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Dear Ms. Editor
With just some 80 people out of a possible 33 000 students voting in this election a clear message has been sent to our Student Union! That message is “change must occur”! It is quite obvious that not enough students view AUSU as a viable organization that is reflective of their needs. So whatever AUSU’s newly elected councillors had in mind must clearly be put on hold. A complete change in the AUSU organization must ring in every corridor, every Internet conduit and in every councillor’s ears.
My first suggestion is that this council have only one goal and that goal is to vote the current structure of their own organization out of existence. My second suggestion is that AUSU realize that they are not like most Universities and begin to gear up to a new system where there is a single president and “regional” councillors. This would be reflected based on how many students AU has in each region of the country the year before and even a councillor representing overseas students. Thirdly, council must take a more aggressive position with AU. They must demand and assume complete management control of all course evaluations of AU and AU faculty. Course evaluations are the only single tool that students have as a voice of protest at AU. They unite students and allow for a vocal united student voice. Councillors must demand that this evaluations change as well. They must not simply be AU propaganda tools they must contain questions that are relevant to students. One question should be whether they thought tuition costs/increases were justified!
Whatever inventive idea any AUSU councillor has in mind they now must realize that they have no mandate for it. That the only mandate that students have given them is that of “change” and councillors should heed that call because we aren’t talking about reform were talking about survival. With AUSU’s new website the infrastructure is in place but they system is clearly broken!
Arthur Setka
Peterborough, Ontario
