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RyeSAC wants out of CFS – again

Referendum to be held in January

By Michelle Osborne

For the second year in a row, students may go to the polls in early February to decide if the Canadian Federation of Students will sink or swim at Ryerson.

Greg Thomas, RyeSAC v.p. education, said the executive will discuss holding a referendum to withdraw membership from the CFS at the next board of directors meeting.

“The referendum wasn’t run properly last year,” said Thomas. “Myself and other people working on it were running for executive positions, so it wasn’t done properly. There was a time crisis.”

Thomas also says the referendum was affected by CFS’ January student strike, which attracted almost 7,000 students from across Metro. The CFS referendum at Ryerson was held shortly afterwards.

“The strike itself had a lot of advertisement for CFS and it was fresh in everyone’s minds,” said Thomas. “There were a lot of messages to get out there that week, and (RyeSAC’s) resources were really thin.”

CFS isn’t planning to take this lying down. Cassandra Conan, executive treasurer of CFS, said the federation will be campaigning to show students the benefits of membership and describing past CFS campaigns. 

Ryerson students chose to stay with CFS by a 129-vote margin out of the approximately 1500 votes cast in last year’s referendum. Conan feels that time and resources will be wasted if another vote is held. 

“I think (last year’s vote) is a pretty clear message that students at Ryerson are happy with the federation,” said Conan. “I’m not sure if having another referendum is acting in the best interest of what the student’s want. I’m sure there are other things that they could be doing than running a referendum on something your students very clearly decided on last year.”

Each student currently pays about eight dollars annually for membership with CFS.

The RyeSAC board of directors is likely to vote in favour of holding the referendum, scheduled for Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, 1995.

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