The Kinesiology Undergraduate Society will no longer be involved in construction of the controversial community health sciences centre.
The building, which would have been shared between the School of Nursing, the School of Kinesiology and the Faculty of Education, sought the support of the AMS to levy the student fees necessary to fund its construction. In the last AMS council meeting, Kinesiology Undergraduate Society (KUS) President Justin Tsang put forward a motion to indefinitely postpone approval of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that would have allowed implementation of the fee.
The MOU outlined the terms with which the building would been funded and constructed as well as approved the student fee levied on Kinesiology students that would have made up a large portion of the funding for the CHSC.
The motivation for scrapping the MOU was that the School of Kinesiology saw more benefit to creating a kinesiology hub with students, faculty and TAs all under one roof as opposed to an interdisciplinary health centre.
When asked about the reason behind changing the building concept, Tsang that it was “just difficult because [the KUS] … was really the only stakeholder that had anything on paper.”
The motion to cancel the MOU passed unanimously. According to Tsang, “This doesn’t mean that the CHSC isn’t moving forward," but believes this new project has more momentum behind it.
"In hindsight there are a lot of things in this MOU that students shouldn't be paying for" - KUS prez Justin #AMSCouncil
— Ubyssey News (@UbysseyNews) October 29, 2015"I’m continuing the discussions with leaders across different faculties and with the provost office to move forward with that concept," said Robert Boushel, new director of the School of Kinesiology. "It’s a high priority for the university. The School of Kinesiology will be part of that [but] how that materializes is yet to be finalized."
Tsang says the referendum question will also need to be rerun. The lifespan of CHSC and the first referendum was dogged by questions and controversy, starting with the referendum that would have funded it
In March of this year, a referendum to approve construction for the $88 million building passed and secured support for a project. Make Your Mark was a Kinesiology-funded, student-led campaign that was promoting the “yes” vote to the project. Ultimately, their work was a success — Kinesiology students agreed to a $250 increase in their student fees to fund the building, which would have been implemented after the building was finished.
The first issue with the campaign that raised eyebrows was the fact that separate faculties were also supposed to have a stake in the building, even though only Kinesiology students would be providing the whole $5 million necessary to fund the project.
The School of Nursing was also supposed to be in the building as well as students in education, which Kinesiology actually falls under. However, it was mostly Kinesiology students feeling the need for a central location of their own — one that was mainly an academic space as opposed to a gym space.
Another question that arose recently surrounding the CHSC and the Make Your Mark Campaign pertained to finances. Documents obtained by UBC Insiders through a Freedom of Information Request show that the total budget to campaign for the last referendum was just over $41,624 — exceeding the total budget of the KUS who funded Make Your Mark.
Tsang confirmed that UBC helped out the KUS financially because the School of Kinesiology is a small group without much of an ability to fund large-scale initiatives.
“The year previous, the KUS raised our yearly student fees and that allowed us to expand our academic, social and professional programming for students,” said Jason Quach, KUS president during the time of the referendum. “But then again, we’re not even a faculty — we’re a school. We don’t have a large student population [and] our budget is always at the brink of capacity.”
The financial issue is related to another major concern about the referendum — the involvement of the university. The spearhead of the project, Robyn Freiheit, was hired by the university to work on Make Your Mark, but was paid by UBC throughout her involvement with the campaign.
Questions arose over whether it was a conflict of interest to have an employee of the university lead an initiative defined as student-led. However, Tsang flatly disagreed with this.
“The bottom line is that that group of students … who were spearheading that project were students,” said Tsang. “From my first year, I’ve known that all the individuals that have been involved with [the building] have been passionate students from the very beginning and their vision was ultimately to have a space for students, regardless of what that looks like.”
Quach said that Freiheit’s role arose in order to foster more continuity of the project between transitions of the KUS executives every year.
With the cancellation of the CHSC, speculation and discussion about whether the referendum was too costly or a conflict of interests is essentially moot. The school is back in the planning stages.
According to Tsang, the KUS are determining what they want from the building and are in conversation with the School of Kinesiology's new director, Boushel.
According to Boushel, should the CHSC come to fruition now the funding will have to come from a model of fundraising and matching funds.
"I don’t influence what the students do with this referendum and the MOU, that’s up to them," said Boushel. "The view that the … building was contingent on student funding is not really accurate in my view."
According to Tsang, he and Boushel are essentially on the same page.
“We’re at the preliminary stages of what this concepts is,” said Tsang. “Study space and things like that I don’t think students should pay for. But things like a gym that’s exclusively run by the KUS ... maybe students could pay for. But not at $250 a student.”
This story was updated on November 18 with comments from Robert Boushel.
A previous version of this story said Kinesiology was a Faculty when it is actually a school. The mistake has since been corrected and The Ubyssey regrets the error.
A previous version of this story said the CHSC would not be happening at all, which may not be the case should new a new source of funding be secured. The mistake has since been corrected and The Ubyssey regrets the error.