I was working at CHMR last week when I heard something happening outside of the studio. I was busy putting a show together, so I didn’t have time to go check out what the fuss was about. After I had wrapped up, my boss told me that someone had come by, requesting that student media cover the U-Pass vote that was in its final stages at the time.
The individual, Matt Barter, had started a change.org petition to “have the board of regents disregard the undemocratic U-Pass vote” – citing what he believed to be problems with the way the vote was being held.
I asked around and found his email, and he immediately agreed to be interviewed that same day. When he paid a visit to our offices, he spoke at length about what he perceived to be major and systemic issues with the vote. Hours later, the results would come in; students did not want a U-Pass.
You’ve probably seen Matt around campus; during his time with MUNSU, he was heavily involved in student life, and even now (as a part-time student unable to occupy that role) he seems to be dedicating his time to representing student interests. The vote was, in his mind, a major issue.
“The purpose of [my petition] is for there to be a fair vote to take place” he said. His issues with the vote held last week are numerous:
“There’s pretty much a whole campaign in support of the U-Pass, and that’s most of the information that students have consumed”, he noted in reference to the posters, photoshoots, and videos that the school has released in regards to the U-Pass (total costs of this marketing campaign add up to 1336.78 dollars, the bulk of which was spent on Facebook ad boosting and an information session held by the school). He sees this marketing as enforcing a bias, especially considering that the entity releasing these materials is the same one facilitating the vote.
He worried that the U-Pass would benefit the province and Metro-bus on the backs of the students. “For them, they get to improve transit for all of the citizens without having to pay anything”. In addition to this, only full-time students were eligible to vote – despite the fact that statements had been released by the school claiming that they would like to open the U-Pass up to more than just full time students in the future. “If the goal is to open it up to more people, why are part-time students not allowed to vote on this now, if it’s going to effect part-time students for generations?”
“Why is everybody in the university community [including faculty and staff] not obliged to pay to be part of this?”
His petition sees more fundamental issues with the vote as well. “It’s not a vote, it’s merely a poll. The university has said that it’s just to gauge student opinion. Why should students take this seriously if it’s not even a legitimate democratic vote? The board of regents has the power to implement any fee that they want.”
As a former student senator, Matt has seen the issue of the U-Pass discussed for years. In 2016, he described a meeting with the president of the school who he claims said to him that “a referendum is a student union policy, not ours. We have the right to implement any fees we want. The U-Pass is something that we want to move ahead with. This is not just to improve things for students; this is to improve things for everybody”.
Although this statement can’t be confirmed, if his story is accurate, then it confirms the notion of the U-Pass being a way to secure funding for the province and MetroBus at the expense of the students (as opposed to being secured through the raising of taxes or more conventional methods).
He believes that to avoid conflicts of interest and bias, a third party should hold the vote (not the school itself). He cited Elections Canada’s role in the conduction of federal elections as an example of this being commonplace in other fields. “The way the school is doing it – that would be like the Liberal party of Canada conducting a referendum, them counting the ballot, determining if it’s valid, and then deciding what to do. It’s really problematic the way that it’s being done.”
“It’s almost like fascism”.
He sees issues with the vote that illustrate problems with the provincial government. “Is it fair that the provincial government is not investing any money in public transit?” The funds that would be secured if students were made to pay for the U-Pass program would probably improve many of the issues with transit in the city, which clearly benefits the province. “There really needs to be a regional approach to public transit, with investment from the regional government and from the municipality”.
“I felt personally the need to speak up. There hasn’t been much discourse on this issue. It’s been pretty much one-sided… people tend not to question authority, which is why they’ve been able to get away with what they’re doing”.
Although some students don’t seem to mind the extra fee that the U-Pass would entail, for many students, having to pay for a mandatory bus pass that they won’t use could be a problem. Many students at Memorial drive to school and can transport themselves without metro. “This is a car centric society,” Matt said as we held the conversation with a view of Price Philip Dr. just outside of the window, bustling with people coming and going.
That makes this U-Pass unique to other universities where campuses are located at the heart of a city (Dalhousie and Saint Mary’s are Atlantic Canadian examples of this). Living in a city where everything is built longitudinally, most people drive. “Now those people will have to work more shifts to pay for this fee”, Matt remarked.
The allocation of funds gathered from tuition can be factored into this issue as well, Matt argued. At Memorial, over 200,000 dollars were spent on searches for faculty deans in 2018 and administrative figures spend hundreds on dinner meetings.
Matt asked why funds can’t be reallocated to implement a U-Pass, as opposed to having students pay more money for a service they may not make use of.
You can follow matt on Twitter here.