I think these votes /have/ set a precedent. You’ll note that you’re quoting precedent I established as a reason that I should be ok with it. Precedents are tricky like that.

You’ll also notice the University is becoming more and more interested in pursuing this option. Round 2 for Sauder, round 1 for architecture, and in those same minutes, you’ll note Clare Benton mentioning the possibility of a $1000 student fee for the new law building. Same thing at UVic, but the Ministry seems to be catching on… http://gss.uvic.ca/documents/2010-02-15AVEDresponseonAthletics.pdf. All of this within the past two years, and before then, hardly any examples? It seems like there’s a rush to get through the hole before government patches it up.

What concerned students /can/ do is help government patch it up.

Even before that, the original $266 CUS fee was put in place to fund career services, as well as pay for computer labs in Henry Angus. Since then, the school has seen more resources become available and has been able to take on much of that responsibility as it rightfully should. The CUS still contributes to the Business Career Centre, however now it is based on performance for getting students jobs (this year it’s ~$58 per student; a far cry from the full funding that the CUS used to contribute).

I would hope to see the same happen in the future with the fee currently being considered. As University resources become available in the future, the school will step up to contribute heavily to this initiative like it has in the past.

http://www1.sauder.ubc.ca/en/About/Opening_Worlds_-_Sauder_School_of_Business_Building_Redevelopment_Campaign/CUS_Sauder_Building_Referendum

If this was an actual student fee, the Faculty would have minimal interest in its outcome. Posting their own, independent FAQ, addressed to ‘concerned students’? Please.

@Jason, TLG summarized well why that point contains “clearly faulty logic”. The opposition is coming from that the University is pushing to increase the overall cost of a degree to students, by manipulating some students and using a hole in the law.

Also, there’s still a gaggle of issues surrounding referendum procedure.

It would be foolish to acknowledge these precedents. I would highly advise anyone in Commerce to vote no on the fee, and let your renovations come off the back of all UBC students (myself included). I would much rather mismanagement be addressed as mismanagement and legal loopholes that undermine a well-functioning democracy not be acknowledged as legitimate.

Capital costs are, and have always been, treated differently from tuition. Though I’m over-simplifying the extent to which they are in siloes, the paragraph you referenced is at best ignorant and at worst an outright lie.

Maybe I’m just bitter. Let’s face facts – there’s nothing about a commerce degree that justifies a more fancy learning environment than, say, an arts degree. Nothing. Underlying this whole affair appears to be an underlying notion that a commerce degree is in some way special such that it requires a cutting-edge classroom. That’s a crock. Commerce students deserve leading-edge facilities just as much as every other student deserves leading-edge facilities; students in other faculties just haven’t been brainwashed into thinking there’s a high-paying glamorous job for them on the other side.

Under the new referendum the fee will be strictly a “Student Association Fee” which H&R Block says is not eligible to claim as a credit.

http://www.hrblock.ca/your_life/student_tax_breaks.asp

Under the ITA Donations must be voluntary, and so one cannot consider this to be a “donation” and so again no credit.

This works out to about $410 ($300 + $110)which would have been available in credits.

We can all play accounting games…

http://mybuilding.cusonline.ca/studentfaq.pdf

Basically they’re admitting that other business schools did not levy direct student fees due to provincial grants, but they also argue that those schools have higher tuition which makes up for the lack of an explicit fee.

As far as I know, no school has had to raise tuition as a direct result of a new building. That was not the case in recent examples such as Queen’s, Ivey, and Rotman.

Regardless of such, great article. I vote tomorrow, and I’m so torn behind the decision.

Three points I’d add.

1) The principle behind “students pay tuition, government/universities pay buildings” is sound. Students’ time is transient; they pay transient expenses. Buildings that outlast any cohort of students are permanent and paid by the permanent tenants/beneficiaries.

2) Yet another dangerous element to the precedent (in addition to those mentioned herein) is that this threatens to increase the ever-growing gap between have and have-not faculties. There are demographers and stats geeks who can make this point better than I.

3) Finally, let’s dispense with the “we need a nice building so the world respects us” crap. I went to law school in a universally recognized dump of a building. That didn’t devalue my degree. To suggest otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of the legal community and, quite frankly, to the faculty as well, in that it suggests that they are incapable of rising above the limitations of the physical plant.

3a) By the way, law’s getting a new building. Why? Because the law community recognized that it was about damn time, and ponied up millions over millions of dollars. Strangely, the business community has declined to do the same. What does that say about the reputational argument?

Irfhan Rawji, BComm 2000.
http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/About/Opening_Worlds_-_Sauder_School_of_Business_Building_Redevelopment_Campaign/Why_Donate/Irfhan_Rawji

John Williams, BComm 1958.
http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/About/Opening_Worlds_-_Sauder_School_of_Business_Building_Redevelopment_Campaign/Why_Donate/John_Williams