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The Student Union's Great

Big General Me

Fees go up as receivership winds down

By JJ McCullough, Editor in Chief

A $60-per-year increase in student
fees was overwhelmingly approved at
the 2007 annual general meeting of the
Douglas Students Union, as a packed
crowd of nearly 200 students endorsed
a ten-fold raise in the College’s Activity
and Intramural Fee.

It was the first DSU annual
general meeting (AGM) to achieve
quorum in nearly a decade. After eight
continuous years of failed attempts to get
the necessary 75 students to show up, the
DSU appeared to finally find a winning
issue with the athletics fee increase.

Sports students flood meeting,
surprising organizers

The meeting, which was held on the
evening of Wednesday, November 28,
got off to a decidedly slow, and muddled
start. Originally intended to be held at
4:30 at lecture hall 2203 of the New
Westminster campus, massive crowds
of students had already begun to fill the
surrounding hallway as early as 3:30. It
quickly became apparent that the DSU
officials in charge of the event were not
prepared for the massive turnout, and
were soon scrambling to formally verify
the names and student numbers of each
student who wished to attend.

The entire event eventually had
to be packed up and moved to a bigger
lecture hall next door, and as a result of
the ensuring confusion, the meeting did
not formally start until 5:10.

The high turnout for the AGM
was almost entirely the result of a
push by the Douglas College athletics

4

department and sports teams, eager to
“stack” the meeting to ensure the passage
of a proposed athletics fee increase.
Physical education teachers and coaches
evidently made attendance mandatory for
their students, and there were rumours
that some sports science teachers were
even offering extra credit to anyone who
attended the AGM. Though such rumours
could not be independently confirmed or
denied by The Other Press as of press
time, it was clear that at the very least
some coaches and teachers were paying
active attention as to which of their
students were attending the AGM, with
students filling in special sign-in sheets
before entering the lecture hall.

When a question was later
raised during the meeting itself about
the high number of athletics students
in attendance, DSU internal relations
officer Geoffrey Lenahan denied that the
student union had been involved in the
push. “Nobody in the DSU told anyone
to make it mandatory,” he said. Indeed,
far from being specifically orchestrated,
it seems the high turnout actually
caught much of the DSU off guard. “It
shocked me, to be honest,” said Wendy
Case, a member of the DSU board, “we
were expecting maybe like, 80 people,
nowhere near this many.”

In the end, the new lecture hall
was packed to maximum occupancy, with
every seat filled and many additional
students cluttering the isles as well.
Though the DSU did not have exact
registration numbers available at press
time, conservative estimates placed the
number of students present at around 200.

Despite the high attendance,

 

however, as the meeting progressed it
was obvious that not all members of the
audience were particularly interested in
the proceedings. Crosstalk and chatter
were in abundance, and many individuals
seemed to want to hurry through the
meeting as quickly as possible. The
chair would occasionally call for order,
and stress the importance of following
proper protocols and procedure, but was
often met with loud groans in response.

Event draws prominent faces

Though much of the audience
may have consisted of sports students
with very little interest or background
in student politics, the AGM was still
a variable “who’s who” of prominent
individuals associated with the Douglas

ee TD
Lone voices of dissent: Christopher Sleightholme votes “‘no”’

ting of 2007

College campus community. All ten
of the incumbent members of the DSU
board of directors were in attendance,
sitting on prominent display in a line
of chairs at the front of the lecture hall.
Along with DSU receiver-manager
Marne Jensen herself, her two past and
present assistants— Benjamin Johnson
and Jessica Magalios—were on hand
to help with the event. Douglas College
student senator and former DSU staffer
Yasmin Irani was a notable presence, as
were a few now-retired board members
of the student union. There was even a
brief appearance by David Seaweed,
the College’s First Nations Coordinator,
who served as the DSU’s last president
from 1998 to 1999 before the position
was abolished.

The official chair of the
meeting was Dutin Grof, the official
BC Representative of the Canadian
Federation of Students, and familiar face
on the Douglas campus.

Representing the College
administration were vice presidents
Blaine Jensen and Karen Maynes, who sat
together at the back of the room. Though
their presence was largely unnotable,
there had been some initial controversy
over the matter of inviting representatives
of the College administration to the
event. The DSU board originally voted
down an invitation, eager to demonstrate
their independence and maturity as an
autonomous organization. The board’s
decision was later overruled by receiver-
manager Marne Jensen, however.

As a compromise, the two VPs
were sent out of the meeting halfway
through, after the report of the receiver-
manager and the approval of the fee
increase. This was of little practical
consequence, however, and they only
ultimately ended up missing the brief
question-and-answer period between the