UPDATE #2 - WTF: URSU referendum results

I decided to take a few minutes this morning to update everyone on just WTF is going on with the University of Regina Student Union's (URSU) referendum results. In case some of the people reading this are unaware of the situation, here's a a brief backgrounder:

1) The URSU held a referendum on continued membership in the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) from Wednesday 26 October to Friday 28 October 2010.

2) On Friday 29 October 2010, the Referendum Oversight Committee (ROC) released, as you can see on one of my earlier blog postings, this statement on its website.

3) On Saturday 30 October 2010, the URSU tweeted that the referendum results would be released "on Monday (1 November 2010) at the earliest."

4) On Wednesday 24 November, after a long period of silence, the URSU released a statement which can be seen below:

URSU media release: http://ursu.ca/ursu_media?n=967

 5) On 2 December 2010, the URSU released another press release which states that it "will seek a court injunction against the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), in an effort to push forward the CFS referendum ballot counting process."



URSU media release: http://ursu.ca/ursu_media?n=1001

 6) On the same day, The Carillon, the University of Regina student newspaper, reported that little mention of the URSU's referendum was made in the CFS National executive's report. That report was handed out to the delegates attending the recent CFS annual general meeting which took place from Wednesday 24 November 2010 to Sunday 28 November 2010 in Gatineau, QC.


7) In Brief, a podcast by two students, John Cameron and Mason Pitzel, interviewed Mike Burton, one of four members of the Referendum Oversight Committee that overseen the CFS referendum process at the University of Regina (fast-forward to 9:50 to get to the segment pertaining to the CFS referendum). There's one part, at the beginning of the interview, that really bothers me and that I wish to highlight. After being introduced by one of the hosts, Mike Burton says:

I am a member of the Referendum Oversight Committee but, um, just so we're clear, this is not an approved or sanctioned, um, discussion. I've... just come to the conclusion that students deserve to know more than they've been given as of now and so, I'm willing answer questions on that basis.

NOTE: In Brief podcasts © The Carillon - All Rights Reserved - Please visit In Brief under the "Podcasts" section on The Carillon's website.




Here are some other media attention this whole referendum fiasco has been receiving...

The Leader Post: December 3 & December 4

CTV News Regina

Global News Toronto

There will surely be more in the days to come...

UPDATE - WTF: URSU referendum results

Alright, so there still hasn't been any results released as of 3:00 pm Monday afternoon, November 1st 2010. Furthermore, I checked the URSU Referendum Oversight Committee's website this morning and I was still able to access it. Well, between now and then, the site has been disabled.

Key words added to the URSU's Twitter message: AT THE EARLIEST. This definitely brings up many questions. Let's hope for some answers.

UPDATE: An article published by Leader-Post which explains the situation

UPDATE: For the benefit of the reader, here's a picture of the the ROC's website page; It seems to go off and on the air sporadically.

WTF: U of R referendum results?

So, as I wrote in my last post, the polls in the University of Regina's referendum on continued membership in the Canadian Federation of Students closed on Thursday night (October 28th). The next day, when the results still hadn't been released, this message appeared on the Referendum Oversight Committee's website.

Then, today, Saturday October 30th 2010, the University of Regina Student Union (URSU) post this message on their Twitter account:

UPDATE: The CFS Referendum results will be released on Monday [November 1st 2010]. If results are provided earlier, we will make sure...

I can only assume that the rest of the sentence goes... This does seem to be quite irregular and may possibly demonstrate a lack of preparedness on the Referendum Oversight Committee. One can only speculate at this moment. I would hope that the ROC's report to be released after the whole referendum process has concluded.

University of Regina's Referendum on Continued Membership in the CFS ends today

Students at the University of Regina will soon find out the fate of their continued membership in the Canadian Federation of Students. Today was the last day for the University of Regina Student Union's (URSU) members to cast their ballots in the referendum on continued membership if the CFS.

More to come...