SU Elections 2026 Q&A: Golden Bears and Pandas Legacy Fund Plebiscite

The University of Alberta Students’ Union (SU) 2026 election is giving students the opportunity to vote to renew the Golden Bears and Pandas Legacy Fund. This fund charges undergraduate students $5.11 each semester.

Representing the legacy fund in this Q&A is Barrett Groves, a third-year kinesiology student and member of the Legacy Fund committee and University Athletics board.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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For students who don’t know, what is the Golden Bears and Pandas Legacy Fund?

Barrett Groves: We are currently leading the campaign to renew the Legacy Fund. Every five years, it’s up for debate whether or not students want to have that as part of their dedicated fees. What we’re asking for is $5.11 from students each semester for the fall and winter semesters to go towards this legacy fund. The legacy fund itself is a collection of money that is split between special projects, athletics, and a reserve. It goes to directly help athletics, as well as, they always say, to enhance student life.

More broadly, it helps a lot with providing students practicum opportunities, employment, and making sure the university has a high reputation to continue having high amounts of donors and sponsorships. Not just to athletics, but to all the university and all that fun stuff. So, basically, we’re just asking to vote to continue having that legacy fund. If it votes no, all of that money disappears. Often whenever we approve a project, we have a revenue matching, so whoever’s asking for a project has to present the same amount of money from themselves or sponsors, so we also lose that doubled amount of money.

What is this plebiscite trying to accomplish?

Groves: So, basically, we’re trying to keep this fund. This fund is really important. It began back in 1991 when we were a little tight on the budget and they considered cutting athletics as a whole, it couldn’t be funded solely through the university’s side. Obviously, there were a lot of political things happening there, but they decided to have this legacy fund where students would be contributing a relatively small portion individually to this fund, but overall it contributes about three-eighths of how much money athletics has in general. It also provides students the opportunity to have ownership in what athletics is spending money on.

Because it’s coming from our tuition, we actually have a Legacy Fund Board that votes on whether or not we pass certain projects. So this allows us to reflect our values in what projects we do. For example, they just approved an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) project for women in coaching, so that’s one of the first major projects dedicated to equity and equality in coaching, and leadership, and female roles. So we’re able to better reflect and have more accountability from athletics, rather than just rolling with whatever they want and them deciding how they use the money. This way, students and those on the board, through representation, can better decide how that money is spent and where it goes. 

If this plebiscite passes, how much will students be paying and how was that cost determined?

Groves: If the [plebiscite] passes, then it’s $5.11 each semester. Basically, it’s the same value as the previous year … but the only reason it increased is just due to the Alberta Consumer Price Index and inflation, so we’re not actually asking for much more. I know it may seem like more, just because everything seems to be more these days, which is quite tragic, but because everything is more, we do have to increase this with the consumer index. But the main thing is, for every dollar you spend, it will be matched from another sponsor, donor, school, when put towards these projects.

Will all students be paying this fee?

Groves: I’m pretty sure it is just an undergraduate student fee … but it is just fall and winter. It’s not spring and summer, just those two semesters. We looked into doing spring and summer, but ultimately decided it wasn’t really worth it.

Why do you think students should care about the work being done by the Golden Bears and Pandas Legacy Fund?

Groves: So the fund obviously provides a lot of things. The three main projects we have coming up that I find to be the most important is there’s a big project we’re doing with athletics, each is going to be contributing $100,000, so it’s going to be a really big project. It has to do with marketing, media, and updating all things there, but primarily we’re getting state of the art equipment, so all of the people that we have working media practicums, which is a really niche program, get to work with high quality new equipment, which will better set them up for degrees in media.

We’re also able to provide our A-team students, that’s the staff that have to be students to work that job, with marketing opportunities and more career preparation and specific tasks that would be able to transfer to the real career workforce, so being able to put more money to that and to have more jobs. We always talk about Guba and Patches, but it’s not the suit, it’s the person in the suit being able to have that job and that employment. We also have a mental health program set up for athletes through that, and the point of that was to de-load the regular mental health for students, because that is very clogged, and so it’s not better, bigger, or more important, than what all students have, but it’s just a way to offset that.

CORRECTION: A correction was issued at 12:27 p.m. on February 24 to correct that the Green and Gold Fund fee is a plebiscite, not a referendum.