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CANADA’S ONLY DAILY STUDENT NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED 1906
VOLUME 107, ISSUE 63
Faculty fee to be reviewed SSSC exec want to Professional faculties’ USC fee questioned prorogue council Jeremiah Rodriguez NEWS EDITOR
Bill Wang GAZETTE
Hamza Tariq GAZETTE STAFF University Students’ Council officials are cautioning agasint reducing fees for professional constituencies, after being tasked with investigating the possibility at last week’s council meeting. Spencer Brown, vice-president finance, along with Sam Krishnapillai, vice-president internal, will be investigating this issue to provide metrics and meet with professional students to deliver a preliminary report to the long term budgeting and planning committee and the local and campus affairs Standing Committee in February. Professional undergraduate faculties include Dentistry, Medicine, Education, and Law, which are made up of approximately 2,500 students. Brown stated that he wouldn’t recommend a change in student fees in this budget cycle, because of the potential impact on the USC budget. “It is very late in the game to make a substantial change in student fees. It will also only be
a preliminary report so concrete solutions will not come of it. I think a more detailed report and discussion is very feasible for next year’s budget,” he said. “If the professionals have a fee reduction, I would have to recommend increasing revenue in another area.” James Hirsch, vice-president external of the Student Legal Society, argued that the professional faculties’ students don’t use the USC’s services at the same rate as main campus students and also already pay constituent faculties’ student fees that fund overlapping services. “Additionally, there are a few reasons that are specific to professional faculty students,” Hirsch said. “We do not participate in the USC’s O-Week or other large USC events and our constituencies are markedly different, with the average entry age of a professional faculty student being around 25 as opposed to 18 for main campus.” Hirsch also stated that medicine and education students spent significant portions of their time in off-campus placements.
Representatives of the professional faculties’ students are looking for a reduction in student fees along the same lines as the one granted to the affiliate colleges in 2012. Affiliate students pay 38 per cent of the $661.33 that main campus students pay. Speaking about the affiliate colleges’ agreement in 2012, Brown said it was debatable if that set a good precedent and once a report is produced, the students will get to decide. Keeping the same level of service with lesser funds would be impossible, according to Brown. This deficit would most likely be met by an increase in prices at USC-run businesses and services or even an increase in student fees. “That means affiliates or main campus students could have an increase to offset the professional decrease,” Brown said. “Or we could just raise the price of a CLT [at the Spoke] but people wouldn’t like that.” “I believe the professional agreement is definitely worth looking into, and I will be doing my due diligence on this matter.”
The Social Science Students’ Council could be put on hiatus until after elections are over, a decision that has left councillors scratching their heads. Yesterday, the SSSC executive sent an e-mail to all Social Science councillors outlining the recommendation that all SSSC activities will be suspended until February 12. The decision was made because Lisa Le Nguyen, the current president of SSSC, is running for a second term — an unusual occurrence for Social Science — and for the council to continue its day-to-day duties in those circumstances was considered a conflict of interests. The speaker of the Social Science council, Connor Scott, recommended the decision to the SSSC executive. Le Nguyen declined to comment for this story, instead providing a statement to The Gazette that contained the same text as the e-mail sent to the councillors.
“I think that it would be prudent to call for a prorogation of council until the end of elections, based on the previous inabilities of members to demonstrate ‘professionalism’ and a commitment to the mission and mandate of our organization since the announcement of candidates,” the statement said. Office hours and regular duties for councillors would be rescinded but according the statement, the proroguing would not affect department representatives, senators and USC councillors who can still conduct themselves outside of SSSC as their positions dictate. Proroguing council has met resistance from some councillors arguing that it would be a disservice to their constituents. Jack Litchfield, a Social Science senator and Le Nguyen’s opponent for the SSSC presidency, said that the idea is an overreaction and that only the executive stepping down would eliminate the conflict of interest. >> see SSSC pg.3
Bill Wang GAZETTE