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Affiliate colleges to pay less for USC

Western’s affiliate college students will soon see more money in their wallets—if the college presidents get their way.

Currently, affiliate college students can expect to pay full fees to the University Students’ Council and student fees to their affiliate student council. For a King’s University College student, this means paying the full $210.35 of the USC student fee and an additional $79 to the King’s University College Students’ Council.

“The base fee structure for affiliates would be significantly reduced,” Barchan Quandry, president of the KUCSC, explained. The base fee and the University Community Centre fee would be reduced for affiliate students to 20 per cent of a main campus student fee. Affiliate councils would also be able to opt out of the faculty council fee and the grants committee fee.

“We are not faculty councils, we oversee faculties ourselves,” Meagan Zettler, Brescia University College Students’ Council president, explained. She noted affiliate college students were paying full fees for the USC to advocate on behalf of them, however. “If there is ever an issue that needs to be advocated on behalf of a Brescia student, King’s student or a Huron student, it’s our respective councils which would take care of that. The USC has no jurisdiction over our campuses.”

She noted many other services were duplicated as well. Zettler also explained while the affiliates had been promised USC services would come to the affiliate colleges, they never arrived. “It hasn’t been working, so clearly something has to change.”

“We decided 20 per cent of the base student fee was a proper number because it still gave the affiliate students access to our services and skills of the president and vice-presidents, while allowing them to take full advantage of their own on each of their college campuses,” Andrew Forgione, USC president, explained.

Quandry said the new financial arrangement would be the first step in formalizing the relationship between the USC and affiliates.

“There’s never been a memorandum of understanding,” he said.

“We agreed, to a certain extent, that we should negotiate a relationship where they have access to our offices for government and university wide advocacy, communications and resources, while still maintaining their autonomy,” Forgione explained. “Each of their principals recognize their university college student council president as the chief advocate of their campus, not the USC president.”

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