Update

I know, I know... this blog has been excessively inactive. However, for those who read this blog may want to visit studentunion.ca as I have been much more active there. I also recently wrote a piece for Maclean's On Campus which you can read here.

Other than that, Student Action (the pro-CFS slate) swept the SFUO elections. In other news, members of the Carleton University Student Association (CUSA) are currently organizing a petition run at Carleton University in order to initiate a referendum on continued membership in the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). Should be interesting. It should be noted that since the CFS scraped the referendum oversight committee (2 CFS staffers and 2 students appointed by the student association) and replaced it with one chief returning officer at its May-June 2011 semi-annual general meeting, there has not been a referendum on continued membership. However, this change will not improve in any way the administration of CFS referendums. Clearly, since the CFS national executive "recommend[s] an individual to serve as the Chief Returning Officer" and that the the appointment must be ratified by the federation's general meeting, it's essentially impossible that the CRO will be someone who's impartial. For some reason, rather than having an arms-length, third party administer the referendum, with the costs of hiring split between the student association and the CFS, the federation has chosen to entrust the administration of referendums to one of their  cronies in order to ensure it has the best chances of gaining or retaining member schools. Of course, for those who follow the practices of the CFS, this comes as no surprise.