And the results are in…

by thisisourumsu

The results are in for the UMSU elections, and it looks like we might have a few more things to write about this coming year.

Although it wasn’t the greatest news, the results were not surprising on many levels, but there are plenty of positives to take from it, including the election of a Vice-President Internal who can hopefully make the new Executive more open and accountable.

As noted earlier on this website, the current regime has been doing whatever it takes all year to give themselves any upper hand or unfair advantage they can get; whether that is using their personal email account while conducting UMSU business so they can collect and use those contacts during the elections, building their personal social media “friends” lists all year long, or changing the UMSU Bylaws right before campaigning starts to allow for a new demerit penalty system. The new demerit system may seem like a good idea on the surface. Why not change to a penalty system instead of a reduction in your campaign expense penalty for violating campaign material rules? Well, here’s a good reason… It is inherently unfair to expect all students to be able to afford “out of pocket” costs for any unclaimed campaign expenses to prevent from going over on budget. The expense limits, set at $350 per candidate this year, are there for a reason, to create and maintain a level playing field for all involved by setting the absolute amount that can be spent on each campaign, not just the amount that can be claimed. If they go over the set budget by buying additional materials and breaking campaign rules, they are receiving a significant advantage over other candidates who are spending within the set amount and following the rules.

What this new penalty system appears to do is favour and reward any candidate that has money or any candidate connected to outside sources funding them to run in the campaign. As we noted, other campuses across the country have seen corporations such as consultants and health plan companies funding favourable executives to run, paying the candidates to spend all day campaigning and paying for additional campaign materials to plaster the entire campus. In the Council minutes as a motivation to changing to this new rule system, Al Turnbull noted that candidates just don’t claim all expenses in order to avoid going over budget. Is he admitting that he didn’t disclose all of their expenses during their election campaigns? This would make sense, as we noted in an earlier post how the Refresh team was allowed to print unlimited glossy cardstock postcards off-campus, which meant they most likely only claimed a portion of these items, and they were either wealthy enough to front the rest of the costs or they had some outside help, or both.

Another recent example of this unfair advantage comes from Jeremiah “if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying” Kopp and the “Your UMSU” slate. Did anyone else notice the extremely large and what we know are overly expensive campaign banners printed using wide-format printers? As a rough estimate based on the amount and sizes of the banners they had printed, they would have spent at least $1,200 on those banners alone, and that is a very modest estimate. They also had printed T-shirts, and of course, the thousands of extra thick and even larger than last year flyers to litter all over campus during this campaign. These were again most likely printed off campus, again with no oversight by the CRO to ensure they stayed within their spending limits. That UMSU Bylaw restricting printing for campaign materials to UMSU’s Digital Copy Centre is there for a reason, to ensure fairness, to ensure that slates are not printing beyond limits, and to ensure that slates have equal access to the same kind and amount of resources. The CRO last year, who as we know, is the same CRO this year, doesn’t seem to understand that allowing slates to print off campus at non-UMSU businesses means they are likely doing it to avoid fully reporting how much they are actually printing and spending. The spending limits are in the Bylaws to ensure that students with or access to a lot of money are not buying these elections and given a huge advantage over other candidates who don’t have access to piles of money.

Overall, we see positives in the voter turnout, especially in how many students voted in opposition to how UMSU has been run and what Your UMSU represents. Sadly, it was also telling the kind of leaders involved on each slate by the messages on their respective Facebook pages. While the Clear team immediately congratulated Your UMSU on a great campaign once the voting closed, Your UMSU said nothing. However, once the results were announced, Jeremiah Kopp made a post to his personal Facebook page basically announcing he is the new President, the election showed that “positivity beats out negativity and pessimism”, and a quick thank you to his friends and supporters. There was no acknowledgement of other candidates, no commendations or congrats on a well-run campaign by the other team or candidates, nothing to show humility and true leadership. We’re sorry, but there’s nothing worse than a sore winner – someone who shows arrogance, conceit, and self-involvement, and that’s what he appears to be showing here. As a leader, he needs to learn to accept any kind of criticism, listen and learn without being defensive, and respect the fact that students have every right to ask questions and to know what goes on in their student union. We’ve heard about and directly from countless students who were “friends” with Jeremiah going into the UMSU election, but as soon as they started sharing concerns and showing they were not 100% supporting him like sheep, Jeremiah made sure to delete and block people on social media. It looks like he is living up to his Twitter quote from last year, “he that is not with me is against me”.

We hope that students take the information and the many unanswered questions from this website and go to UMSU Council meetings, start asking more questions of the elected representatives, and get involved in how your money is spent and how your student union is run. Please continue to send us information and ideas and we will continue to investigate and report as needed.

This is our UMSU. Til next time.