS against the grad students and thier student reps as a means to act a a warning to future elections that unless they vote for CFS friendly slates more of the same is in store for them as well . My hope for the Grad student Counsel is that they get superior lawyers and make this student spend the next 50 years in court to answer for their actions against grad students. How can Undercoverkitty help ?