Bylaw 2000: A Defaced Odyssey

As a staunch supporter of reforming the Students’ Union’s Elections, Plebiscites, and Referenda Bylaw, I was pleased by last week’s news that the Bylaw 2000 Review Committee was, well, was actually doing something. The committee, created by the Students’ Council Administration Committee back in July, has been unnaturally silent regarding its proceedings so far; they’ve only made one (oral) report to Council, and currently have no agendas or minutes — or any documents at all, for that matter — available for viewing on the SU’s website. So it was a pleasant surprise to have them finally reach out to the undergraduate constituency, in the form of the SU elections review survey.

The survey itself is very thorough. It covers all the bases it needs to, and more; every part of the bylaw gets scrutinized in the questionnaire, and I commend the review committee for their work in creating it. So here’s to you, Bylaw 2000 Review Committee, you’ve done good. I’m impressed.

Unfortunately, I was less impressed with President Kory Mathewson’s comments on bylaw reform, which oddly seemed to be less focused on policy and more focused on his pet project — the ever-present problem of student engagement. I’m not sure why Mathewson chose to conflate the two issues. The review committee should stay focused on improving elections rules and regulations, and not figuring out how to get more students out to the polls; after all, there’s no bylaw dictating the marketing plans for Anti-Freeze, or how many ads the SU should put in the Gateway every year.

But let’s humour Kory for a second, and assume that bylaw reform combined with the B2RC feedback survey will somehow do something to help with the issue of voter turnout. Mathewson claims that the recent success of his SU Student Survey is an indicator that students are interested in their Students’ Union, and thus, by that logic, undergrads will undoubtedly be flocking to the Bylaw 2000 questionnaire. If only we lived in such a world.

What our president neglects to factor in is that there were substantial incentives for filling out his survey. The review committee — to the best of my knowledge — has no mini-fridges to spare. Additionally, there was significant marketing to promote the SU’s general survey, while B2RC hasn’t done anything in the way of publicizing its feedback form — if it weren’t for a post to Twitter by the Vice President (External), I wouldn’t have heard about the survey at all.

It’s naïve to think that the Bylaw 2000 survey by itself will come anywhere close to the nearly 7,000 responses that Mathewson’s undergraduate survey garnered. Without the right incentives and promotions, the average U of A student isn’t going to fill out a questionnaire on SU bylaws. In fact, you’re far more likely to find people to vote in the executive elections: you don’t necessarily need a grasp on the issues to vote for President — or to run for the post, for that matter — it’s a lot simpler than answering detailed questions on election regulations.

President Mathewson also mentioned that social networking could help promote elections, and here I don’t disagree with him. (Addressing social networking actually happens to be under the purview of the Bylaw 2000 Review Committee, insofar as it’s classified under a form of campaign materials.) But Facebook and Twitter and its digital accomplices are far from one-click solutions to lacklustre voter turnout, and student engagement as a whole. To truly recapture the interest of the undergraduate population, the SU needs to become our Students’ Union. Bylaw reforms and surveys won’t engage undergrads unless they have relevance to undergrads, and until the SU realizes and takes action on this simple fact, they’ll keep surveying around in circles. Time for Mathewson to realize it’s going to take more than MacBooks and mini-fridges to make students care again.