Editorial: Vote no on Phase II, Commerce Students
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Commerce students will be going to the polls this week to decide whether or not they will be paying a $500 fee each year for decades to finance upgrades to the Henry Angus Building. This is the second time that Sauder and the Commerce Undergraduate Society (CUS) have tried to hoist this fee on Commerce students—a referendum passed in 2006 asking students to pay a similar fee.
It was poorly conceived then, and it’s poorly conceived now.
The referendum makes it so that funding Phase Two of the Sauder building upgrades, worth $20 million, will be up to students. This fee is supposed to be in effect for 35 years. Commerce students are being pressured into deciding whether incoming students have to pay for a new building, bigger classrooms and better technology for the next 35 years, without any support from other donors?
We find it hard to believe that neither UBC, Sauder, alumni nor donors have the money for this. Do you think Commerce students, who can pay up to $4450 a year in tuition, can afford $500 extra each year?
The AMS, for all its blunders, has reached an agreement with the university for the SUB Renew project. They are paying $85 million and the university $25 million. That is for a building that only students will use, and students will operate. Henry Angus is a building that students, staff and faculty will be using, and students will have barely any control over. Yet, Commerce students are being asked to pay for the entirety of Phase Two of the project. In 2006 students agreed to fund part of Phase One of the upgrades as well, and it was only after the government refused the fee upgrade that the university stepped in to help.
To make matters worse, the Dean of Sauder, Dan Muzyka, has been going around to classrooms giving presentations on the subject. At a town hall meeting last Tuesday, Muzyka highlighted how terrible he thought Henry Angus was when he first arrived at UBC. He should find people to pay for upgrades who aren’t students—deans should not be interfering this much in a student society matter.
The CUS and Muzyka have said that the school might lose its accreditation if the building is not brought up to par with the rest of the business schools worldwide. Does anyone know how true this is, whether other schools have lost accreditation due to similar circumstances? The CUS doesn’t. You would think that as a student society, they would be doing their due diligence and providing students with all of the information they can.
If the legitimacy of UBC students’ Commerce degrees is on the line, shouldn’t Sauder be trying harder to find private donors? Dean Muzyka said that “this is Plan B.” If the referendum doesn’t pass, what is Plan C? He said, “there hasn’t been another pot of money to put into this.” We find this argument, again, difficult to stomach.
Even supposing they couldn’t find that money from private donors, this fee increase shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of students alone. If one of the university’s flagship faculties truly is in danger of losing its accreditation, shouldn’t that be a concern of utmost importance to the administration, alumni and the faculty? The dean, faculty and school lured students into coming here with promises of a world-class education. Now the dean is terrorizing those same students into paying for infrastructure upgrades with the threat that their degrees may become nullified? If that happens, he’s the one who has failed, not the students.
The sad thing is, we think that this referendum will pass. University students are already afraid they won’t find jobs after graduation—to hear that their degree would be worthless if they don’t pony up money for a new building has many scared enough to vote yes.
So Commerce students, when you go to the polls on March 11 and 12, vote no, and place the onus on the university and the Sauder School of Business to make your school better.
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Paully Mar 9
Your article has several factual flaws, and is inherently misleading. Firstly, while it is true that the student community is being requested to contribute to the building project, the entire weight of the project isn’t being dumped on their shoulders as your article suggests. Alumni have come together in large numbers in support of this cause, and have altogether raised well over $20 million.
Further more, the CUS isn’t trying to terrorise us. They have, to a large extent, done the necessary information gathering, and are making great efforts to raise awareness amongst Sauder students, so as to allow us to make informed decisions come March 11th and 12th.
With regard to how ‘hard’ Sauder should be trying to convince donors (I assume you include alumni in this group), there is no measurement on how hard they are actually trying. It’s therefore impractical for you to suggest they try harder, without first finding out which efforts have been made. In line with this, we have no indication whatsoever that the office of the Dean isn’t doing it’s very best to secure funding from sources outside the community, and therefore, that section of the article is pure speculation.
As for the issue of commerce students affording an extra $500 each year, this is one of the (relatively) more valid points in the article. Come September 2012, undergraduate students will have to add the above mentioned fee to their cost of attending Sauder, should the referendum come to pass. This gives us 2 years to plan how we can get the $500 in question, which will, hopefully, be adequate. Those who indeed can not afford this will have the $500 factored into their bursary/scholarship requirements.
Finally, I draw your attention to the allegation that the Dean is ‘interfering’ with student matters. This comment seems somewhat out of touch; it is indeed the Dean’s responsibility to ensure that Sauder school is the best business school it can be. His presence in these class discussions only serves to (as someone had stated earlier) impress on students the gravity of this matter.
In conclusion, I urge all students to get fully informed on the facts BEFORE they vote. Don’t take anyone’s word for it, find out the facts and then decide for yourself whether or not to support the referendum.
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