Your Student Government and You: Studies in the KSA

Just in case you forgot that you pay for a student association

You know, not a lot of people really voted for KSA council members when the elections went down last February.

Just under 500 votes were cast in this school of about 19,000. But we can’t really blame the other 18,500—I mean, maybe they would tune in if they knew how much student money the KSA actually has. It’s in the millions. If they only knew about the historic, massive misuse of that money in the association’s recent past. Or perhaps the dark history of the Reduce All Fees party and their unfortunate 2011 successors. But that’s a scab we’ll pick off later.

The point is, you should probably know how the KSA works. Things are constantly in flux with the student government, and because sometimes we understandably get caught up in other things and forget, a quick primer on Kwantlen’s favourite student union couldn’t hurt.

KSA1101: Introduction to Student Politics

“Essentially, the student union is there to represent the students as a whole, to provide services that the institution won’t or can’t,” says Allison Gonzalez, the KSA president and vice-president of student services.

“And, also just to create a student life for students.”

Gonzalez fronts the KSA executive—a group of four students elected by KSA council from amongst their ranks to oversee the day-to-day business of the student union. They’re mandated to work 40 paid hours per week, and oftentimes it means juggling school simultaneously. Besides her, Alex McGowan handles external affairs, Waheed Taiwo manages finance and Manpreet Bassi organizes student life. Any student can literally walk into their offices in Surrey campus’ Cedar building and talk to them face-to-face. You could even attend their weekly meetings on Thursdays, just to get the low-down in-person.

Executive meetings typically concern club funding requests and unique capital projects, but here and there it can get pretty spicy, sometimes leading to debates that touch on ethics and policy development when it comes to making decisions in the future. They release all the minutes and agendas for their meetings on the KSA website, so anyone can access their business remotely. These are archived for posterity and accountability, so that all union members can see that they’re actually functioning.

If they’re not working up to par, the executives must answer to KSA council, which consists of twenty-something representatives that Kwantlen students have voted for. You’ll have students representing the different campuses and departments at KPU, such as arts, horticulture, business; and even specific constituencies like students with disabilities, women, students of colour and more. All reps are to provide new ideas to improve student life for their respective constituency. This collection is the highest voting authority in the KSA and can overturn any decision made by the executive team. They also share a fiduciary responsibility in the student union, and must approve monthly budgets.

Council meets monthly for about three to four hours per meeting, alternating between campuses. Like the executive team, their meetings are public, and their minutes and agendas are just as available online. You could even sync their Google calendars to your Gmail account.

Sometimes exec and council hold in-camera portions in their meetings and these aren’t open to the public. You’ll be instructed to leave the room if you’re present. These portions can only be held for HR reasons, legal reasons and property reasons. However, we’ve reported in the past that previous executives have conducted business in-camera outside of these parametres. Ultimately what goes on in these portions can’t be confirmed and we can only take their word for decisions to go in-camera. Sometimes they’re in for 15 minutes. Other times it can take over an hour.

As harrowing as that sounds, there’s still more places for students to get involved.

KSA2210: Principles of Committing to a Committee

Council members actually do more work in committees, all with specific purposes like student life, finance and others. Any student can apply to be part of these committees and Gonzalez says that as of now all committees are “mostly full.” Apparently, they’ve been having luck with student engagement.

These committees are the ground floor for new ideas when it comes to changing things at the union level and even the university level. There are six regular committees so far, including the student life committee that focuses on enhancing student life and deals with social justice and academic issues. Special committees pop up too, when the need arises. The special committee on academic affairs reports on issues of university governance and discusses academic policies at the KSA. That particular committee even has university senate and board of governors members.

One of the most important committees is probably the standing committee on governance, which looks at KSA policy among other things to ensure proper governance in the KSA. Nobody would want a repeat of what happened a decade ago, after all.

KSA4100: Advanced Studies in Political Scandals

Yes, once upon a time (2005) some bad eggs made their way into the student union at the executive level. For their actions, the student association sued them for a lengthy case that used about $800,000 in student funds and spanned over five years—only to have the case dropped unceremoniously by a later student council and executive team. Massive conflicts of interest were uncovered in the freezing of the case. People were chapped and the scandal saw national media coverage. Look up “Chaos at Kwantlen” on YouTube and you’ll find some video coverage as example of the situation’s gravity.

“We’ve learned from those mistakes in the past,” says Gonzalez. “Now we have a lot in terms of policy procedure . . . that help protect against that. We’ve made sure that’s not possible anymore.”

She adds that they’ve, “developed a lot of regulation and a lot of policy on accountability of the student union.”

The student union is organized in a more “formalized way,” according to Gonzalez. She says that includes how, “open our meetings are, how we post publicly, how we don’t do very much in-camera at all, so we try and be as public and transparent as possible.”

“Because council elects exec, and exec elects the president, there’s a lot of accountability built in,” says Gonzalez.

Accountability is a pillar that the student union must have when they’re representing students. It must exist in the day to day business of the union, and it must exist when they’re tackling moves by the university that they believe aren’t in the best interest of students—like the recent agreement between KPU and Kinder Morgan.

Gonzalez says the union called a special meeting of council in the wake of that controversial news piece. At the meeting she saw the most inspiring moment so far in her executive run—there they were, her fellow student representatives, all gathered at the last minute, all passionately discussing the policy that they would take against something contrary to the values of those which they strive to represent each day.

The KSA might not be perfect but it’s the only student association we have. It’s important you remain informed about what your representatives are getting up to, so that when February rolls around you can pat them on the back… or dump them on their butts.