SU Elections 2025 Q&A: SSCBA No-side Plebiscite

The Students’ Union (SU) 2025 election is giving undergraduate students the opportunity to decide on whether or not to renew the Single Source Cold Beverage Agreement (SSCBA) at the University of Alberta, for on-campus businesses and student group usage.

The current SSCBA gives the Coca-Cola Bottling Company exclusive rights to sell cold beverages on campus. The SSCBA no-side plebiscite is hoping to provide a space for students to express their opinions regarding having a sole provider for cold beverages on campus. The vendor for the new SSCBA has not been selected. There is no fee for this plebiscite.

Representing SSCBA in this Q&A is Bassam Dakhel, a fifth-year software engineering student.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What is this plebiscite trying to accomplish?

Bassam Dakhel: The [plebiscite] is a survey of what student opinions are on the agreement between the university and the SU on whether they should have a SSCBA. Which means that only one company would be supplying all the drinks for businesses on campus, for cold beverages, and would be the only [possible] sponsor for student groups. And also could be the only beverage that [is] served in student group events, in all areas except individual consumption.

The plebiscite is trying to [get] students’ opinions on whether they’d like to go forward with selecting a single company or not. The plebiscite does mention that the vendor has not been selected, but realistically, there’s only a couple of vendors historically. If you look at this university and other universities in North America, historically, there’s only been [three] companies that have been doing these agreements: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or Dr. Pepper. It really boils down to whether students and student groups on campus would like for one of these companies to be the sole provider of cold beverages on campus.

Why do you think students should care about the work being done by SSCBA? 

Dakhel: I think there’s several kinds of angles to look at. One of them is a moral and ethical angle. There’s a few companies that could be signing this agreement, and all three of these companies are complicit in the illegal Zionist occupation and genocide happening in Palestine. Whatever option we choose, even though the vendor has not been selected, students would be forced to purchase from these companies, and the businesses would also be forced to only serve from these companies. That comes from the moral standpoint and kind of, “Why should students care about that.” This illegal occupation and genocide has led to the deaths of 10s of 1,000s or 100s of 1,000s, according to whatever numbers you follow. That’s from the moral standpoint.

Another thing is just giving people the free choice of whether they agree or not with [the] moral standpoint. People should have the free choice to choose what they drink on campus. We see even like student groups now and like businesses on campus, they’re not even following the agreement. This Red Bull, I bought it on campus. It’s not a Coca-Cola product, even though there’s a Coca-Cola agreement, and many student groups are sponsored by Red Bull, and many student groups serve other than Coca-Cola beverages. That shows that even though these student groups and these businesses could face severe consequences for violating the agreement, they’re still violating the agreement, which shows that they’re not in favour of the agreement.

– With files from Gabriella Menezes.