CIT Student Association Fees Illegal? CIT Officials Secretly Think So
March 24th, 2006 at 08:00am
I could have been certain that I’ve written about CIT charging “Student Association” fees, how horribly wrong it is, and how it should be illegal under VSU (Voluntary Student Unionism) before, but I can’t find any record of it, so I’ll provide some background.
CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology, for those of you who have been wondering) has a student union called “CITSA”, or “Canberra Institute of Technology Student Association”, they also charge all students a compulsory CITSA fee, without forcing anybody to join CITSA. From memory, this fee is around $60. I can’t remember the exact details of the VSU legislation which was passed by parliament last year, but I know that students are no longer allowed to be forced into a student union, the thing I’m not 100% sure about is if educational institutions are allowed to charge a student union fee, I think they can’t, and I’m 95% sure that they can’t, but as I said, I can’t recall the exact details of VSU.
If, for some strange reason, VSU does not cover this, then it is an outrageous loophole, and one the legal teams who drafted the VSU legislation should have picked up on very early in the piece. VSU is very important as it means I don’t have to be a part, by connection, of some strange angry chanting mob taking over Civic with five dozen different campaigns at once, most of which I would disagree with. I would be more than happy to pay a bit extra for food or drink in exchange for not giving a student association a lump sum every six months.
On this topic, I overheard some CIT (possibly CITSA) officials talking in Cafe Yala the other day. Whilst I didn’t catch every word, and didn’t want to appear to be eavesdropping, I did get most of it, and the basic message of their conversation was:
- CIT is the only educational institution in the country to charge a compulsory student union fee
- The legality of it is unclear, and if possible would only be through a loophole
- They have already received at least one complaint by phone
- One complaint to a federal MP would probably be enough to bring the whole sordid little scheme crashing down
The officials in question saw me standing there near them waiting for my coffee, looking somewhat distant and focussed. It is surprising that they had that conversation at a reasonable volume in public and in front of, when I am known to carry a recording device with me, especially during lectures. The fact that I appeared to be concentrating on something else does not alter this, as I was nearby for plenty of time before I looked like I was concentrating on anything.
It is a pity that I didn’t turn on my digital notetaker as I would have loved to record that conversation, alas it didn’t really last long enough, and I didn’t want to scare them off by searching through my bag for any length of time, which would probably have made it harder for me to hear the conversation anyway.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: Bizarreness,Canberra Stories,Samuel's Editorials
5 Comments
1. John B1_B5 | March 24th, 2006 at 11:30 am
Any person that is involved (either direclty or indirectly ) in forcing a student to pay a “student fee” should be put into ‘hibernation’ ( as seen aboard the spacecraft “Discovery” ) and kept in a state of ‘hibernation’ until the computer controlling their ‘life functions’ deems it appropriate to deal with them !
2. Kerces | March 24th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Sam, the VSU legislation doesn’t come into force until July 1 this year, so the CITSA is still within its rights to charge a fee for it.
And CIT is far from the only educational institution in the country to charge a compulsory fee. Having been a student at both UC and ANU at the same time for the past three years, I had to pay what they call a general services fee, a large chunk of which makes up a student union/student association fee at both universities. You were able to defer the HECS if you wanted, but this fee had to be paid in full each year or sememster (they differed slightly, but it was about $140 per semester).
On a related note, under the VSU legislation universities cannot charge fees for anything that isn’t related to academic study, which hopefully means they can no longer charge fees for graduations, academic transcripts and other things like that.
3. Samuel | March 24th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Hmmmm, pity it didn’t come into effect earlier. Maybe the officials in question were talking about future plans, in which case I’ll keep an eye on them from July 1 onwards.
4. John B1_B5 | March 26th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
OR – They should drop a rock on their head .
5. mark | March 27th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Kerces is right on the money, Samuel – the universities and student organisations were QUITE REASONABLY given a year’s grace under the VSU legislation to make alternative arrangements. While I am broadly sympthetic to VSU, I certainly am not sympathetic to John B1_B5’s suggestions of violent direct action against people implementing entirely legal compulsary fees.