GSEF Constitutional Referendum
The following referendum was held from March 9, 2009 to March 15, 2009, and is now closed.
Results:
- “Yes – I approve of the changes to the constitution,” 274 votes
- “No – I do not approve of the changes to the constitution,” 28 votes
In total there were 302 ballots cast out of about 4000 eligible voters.
Question: Do you vote in favour of changing the constitution for the University of Waterloo Graduate Studies Endowment Fund as described below? All active graduate students at the University of Waterloo are eligible to vote in this referendum.
What is an endowment fund? The concept is to store a large amount of money and spend only the interest to accomplish a goal (in this case, improve graduate studies & grad student life at UW). There are about 10 student-run endowment funds at Waterloo.
What does GSEF do? Currently, GSEF funds four programs: the Graduate Studies Research Conference; Travel Assistantships; Doctoral Completion Awards; and Project Funding.
Who contributes to GSEF? All grad students not in cost recovery programs automatically make a $20/term charitable contribution to GSEF, which is refundable. This has been the practice since 2003, when GSEF was started.
Has the economic climate interrupted GSEF’s impact? Fortunately, it has not. GSEF’s investment model (which is in the constitution) defines a “pre-maturity period” in which half of the donations are to be spent in the short term. In this fiscal year GSEF received $95000 of income of this type. Projecting trends of the last five years, GSEF will not mature until the year 2030 or later. In the long term, GSEF should perform as well as UW’s funds since their investment managers are the same.
Reforming GSEF’s Operations. GSEF has had the same constitution and bylaws since its inception in 2003. The previous GSA President, Ian MacKinnon, said in the 2007 Annual Report,
The current GSEF constitution is not being followed in practice and is very dependent on a non-existent volunteer base to implement its bureaucracy. It will likely need to be amended to reflect the fact that GSEF does not have a large volunteer base on its own, while still retaining its official independence from the GSA. It will likely need to follow the lead of other endowments on campus and appoint a director to oversee the advertising of the fund, collect funding requests, and ensure proper procedures are being followed. Right now, this is falling under the President’s already heavy portfolio.
To this end, the GSA VP Communications & Organization (Dave Pritchard) and GSEF Coordinator (Marty Day) have crafted a new operating model and written a new constitution for GSEF. The process was heavily dependent on the help of other student volunteers from the GSEF Board of Directors. Well-run student endowments such as WESEF were used as models. The GSEF Board of Directors endorsed the draft on January 20, 2009. The referendum will pass if 2/3 of voting students vote in favour.
The New Constitution
- Formally includes the GSEF Coordinator position and reduces dependence on GSA
- Removes old parts that were never followed in practice
- Has a new administrative structure with UW staff involved in high-level decisions but not day-to-day operations
- Makes GSEF more student-run (e.g. via student Treasurer)
- Aims to balance efficiency, transparency and stability
- Will not change the fees that grad students are charged or the investment model
A major benefit to graduate students if the referendum passes is that GSEF will be able to call for “Project Funding” applications every term due to increased efficiency and independence. Previous calls happened only in Winter 2008 and 2009. If the referendum is not passed, grad students will not reap the full benefits of GSEF.
Help GSEF have a positive impact! Please vote YES in the constitutional referendum!
– Dave Pritchard & Marty Day
Documents
- Current Constitution (Adopted in 2003 when GSEF began.)
- Proposed New Constitution (Requires 2/3 approval to pass. Endorsed by the GSEF Board of Directors on January 20, 2009.)
- Note: in addition to the constitution (which can only be changed by a referendum) GSEF is governed by bylaws (which can be changed by the Board of Directors).
Do you approve the proposed new constitution for the University of Waterloo Graduate Studies Endowment Fund?
Please report any unusual voting errors to gsa-vpco@uwaterloo.ca.
I approve of the changes to make the GSEF more student run; however, I disagree with the practice of allowing some students, i.e. “cost-recovery” students, not to pay the 20$ per term. Could they not be benefiting from the GSEF as much as some full-time on-campus students? I personally don’t anticipate benefiting at all, but I still contribute. Thus I believe that ALL students should have to contribute
I think it ridiculous to automatically take $60/year ($20/term) out of students funding for events/projects that not everyone deems important or sees as improvements to graduate students. The Graduate Student Research Conference is a prime example, being a waste of time and money as the majority of graduate students do not participate in it. Why should our funding go to other students as Doctoral completion awards, or to provide travel grants to other students. I work hard for my funding and do not think I should be supporting other students. I look for outside travel grants and outside support for conferences – perhaps other students should too. There should be no GSEF, and hence no changes to it. It should be discontinued.
To the poster above, I believe the fund is 100% refundable within the first three weeks of class. You can view all the information here. So if you don’t want to contribute to the fund you are more than welcome to opt out.
[NOTE: edited 1:35 PM on Mar 9 to fix the refund information link]
Much as I agree that the contributions to the fund is entirely refundable, I still believe that the objectives of students benefiting from such fund are far from been reached. The need for constitutional change is important but the question still remains, how would the suggested changes even benefit students contributing to the fund. Personally, I don’t see how the suggested changes will benefit a graduate student spending 2/3 yrs in UW. GSEF and GSA as a whole need to formulate policies that will provide ultimate support to its members. If the executives don’t have any ideas and would want our monies to be spent on coffee and doughnut, they should tell us.
I agree that certain purposes of the GSEF are more warranted than others – eg the graduate student conference, in my opinion, is quite useless, as it covers too large an expanse of topics. The funding of, say, travel expenses for conferences etc, however, I feel is well motivated, as certain departments (eg CS, which is my department) tend to have more funding than others (ie students from departments with less support will benefit).
So, I do agree that the direction of the GSEF should be fine-tuned a bit, and perhaps a public meeting among all graduate students is in order to get a consensus on how we wish to focus on spending the money.
Finally, I am a bit weary of letting students do more of the running of GSEF (though I’m not in principle against it) – for example, I recall hearing that for some reason one of the student administrative bodies (forget which one) seems to think that more big-screen TVs in SLC are a good way to spend our money.
Im not sure I approve of all the changes. Perhaps individually pushing through separate aspects of this larger change would make for easier voting and better directed change.
It is not fair and ethical cutting 60$/year from my income without letting me know what it is and why. So far I have not seen any benefit of being GSA member etc. As a PhD student I don’t have time to run around to found somebody in Grad House and ask him/her please give my 60$ back. Please design a reputable procedure for refund, or ask us before taking that money. I prefer to give it directly to a church close to my home and see directly how they help homeless and hungry peoples. I vote for YES because I hope that the new constitution will make this process more fair, clear and reputable.
A random note: feedback on GSEF is welcome here. Much of the feedback so far deals with operations and not with the constitution, and we’ll pass it on to the GSEF Board of Directors. More specific feedback than #6 would be helpful. #5 is a good example. #7: information about how GSEF money is spent is available on the GSEF home page. The information about refunds has been made more prominent, it is now on the left-hand navigation menu.
RELATED TO COMMENT #2 and #3: I think there should be an option on the Quest that allows a student to specify whether they want to contribute to GSEF in a given term, or not. The default of such an option should be set to “not contributing,” rather than “contributing.”
The suggestion of #9 is excellent. The current refunding procedure is too inefficient a waste of resources.
I totally support #9. I don’t like to be charged first and then ask for refund every term. Let’s everyone decides if she/he wants to contribute.
I’d like to know what “Removes old parts that were never followed in practice” specifically refers to? Its a bit hard to vote on this without actually knowing what I’m voting for…
#12: the stuff that was “never followed in practice,” which was also what Ian referred to in the quoted section of the 2007 GSA annual report, is in large part sections 10, 11, 12 of the original constitution: over-detailing of Board of Directors membership/appointment and description of bylaws/standing rules in the constitution. The best example of the impractical stuff (e.g. lots of committees that have not existed in recent memory) is actually in the bylaws and standing rules, which were completely rewritten and removed, respectively, as part of the constitutional review process. The annual general meeting is, I think, the other good example in the original constitution.