All Posts Tagged With: "election"
Don’t drop the voting age
Extending franchise to 16-year-olds won’t create ‘culture of engagement’
Imagine a world where provincial election campaigns are blithe to promises of tax reform or health care amendments. In this fantasyland, the Liberals are running on a strong platform of increased Justin Bieber performances, while the Conservatives are trailing with their “More School Dances” five-year-plan. The NDP’s “We’ll Talk to your Mom about Extending your Curfew” promise, however, hasn’t really taken off.
A disturbing thought experiment? Thank B.C. Liberal leadership candidate Mike de Jong who has come out saying that 16-year-olds should be able to vote in provincial elections. De Jong has said that we need to create a “culture of engagement” by getting young people to the polls earlier, and that means lowering the voting age. The move, according to de Jong, would also help tackle poor voter turnout numbers.
Handing out free popsicles at polling stations would likely also improve turnout, though I don’t think that recommendation will receive support from some Liberal frontrunners as de Jong’s did.
Of course, it is by no means breaking news that the 18-24 age group is underrepresented at the polls. The reason often comes down to chicken-or-egg explanations; young eligible voters don’t vote because they feel disenfranchised by politicians who ignore their interests, or—inversely—politicians don’t lobby for the youth vote because they show poorly at the polls. Whatever the case, lowering the voting age ignores the root cause (a Band-Aid solution, you say? Naw, it couldn’t be!). While extending the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds would spectacularly increase turnout in the newly-formed “Under 18” category, the relative numbers will be just as abysmal as for those aged 18-24. In fact, they would probably be worse. Statistics show that voter turnout increases with age, even within the 18-24 category. So if those trends are any indication, 16-year-olds would likely have the worst showing of all.
But let’s say, by some stroke of luck or bribery from their parents, these kids did show up to the polls. What would the implications be? Maclean’s columnist Colby Cosh argues that there is “no substitute for living through history.” “The older I get,” he writes, “the less qualified I feel to have secure opinions about horserace politics.” And indeed, Cosh has a point. With few more than 14 years out of diapers, the newly-authorized voters would have little life experience from which to draw political conclusions or cast an informed vote. On the other hand though, being uninformed does not negate one’s right to vote. Even when individuals are back in diapers, they can still cast a ballot, despite their perhaps eroding reasoning abilities. Of course, not all 90-year-olds have lost their wits, whereas no 16-year-old can remember, for example, the tax-happy premier that hijacked the province two terms ago.
Perhaps more problematic with a teeny-bopper electorate is its vulnerability to pressure. There have been countless studies affirming just how susceptible high school students are to outside influence– and just count the number of Canada Goose brand winter jackets you see on teens next time you’re in a mall if you have any doubts. Imagine, then, the political power of a homeroom high school teacher. Or the cool kids in class who happen to be voting NDP. Or Conservative mom promising a Canada Goose parka! When you’re 16 years old and thirsting for affirmation, you’ll get it in any way you can. Politics would become an even dirtier game.
Lastly, it’s important to note that most 16-year-olds have never shopped for a daycare facility for their children. The fortunate majority has never set foot in a palliative care unit, nor waited weeks to see a specialist. Few have tried to start a business, or even paid taxes, for that matter. Sixteen-year-olds should not be voting on that in which they have little stake, particularly during those formative years when “relativism” is just a word on an English pop quiz.
Liberals to campaign on PSE
Ignatieff says access and student debt top priorities
Boosting access to higher education and lightening student debt loads will be a central priority for the federal Liberals during the next election. “I don’t have 20 priorities. I have about three, and one of them is post-secondary education,” Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff told an audience at Dawson College, in Montreal, Monday night. While Ignatieff did not go too far into specifics, he cited access to education for aboriginals and tackling debt that he says has “crippled” graduates. “We’ve worked out and costed a very ambitious proposal,” he said. Ignatieff is touring the country as part of his “open mike” series.
Apparently, they don’t care.
It’s hard to jump into an electoral system where you feel worthless and ignored
Fellow blogger Jeff Rybak thinks young people are being labeled apathetic when it comes to politics and don’t deserve it. He suggests that these new forms of connecting and networking, which we value more than voting, are the start of something new and big.
I hope he’s right, because I’m a big pile of disenchanted with Canadian politics, and I’m only 18 years old. Here is something I wrote back in June, when Iggy was threatening to throw a hissy over employment insurance and send Canadians to the polls. I thought I’d share it in response to Jeff’s comments:
Last time there was an election, I missed voting in it by 33 days. As someone who was raised in a government town by parents who work in government and politics, I’ve been waiting for it to be my turn to vote for a long time. I was 10 when I started watching the West Wing and even younger when I sat at my dining room table during dinner parties, listening to my parents and their friends discuss politics. I willed my brain to absorb every mysterious, exciting word of it – and gradually, it started to work. Unfortunately, I couldn’t will my birthday a month earlier.
As the election approached, I realized that a lot of my friends were planning not to vote. Mostly they were lazy, or busy; the registration centre was outside our campus bubble. A lot of people had been so swept up in first year stuff that they had no time to keep track of real world stuff. They didn’t know the issues, they told me, so why vote?
I do see the issue with uninformed voters casting ballots to whichever candidate’s name sticks best in their mind. I didn’t argue with them. At least they’re informed enough to know they don’t know, right? But that idea still didn’t feel right. Didn’t that drive them crazy? Didn’t they want to know? No matter what, I just couldn’t find a way to support someone’s excuse not to vote. I WISH I could vote, I kept lamenting. I momentarily thought about vote swapping, like Donna did on the West Wing when she accidentally voted Republican, only, in this case, I’d get someone to vote the way I would have voted because they didn’t care
This week when the news started up about a possible summer election, I started to feel excited while everyone else groaned. Sure, no one really wants an election – but when is a good time of year, exactly? For me, summer is perfect – I have more free time to stay up-to-date, I’m in my home riding, it’ll be easier to register when I have someone to drive me there. I even know where the neighbourhood polling station is.
But… who would I vote for? The more I think about it, the more I feel just as disenchanted as my peers. Sure, there are ideas that I believe in and I want to elect a government who shares my values, but the issues that are most important to me aren’t on the map. Because I’m a student. Because no one cares that I’m paying way too much money, money I don’t currently have, for my education so I can support them later. Because students don’t vote. And suddenly, I see it. There it is. It’s a vicious circle.
The U.S. presidential election pulled it out last year with record numbers of students voting and participating in campaigning. One poll last October reported a ridiculous percentage of Canadians would give up their vote in the next Canadian election in order to vote in the American election. And here we are, standing in the shadow of the threat of a summer election with zero wind in our sails. You would think that the parties would have noticed by now how good it can get when you get students – or anyone – excited.
Maybe it’s a problem with our election system; because elections tend to be more reactionary, there’s less room for setting an agenda. Maybe we students need to get off our butts and be less apathetic and set the agenda. Maybe it’s impossible, at least for now. But I don’t want to lose interest, I want to have something to get excited about. I want someone to talk to me, not down to me. I want someone to fight for my vote. I want to feel like my vote is worth something to someone.
Who knows if there will be an election this summer – right now it seems like the Liberals are backing down. Who knows… and who cares.
Dispelling some myths about student leadership
Why they do it, where it leads, and what it’s really worth
I hate the term “student leader.” I think a lot of people do. It just seems smarmy and self-congratulatory. And I’m speaking as a guy who lived that role. I can only imagine how the term must aggravate other people. And yet, we do need folks to run our student unions and our residence councils and our campus media and our clubs and more besides. And often we want to talk about those people as a group. So for lack of a better term I’ll call them student leaders.
Some recent discussion about student politics and student politicians (see here and here) got me thinking about this topic. Surrounding the debate about the appropriate role of unions and the right (or lack thereof) of elected students to hold and express their individual opinions, there were a few references to the perceived benefits and opportunities that come along with leadership roles on campus. I’ve heard it all before. Quite a lot of people seem to believe that the whole student leadership scene is just using it all to get … something. Something more than just the opportunity to do the job, anyway. Maybe that’s why the term is so annoying.
Now I don’t want to get into an extensive debate about what union execs are getting paid (see here for that debate) or whether it’s appropriate. That’s only a small fraction of the many student leaders on campus anyway. A very few students get paid something approaching real salaries to do essentially full time jobs. Some others receive honorariums that are probably quite small in relation to the amount of work they put in. And most are simply volunteers. But even the best paid aren’t receiving more than they’d earn for entry-level clerical work. So let’s just agree that it isn’t about the money, and when people suggest there’s something selfish going on they mean something different.
Back to this idea that students get involved in these positions with the expectation of some secondary gain. Most often this accusation is very vague. “Oh, you don’t really care about X (the club, the union, the position), you’re just in it for yourself.” But that’s got to mean something like awards, personal connections, job opportunities, political careers, etc. We’ve already excluded money as a realistic motive, and it makes no sense to suggest that someone is using one student position only to get to another student position. The end goal has to be something more significant than that – some reward or advantage that comes after university is done.
Brief pause. There is always the rare instance of actual abuse. Unfortunately, any time someone has access to a budget and some responsibility there is the chance they might do something fraudulent. Here’s one example of that. I would never attempt to excuse or justify anything like this. I’ll just say that it happens in student activities just as it happens everywhere else. People steal from charities too. It’s very sad. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
Here’s what I’ve discovered about every student leadership position I’ve ever held or interacted with. It’s worth basically nothing to just have the job. I mean it. Sure you can use it as a line on your CV. But then people fill their CVs with bullshit all the time. And if you really want to create an impressive sounding title for yourself just invent a club, register it with your Student Affairs office (or local equivalent) and declare yourself President. It’s very easy. And exactly because it’s easy to manufacture empty claims of this sort, anyone who might possibly care about your activities on campus will not be suckered in by lines of empty crap. Will they care about what you’ve really done on campus? Very possibly they will. But now we’re talking about your actual work and achievements – not the mere fact that you filled a position and held a title.
I definitely know students who found their direction as a result of some role on campus – elected or otherwise. I’m one of them. Certainly there’s a lot of what I do, right now, that I can trace back in some way to my student union days. But I could never have guessed at where I’d end up when the whole thing started. And that’s also true of just about everyone I know. Building on your experiences, finding some success at the things you do well and getting noticed for that … there’s nothing illegitimate about it. That’s just the way people build careers in any environment. And sure, that happens in student leadership as well. Maybe academic advocacy leads you eventually to law school, as it did in my case. Maybe experience with the student press leads to a career in journalism. But not automatically. Not just because you won an election or got hired for a job.
More on the limits of student union politics
Addressing the question of personal stands on potentially divisive off campus issues, for union execs
A piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the limits of an elected student’s mandate seems to have generated some buzz. A political blog from Queens picked up the topic in connection with local issues. Justin McElroy ran a riff off the topic on this site. And I’ve heard from a few student politicians (or former ones) on the subject.
Now I’ve just received this question. Note that I’ve made all the details more general, to avoid putting anyone on the spot.
My fellow union executives and I recently decided to participate together in an event, off-campus, that has some political overtones. Some of us, although they supported it, were highlighting whether or not this was the union taking a stance on something that they felt is seen as political and if that is appropriate. The event is important to at least one identity group on campus, and we see our participation as a way to support diversity. But it’s possible that some students might disagree.
In our union we have a very strict policy that we don’t pass motions dealing with political things (ie. The war in Afghanistan) and while I feel this is a different case I’d like your opinion on it.
Well first off, thanks for the interesting question! In order to answer it, I’ve got to introduce another idea that is foundational to my understanding of student politics. I believe that just because someone becomes elected to a position in some organization – even if that may be the presidency of the organization – that person’s identity does not become entirely subsumed to the organization itself. In other words, there is still the individual. There is the somewhat prominent student, who may still do things on his or her own behalf, and there is the person who holds office in the organization and may do things on the organization’s behalf. Keeping those two roles distinct from one another is very important.
Union executives are fairly prominent figures – at least among students. I’ll compare them to city counselors only in miniature. Not everything a city counselor says or does is endorsed by the city or needs to reflect on the city’s official position on issues. Now, if the counselor says or does something particularly stupid, embarrassing, or toxic that’s a different story. The fact that the counselor is embarrassing him or herself does affect the city – but only by reflection. If a counselor speaks on behalf of some cause or shows up at some event that doesn’t mean the city supports that cause or event. Not even if the mayor does it. The city has its official policy but city officials still have their individual identities. And so too do student figures on campus.
So, to answer the question. I think if your union were to pass a formal motion supporting this event or the cause it is associated with that would be outside of what I feel is an appropriate union mandate. That just goes back to the original article. Similarly, if you were going to spend student money on the cause that would amount to the same thing. But merely showing up doesn’t need to imply that your union is taking a formal stand. You can still show up as prominent students who want to show your support for the cause. And there is nothing at all wrong with that.
I’ll grant you, once the entire union executive shows up that does send a clear message. But the message is only that you happen to agree on this issue. Unless you show up on behalf of all the students you represent, or presume to speak on their behalf, you aren’t binding them to your individual views on the subject. And I firmly believe elected students remain entitled to their individual views. As particularly prominent students on campus others may be interested to know how you feel about things. Feel free to share your opinions (and potentially deal with the criticisms that may follow) but the opinions can remain your own and need not reflect on the union unless you intentionally cross that line.
All of this implies one necessary limitation. If you aren’t showing up as representatives of the union you have no right to require anyone to show up. So while your mail seems to suggest that everyone is on board, if there were one or more execs who would prefer not to participate I would say that’s their right. As soon as you say that someone has to show up as a function of their role in the union then your union is clearly taking a stand. If you communicate clearly that showing up is a personal decision for each participant that would go a long way toward avoiding the perception that you are taking an official union stand on the issue.
I’m really glad this topic has received so much attention, and I’m particularly glad to hear from union execs who agree that unions are strongest and most effective when they stick to core student issues. It’s so easy to push the rhetoric in the other direction, and succumb to accusations that if you don’t use your control over the students’ union to promote a particular cause or agenda then you obviously must not care. Of course students care – about any number of things. But it’s possible to support a cause wholeheartedly and still debate the best way to promote that cause. Grappling honestly with these issues is part of what student leadership is all about.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.
The limits of an elected student’s mandate
Some advice for the student leaders among us, and those who live with their actions
Ever year students elect various representatives to run their unions, to sit on the governing bodies of their institutions, to head their various clubs and organizations, and to speak for them in numerous diverse roles. The full list would be impossible to compile, but I’m sure that any mid-sized university has literally hundreds of elected students in any given year. The most vocal and influential students are typically the union executives. And every year a new crop of students faces some interesting questions. How best to serve students? What should they do with their terms in office? What are the limits of the mandate they have received?
Actually, some student leaders never get as far as that third question. And that is a source of great frustration for many students. Students tend not to think of the question in abstract terms, of course. But when there’s some concrete example at hand they get there fast enough. Some student politician is off doing … something. And at least some students respond with “what?!? I didn’t elect him or her to go do that.”
I take it as assumed that there are limits to the mandate of every elected student, and every student organization. In fact I take it as assumed that there are limits to the mandate of any elected person or organization period. We agree that there are things even our government shouldn’t do – such as tell us how to worship – and therefore there are subjects even our highest elected officials shouldn’t presume to touch on our behalf. So if we can agree there are things our government shouldn’t do and even our Prime Minister shouldn’t touch (as our representative – what he does as an individual is quite different) I’m sure we can agree there are limits to what a union should do, or how far union executives should go in terms of speaking for their members. The really good question is: where are those limits?
I have always believed that the mandate of any elected student is to speak on behalf of student issues. Now let me be clear on that. I mean issues that directly touch on the experiences that students have as students rather than the experiences they may have as individuals. I’ll give you a direct example. I believe it is well within the mandate of a students’ union to stand up for an oppression-free environment on campus. I believe everything possible should be done to advance that goal. But I do not believe that the students’ union should take a hand in advancing social causes more broadly.
Some may view those positions as contradictory. Some will say that as long as you tolerate a social ill anywhere (and tolerance, for them, is defined as anything short of active resistance) then you can’t take a consistent position against it locally. I prefer the opposite way of conceiving of this dichotomy. In a very real sense, ensuring that the campus is oppression-free is the way you take on the broader issue. Do everything you can locally. And ideally, if everyone were to do that, then you would indeed address the problem as a whole.
As student leaders go (in my case, former student leader) I’m probably in the minority in my perspective. Many student leaders willingly and gleefully take on issues that are well outside the scope of anything that is going on within their school environments. They do this for a variety of reasons. Sometimes because students demand it – almost invariably a small minority. Sometimes because issues in the moment grab headlines and attention. Sometimes because the union leadership itself has particular sympathies and agendas. And most often, in my personal opinion, simply because the union leadership is actually quite powerless when it comes to these broad social issues, and therefore is free from any responsibility to be constructive. Allow me to elaborate.
Believe it or not – and this may come as a shock to some students who haven’t seen university administration from the inside – elected students actually have quite a lot of power and influence. Or they have a lot of power and influence, I should say, on a fairly narrow stretch of turf. When it comes to influencing institutional policy, students can do a lot, if they are willing to do it in dialogue with the administration, and to deal with all the crap and compromise and hard work and details that it entails. Dealing with the administration is very hard work. It’s messy and complicated and you never get exactly what you want and along the way you’re forced to learn all kinds of facts about why things currently work the way they do and what the consequences will be (intended and otherwise) to changing those things. Real change is difficult.
By contrast, when you aren’t trying to institute real and immediate change, but rather only want to make a statement in principle, then your job is very easy. You organize a protest. You make some big signs. You pass some resolutions in broad language and write a cheque to some external organization that makes grandiose claims regarding their long-term agenda. You issue some media statements. And at the end of the day you feel like you’ve accomplished something. It’s actually quite easy – compared with all the detail work of making local change – and best of all it requires no compromise or even any close understanding of opposing views. Is it any surprise that many student leaders go this route?
Federal Liberals vs provincial Liberals on PSE
Will students believe the federal Liberals after McGuinty’s broken promises to them?
The Liberal Party of Canada is promising more funding for post-secondary education and by the sounds of things, they include increasing student support in that envelope.
Meanwhile, the Ontario Grits have decided their election platform wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. On Friday, the McGuinty government announced over $100-million in cuts to student financial supports.
It will be interesting to see if students will believe the federal Liberals after McGuinty’s broken promises to them.
B.C. political parties on tuition fees
Liberals to continue caps, NDP promises a freeze, Greens pledge 20% reduction
British Columbians will go to the polls in a provincial general election on Tuesday, May 12. The major political parties are offering the following directions for tuition fee policy:
After having deregulated fees during their first term starting in 2002, the B.C. Liberals are pledging to continue with capping increases to the rate of inflation. The NDP is promising a freeze, while the B.C. Greens would roll back fees by 20 percent. The B.C. Conservatives would give tax incentives to new graduates moving into industries with skills shortages.
CFS opposes government economic update
Isn’t it the mandate of the CFS to lobby on behalf of students, not political parties?
At the CFS conference that was held this past weekend, the organization opposed the economic update presented by the government. Below is the text of the motion, that can also be found on La Rotunde’s Celine Basto’s blog.
Whereas the federal conservative government has tabled an economic update that ignores the need for investment in public infrastructures and furthers an ideological agenda through reckless tax cuts and wrongheaded limitation of union rights ; and
Whereas investment in accessible public post-secondary education is an important economic stimulus and a proactive measure for promoting economic stability in a knowledge-based society; and
Whereas in a minority parliament, opposition parties have the power to work together to oppose regressive policies and pass policies that reflect the priorities and interests of the majority of Canadians ; therefore
Be it resolved that the November federal economic update be strongly opposed ; and
Be it further resolved that the opposition parties be called upon to work together to oppose the economic update and to develop a plan to increase funding for public infrastructure, including a dedicated provincial transfer for post-secondary education that promotes national standards in quality and affordability.
Normally, the CFS’ (or any lobby group for that matter) opposition or endorsement of government legislation would be rather mundane and routine. But the context surrounding this particular economic update is definitely not routine. The Liberals and NDP have been in widely reported talks aimed at toppling the Conservatives and installing a new coalition government over the update.
Is the endorsement of a new coalition government what is meant by calling on the opposition “to work together to oppose the economic update and to develop a plan to increase funding for public infrastructure”? The phrasing is admittedly vague, but what else, given the context, could it mean?
The CFS is not simply calling for a specific action to be taken, as they do during election campaigns when they (appear) to lobby all parties to endorse particular policies. Here they are calling for specific action from specific political parties, the result of such action could be the installation of a new government. One wonders if the CFS has abandoned whatever veneer of non-partisanship they may have had.
One also wonders what regular students, those who fund the CFS, think of the organization offering an implicit endorsement of a change of government? Since when is that in the mandate students supposedly give the CFS when they vote to federate?
Is it not the mandate of the CFS to lobby on behalf of students, and not political parties? If the Tories survive the next few weeks, this makes it all that much more easy for the organization to be dismissed as an extension of the opposition.
Preparing for the CFS Day of Action
CFS marches to demand tuition decreases
Follow the Day of Action live on Coleman’s Twitter feed: www.twitter.com/JoeyColeman and view photos on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/groups/898140@N24/
The Canadian Federation of Students will be holding a Day of Action Nov. 5 and 6 in a few provinces.
Simultaneously, CFS-Ontario is set to hold a series of rallies across the province as they lobby for tuition cuts in Ontario. The province’s tuition framework will expire at the end of this academic year and the McGuinty Liberal government is currently deciding on future tuition rates.
I will be in Toronto covering the Queen’s Park rally along with my camera and will be uploading pictures during the day. These will be put in a Day of Action Flickr group and you’re invited to share your photos as well.
All my photos are available, free of charge, for use by any student newspaper that is a member of the Canadian University Press, as well as with other student media outlets bloggers, and non-CUP university papers. For everyone else, please email me for permission.
The Flickr group is here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/898140@N24/ and my Flickr name is fullsmash26. Hope to see a lot of pictures from other rallies!
Here’s my blog posts from the 2005 and 2007 Days of Action. Check ‘em out.
Obama volunteer denied entry into the U.S.
Regan Sarmatiuk, who was editor of the Manitoban in 2005-06 and is a permanent fixture on my resume, was denied entry into the United States on Sunday because she was heading to Minnesota to volunteer for Barack Obama. The Winnipeg Free Press picked up the story: On Sunday, Sarmatiuk, 28, was on her way to [...]
Regan Sarmatiuk, who was editor of the Manitoban in 2005-06 and is a permanent fixture on my resume, was denied entry into the United States on Sunday because she was heading to Minnesota to volunteer for Barack Obama. The Winnipeg Free Press picked up the story:
On Sunday, Sarmatiuk, 28, was on her way to Thief River Falls to help get out the vote. Instead of witnessing history, the Winnipegger was sent back home.”It was upsetting,” she said. “I felt like I was being accused of something. I don’t have a criminal record. There’s no reason not to let me in. I felt very unwelcome.” At the Highway 59 border crossing at Lancaster, Minn., the U.S. border officer was stumped when she told him she was going down the road to volunteer on election day.
