AMS Council voted against a push to combine two referendum items on this year’s AMS Elections ballot to include both a general student fee increase to the AMS/GSS Health & Dental Plan to maintain current levels of coverage and a fee increase to include gender-affirming care in the plan.
Council approved two referendum items which will appear on the March AMS Elections ballot. The first referendum item would increase the student fee for the Health & Dental Plan by $52.50 and the second would increase the student fee by $8 to cover gender-affirming care. The second one is conditional on students voting in favour of the first.
Over 50 student supporters of the Trans Coalition, a newly formed group focused on improving access to gender-affirming care at UBC, showed up to Council last night to call for these two separate referendum items to be combined into one — which would bring the total fee increase to $60.50.
Trans Coalition members in attendance at last night’s meeting argued combining these two items would fill a gap in the Health & Dental Plan. They also said having a separate item for gender-affirming care would put Trans students and others seeking this care at unnecessary risk of harm from other students by making them more visible on campus.
The AMS is running the $52.50 fee increase referendum as a solution to an unsustainable depletion of the Health and Dental Plan Reserve Fund. If students claim more health coverage per capita than the Health and Dental Plan student fee, the AMS has to pay the balance to the insurer Pacific Blue Cross. This difference has dramatically increased recently, largely driven by higher usage of mental health coverage.
Meanwhile, the $8 fee increase to include gender-affirming care in the plan was proposed following months of discussion between the AMS, Studentcare and the Trans Coalition.
This is the second AMS Council meeting in a row where a group of Trans Coalition members have attended. At the February 1 meeting, members spoke after AMS President Eshana Bhangu said the AMS needed to rescind its support of adding gender-affirming care to the fee increase referendum.
Many speakers called out councillors who opposed combining the two referendum items while also saying they wanted to support Trans students on this issue.
“The way to work with us is to believe us when we say that having a Trans-specific [referendum] question … puts us at risk and singles us out to Trans violence and all sorts of attacks,” another member of the Trans Coalition said.
Some AMS executives and councillors objected to the motion, primarily on the grounds that a question on maintaining current coverage should be put to students separately from a question on increasing the coverage available.
Trans Coalition members responded by saying the $8 fee for gender-affirming care should not be seen as an “add-on,” but rather bringing the current plan to an equitable level.
Other Trans Coalition members said separating a referendum item on general student health care and Trans student health care implied these two groups are different.
“I think it's very important to recognize that within this room, there is a deep assumption that Trans people are fundamentally different than cis people ... which to me is really upsetting,” said another member of the Trans Coalition.
Many councillors were also worried about a combined referendum item passing — although they also said they thought two separate measures on a general fee increase and a fee increase for gender-affirming care would pass individually.
Trans Coalition members and councillors in support of the amended referendum item said this argument did not make sense.
“If you have a high confidence that both items are going to pass, it is kind of arbitrary [to separate them],” said a leader of the Trans Coalition.
Medicine Councillor Maddie Elder, who supported the motion, questioned the need to debate the proposal the Trans Coalition brought forward.
“I'm going to assume that we all believe that we need gender-affirming care this year in our coverage. So then the hardest thing is how do we go about it,” she said. “The fortunate thing here is that [the Trans Coalition], I believe, have already done this work for us. And all we need to do is listen.”
After an in-camera, private discussion, Council voted 16 to 4 against combining the items, with one abstention. Following that vote, councillors approved both individual referendum items separately.
The second referendum item on the $8 fee increase to include gender-affirming care was amended to remove examples of gender-affirming care at the request of the Trans Coalition, but a push to remove the conditional language on the item did not pass following discussion.
As councillors voted on the second referendum item, members of the Trans Coalition told councillors to vote 'no' so the Coalition could petition for their own referendum item that matched the language they wanted.
Council approved the referendum item 16 to 8.
The Ubyssey reached out to Bhangu for additional comment but did not hear back before publishing time.
“We are extremely disappointed,” said a member of the Trans Coalition following the vote against the combined referendum item. Her name has been omitted for her safety.
“Shame,” she said.
This article was updated at 5:20 on March 15, 2023 to remove the names of members of the Trans Coalition to protect their safety.