We almost never cover U of R student politics on Dog Blog but we’re going to this week because the circus is coming to town. And by circus, I mean an URSU-launched referendum to kick the Canadian Federation of Students out of the University of Regina.
There will be children, clowns and animals doing tricks. It will be fun!
Why does prairie dog care? First off, CFS is an important national organization that has traditionally fought hard for Canadian students, and I think U of R class-goers would be better served by more involvement with the organization than they would be by quitting it. Given that I think that, it naturally bugs me that the University of Regina Student’s Union is advising students to punt CFS.
Second, I’ve seen student council/CFS scraps four or five times now and they’re always fun to watch. Wildly entertaining contrasts — of reason and stupidity, naivete and and sophistication, integrity and skulduggery — are guaranteed whenever the battle lines of student politics are drawn between contrasting ideologies. Also, every time I’ve seen this happen the anti-CFS gang was a bunch of jerks.
Finally, when James Brotheridge told me this was going on, I asked him what faculties the four-member, anti-CFS URSU executive came from. “Three business students and an engineer?” I joked. Well, it turns out… yes. The student council actually is led by three business students and an engineer. Of course they’re going after CFS. It’s their nature. Business students can no more ignore lefty lobby groups — especially powerful and successful ones — than dogs can ignore pizza dropped on the floor.
And if there’s one thing business-types know, it’s that you beat your enemies by attacking their financing/funding. Or pizzas. Whichever applies.
(As for the anti-CFS engineer, you’ve just gotta have at least one of those. I think it must be in the URSU bylaws.)
In all, it’s all a hilariously misguided referendum. So even though this is a pretty small deal as far as Regina is concerned, we’re going to rant about it all week on Dog Blog. Sounds like fun? Sure it does!
