But if the watchman see the sword come, and sound not the trumpet...
Tuesday, January 10 2012
Student referendum to decide fate of canteen By Niko Bell
King’s students will cast ballots in a referendum on Wednesday and Thursday of this week to fund a new canteen in the Wardroom. The proposed canteen, called the HMCS King’s Galley, would be run by the King’s Students’ Union (KSU), and would provide coffee and food from local or fair trade sources. To fund the canteen, the KSU will have to use an $83,000 investment, and students will pay a $14 levy for the next three years. The bulk of that money will go to the King’s administration. In October, King’s President Anne Leavitt asked the KSU for $75,000 to cover the cost of renovating the alcove in the Wardroom. At first, the KSU was convinced that this was only a starting bid. In a public meeting in October, KSU Student Life Vice President Anna Dubinski dismissed the number as “ridiculous” and said that negotiations would continue. In reality, there were no negotiations. The KSU, after all, had nothing to offer. The students wanted to use the space, and the administration had no reason to give it to them any cheaper. KSU President Gabe Hoogers made an offer of $5,000 for the space—essentially asking for the renovation costs to be waived—and the administration said no. As the Christmas break approached, said Dubinski, “the realities of the agreement became more real for us.” The final deal was as the administration first proposed: $75,000 for the alcove, plus $5,000 a year in rent. With start-up costs, that brings the total price tag to approximately $120,000 dollars. If students vote ‘yes’ this week, the KSU hopes to start up the HMCS Galley before the end of the year. It would serve coffee from Java Blend and prepared food from Local Source. The Galley’s business plan is on the KSU’s website at http:// ksu.ca/section/106. The total start-up cost of the canteen will be slightly more than one year’s total revenue for the KSU. In addition to the $14 levy
Internal Coordinator John Adams in the newly renovated canteen space. Photo by Alex Estey from students, the canteen will require the KSU to dig $83,000 out of its savings. The KSU will also be on the hook if the canteen’s income doesn’t match expectations. Hoogers says that a project like the canteen is the reason the KSU has been saving up and that they will not lose anything from their usual operating budget. Because the new canteen will be not-for-profit, he says, it will succeed where Sodexo’s canteen failed. Although the KSU has come to an understanding with Leavitt, Hoogers says he still thinks that the administration’s demands were too high. “It was difficult to originally reconcile the idea that what we planned on doing ... was to provide a service for the entire community
You Can Vote Outside prince hall Remember to Bring your Student ID
including the administration, and on the other hand being asked to pay $75,000, just like any other corporation,” Hoogers said. Leavitt said that if students vote ‘no’ this week, she will probably offer the canteen contract back to Sodexo. At first she said that the administration never intended to cover the cost of renovations and that she always expected the new operators to pay the $75,000. She would not say, however, that Sodexo would actually have to pay as much as the KSU. “Sodexo makes different contributions to us as a company overall, and so we would have to ... weigh that off against what they are are already contributing to us in other ways,” Leavitt said. “In the 20 or 30 years that we’ve worked with them,
they have always been very generous to King’s, and so ... we would have to take their existing generosity into consideration.” Neither Hoogers nor Dubinski, however, thinks that the referendum is likely to fail. The KSU is already interviewing staff for the canteen, even though it has yet to be funded. In another gesture of self-assurance, the KSU has set up speakers to promote the motion for Tuesday’s meeting but has not asked anyone to argue against it. If students have objections, says KSU Communications Vice President Anna Bishop, they can just “show up.” There are no KSU procedures detailing how to run a referendum or to indicate whether a formal debate is necessary.
\wednesday & thursday
Jan 11 Jan 12
canteen Questions By Kai Miller
Think hard, King’s.
The referendum this week will be a big deal for the King’s community. I’m a member of the food advocacy committee and have been involved in this process since September, and I’m really excited by the plan we’ve put together. It will re-establish the Wardroom lounge as a centre of student life during the day, provide student jobs and give all of us access to better, cheaper, closer and more ethical food and coffee than we can get at the LSC or the SUB. However, the cost to the union is high. I’ve weighed the benefits and the costs, and I’m proud to say I’ll be voting in favour of this referendum. The money we’re playing with belongs to all of us, though, and it’s important that people consider both the good and the bad and make their decision carefully. A few things to bear in mind:
1 A student-run canteen would be really great. You’re going to be hearing this from a lot of people this week, and it’s all true. The food and coffee we’ve got lined up will be excellent and affordable, and the management structure will ensure that the student community can decide how it should be run. Immediately, it’ll be a centre of student life, and eventually it might be a revenue stream for the students’ union. The space is gorgeous and we can’t wait to start selling food from it. 2. This is all of our money. It’s actually all of the KSU’s money and then some, because in addition to dissolving our investments we’re raising more funds through a levy. This leaves almost nothing beyond our annual operating budget in case the canteen or the union should face unexpected expenses such as equipment failure or toner piracy. 3. Most of this money is going to the administration, not the canteen. About a third of the money in question in this referendum will actually be used to open the canteen. The other two-thirds is a payment demanded by the administration as a condition of being permitted to use the space. When the boycott was resolved, we thought we’d won the canteen space to open a
food service venue. What we actually got was an opportunity to buy access to a space at a price we can only just afford. That stings a little.
4. The administration has the upper hand. The administration realized, astutely, that students want this canteen badly. They could pretty much name a number, and they did. This isn’t the first time the administration has attempted to squeeze the union for cash. In 2007, under a different president but the same bursar, the administration decided to levy a surcharge of 50% on Wardroom payroll. The union had the option of looking elsewhere then—the union outsourced Wardroom paycheques—but this time we don’t. If we want to open a canteen, we need this space, and the administration can set the conditions. The argument that anyone opening a canteen would pay a similar fee is misleading. Dr. Leavitt has as much as said that Sodexo wouldn’t pay this fee because of their existing relationship. I, for one, wish the administration valued its existing relationship with students enough to give them at least the same treatment as their caterer. There is a difference in kind between a for-profit, external business buying access to the King’s market and the students themselves opening a service. We shouldn’t have to buy access to King’s students; we are King’s students. Nonetheless, I think that this referendum is a great opportunity for the King’s community. We’ve missed having a canteen this year, and now we have a chance to open a better one than ever. I regret that Dr. Leavitt chose to begin her relationship with King’s on this note, but this time I feel it’s worth swallowing our pride and paying the price for a student-run food service. It’s a big decision, though, and it shouldn’t receive automatic, reflexive student assent like the budget at a General Meeting. So argue with your friends about it, and come out to vote in droves. And when the president and the bursar come down to buy their first coffee, at $75,000 a cup, we’ll know it’s been worth it. The price for everyone else will be $2, of course, but there’s an existing relationship to consider.
TODAY January 10 2012 at 7PM in the
Wardroom Get informed, Join the discussion
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Editorial
Our Last Chip
By Evelyn Hornbeck, Co-Editor-in-Chief
So what if we vote ‘no’?
This is not a possibility the students’ union finds likely. And why should it? The school needs access to food services for the students. While Zona Roberts’s friendly face drew many of us to the Wardroom at lunch, we’ve all heard that the Oxford college style depends on common spaces for learning, praying and eating. Lectures are important, but the life of the college is in the spaces in between—between classes, between lecture and home, between friends. We’ve lost that important aspect of college life to the LSC and the Subway down the street. The KSU understands this; they’ve been working tirelessly to correct this wrong since the September boycott created it. Now the question is: how to fill the void? This week, the union presents students with the option they (and we, through consultation with members of the food advocacy committee) have selected, in our best interest. The food will be ethical, the counter staffed by students. The students will finally have a foothold in the previously Sodexomonopolized food landscape at King’s. This is a good thing. But at what cost? When the administration presented the $75,000 fee, the food advocacy committee held a town hall meeting in which they told students that this number was “ridiculous.” They countered at a fraction of the cost. But the number hasn’t budged. This means that the upfront cost of the canteen, one that will not make money for some years, if ever, will be over $100,000. To pay it, we must fork over our cash reserves, built up over the years by generations of King’s students. And if that prospect is not worrying enough, voting ‘yes’ to this canteen will mean that we give up our last bargaining chip.
Saying no.
Saying no is what got the union this foothold; it is what put student voices on the committee to renegotiate Sodexo’s contract in 2013. Our boycott was the students’ leverage. If students approve this vote, it’s done. The period of change is over. We no longer have the option to say “This is too expensive” or “We deserve a better deal” and back out. We’re locked in. And the KSU, and our money, is on the hook. Is this best deal for students? It is the students’ duty to ask this question. The union’s discussion on Tuesday night will present one side. The union has lined up its own speakers but not any to speak against; students will have to cover that on their own. This question deserves a hard look. We can’t afford to rubber stamp this.
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Be it resolved that a $14 levy be collected from all full time students of the University of King's College for the 2011-2012, 2012-2013, and 2013-2014 academic years to be used to help fund the HMCS King's Galley. Be it further resolved that the King's Students' Union dissolve its $83 380.45 GIC to be used as start up funding for the HMCS King's Galley.