The British Columbia Federation of Students (BCFS) is totally justified in withholding $200,000 of Camosun College students’ Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) fees. Our cover story in our last issue made public the fact that your CFS fees, collected by the Camosun College Student Society (CCSS), aren’t going to the CFS, as the CCSS claims they are in the student fee breakdown on the Camosun website; instead, the fees are going to the BCFS, who isn’t passing them along to the CFS.
The cover of the issue the story appeared in featured the phrase “Where’s the money?” and pictures of $100 bills. It caught my eye, particularly the $100 bills. And, apparently, I’m not the only one whose eyes widen at the sight of a wad of cash: the CFS has been exposed.
When I first read this article I thought, “Come on, BCFS; get your act together. Graduate from this high-school he-said-she-said drama and pay your student fees, already!” But, of course, it’s not that simple… or so the CFS claims. They say the BCFS is actually withholding money owed the CFS. Now, why are they doing that? Oh yeah, because, apparently, the CFS owes the BCFS $1 million.
If I was owed even a tenth of that by anyone as sly as the CFS, you’d better believe I’d be doing something crazy to get their attention.
I haven’t been elected or hired to make any decisions for the BCFS or the CFS. I didn’t know the exact amount that I was paying in fees each semester to the two groups—$2.22—before reading the story in Nexus, and I don’t know all the things those fees go toward, but there is a reason they call it paying “in trust.”
The CFS’ claims that the BCFS has no right to withhold the money, which is reserved for federal funding, has merit. But this seemingly anarchistic move by the BCFS does not constitute stealing; it is, rather, withholding until “the man”—the CFS—pays up.
The timeline provided in the article points out the anonymous email in 2014 that said the democratic election process at the 2014 CFS annual general meeting was unfair. The following year, tensions continued between the CFS and provincial locals, including a show of verbal abuse toward our CCSS Lansdowne executive at a 2015 CFS meeting.
Justifiably, some members of the CCSS lost confidence in the CFS, and this view was not unique. It does not help the CFS’ case that the CCSS was just one of many provincial British Columbia locals who, disenchanted with their federal counterpart, have been paying all fees to the BCFS in hopes that the CFS might smarten up and pay their debt to the BCFS in full.
The difference between what the CFS has done and what the BCFS is doing in response is this: the CFS began withholding money (presumably out of political retribution) with no initial expressed conditions or intentions of paying, while, on the other hand, the BCFS is withholding the CFS’ money on the condition that they are paid what’s owed.
Now, the CFS is saying they cannot pay the BCFS until they have received payment of what is due to them. On top of this, they seek to lessen the offence by estimating they owe about a quarter less than what the BCFS claims: $746,000 instead of $1 million.
BCFS, you just hold that money until the CFS wakes up and smells the rat.