New U of R student association makes pitch of optimism ahead of referendum

Students at the University of Regina are days away from deciding whether a newly formed student association should become their official representative body.

The University of Regina Students’ Association (URSA) is asking students to vote in favour of having the association be their representative body in a referendum running Dec. 12–15, a move that would formally replace the University of Regina Students’ Union (URSU). The longtime student union dissolved in October after months of conflict, governance failures and financial questions.

URSA interim president Matthew McStravick, a fourth-year political science student, says the proposed association was designed “from the ground up” to avoid URSU’s pitfalls.

“The new organization has been designed from the ground up to offer a constitutionally strong alternative that is proofed against a lot of the problems that emerged with URSU,” McStravick said in an interview with the CBC’s Morning Edition on Thursday. “It has lots of checks and balances and is designed to maximize student voices.”

University of Regina president Jeff Keshen said the institution will be handling the referendum after students raised concerns about how previous online votes were handled by URSU.

“We're just providing the means through which students can undertake that vote,” Keshen said in an interview on Wednesday. “We have no influence on how students vote. That will be their decision.”

Eligible students will receive voting information through their university email.

If the referendum passes, URSA plans to create what it calls a “general council,” a body of representatives from all the student groups across the University of Regina and the First Nations University of Canada. Every ratified student association would receive a seat.

“When we have all the infrastructure in place, we'll start looking as soon as possible at getting a general election arranged,” McStravick said.

McStravick says that election would likely be in March to have a sense of recognition in time for the next semester.

“We're temporary placeholders,” he said. “We really just want to give young new first-year students coming in now the opportunities that we wish we had.”

During Thursday's town hall, URSA’s interim team took questions from students at the university’s AdHum Pit. Many asked what makes this representative body different from URSU.

“We did a lot of thinking about what went wrong with URSU and how do we prevent that from happening again ever,” McStravick said at the town hall. “We’ll make it function like a government with all of the safeguards inherent in that.”

McStravick says URSA will work to rebuild the trust of students, including making the meetings public and available for everyone. He also noted that in the past, students were not able to hear much directly from URSU’s executive.