‘This is just a hiccup’

Transit advocate, student disheartened by Acadia U-Pass vote results

There will be no U-Pass for Acadia University students.

A vote gauging the interest in providing students with expanded access to transportation services offered by Kings Transit was recently defeated.

The referendum was the result of a concerted effort by Kings County councillor and Acadia student Meg Hodges.

She hoped the U-Pass would make public transit more accessible for students at Acadia.

Hodges has been passionate about creating more public transit options for students at Acadia for quite some time.

“I approached the Acadia Students’ Union on a separate occasion as a board member (of Kings Transit) and asked them to create some kind of U-Pass partnership together, and at that time they declined,” Hodges said. “Then I became a student at Acadia and put the U-Pass behind me until someone told me that, as a student, I could make a petition to have 10 per cent of the student body sign it, to force a referendum.”

That’s exactly what Hodges did, spending the last year working to organize a referendum that came to a vote this year.

The vote asked Acadia students if they’d support a mandatory $180 fee added to their student fees that would subsidize a U-Pass for Acadia students. The U-Pass would entail increased route frequency, bus trips to Halifax every weekend and unlimited access to existing services offered by Kings Transit.

The vote failed, with 71 per cent of students opposing the proposed fee increase.

ISSUES

Hodges is far from satisfied with the outcome of the vote and alleges that the entire election process was flawed to the point that there were “barriers to voting.”

“There were some serious issues with the voting system. More than half of the students didn’t receive a ballot and there was no physical polling location,” Hodges said.

The referendum for the UPass

was carried out through an online-only voting system.

Polling stations were established throughout campus for students wanting guidance, but Hodges said complications still arose.

She said many of the polling emails students received were blocked by the university server and diverted to junk folders in their email inboxes.

“When half (of) the students didn’t receive their ballots, those polling stations became redundant because they didn’t have access to the vote.” Hodges said. “The Acadia Students’ Union tried to resolve the problem by extending the election period by four days, but it didn’t help and didn’t change anything.

“In the end they did resend the ballots, but it was 20 minutes before the polls closed,” Hodges said.

She knew the idea wouldn’t be for everyone, but she hoped enough students would see the value in it to allow for a trial to take place.

“I think the majority of people who came out to vote are people who own cars, people who don’t want to pay for the bus because they won’t benefit from it,” Hodges said. “I think people were upset it would have been a mandatory fee and they couldn’t opt out of it ... it was only a two-year trial, so we could have just tried it to see how it worked out, but we don’t get that chance now.”

Hodges considered writing a letter of appeal, outlining all the faults she saw in the voting process, but decided against it in the end.

For one, she felt a returning officer was not in place in a timely manner.

“It’s been three years of my life I put toward this, only for it to fall apart ... it is disheartening, but I need to focus on my children, my council work and being a student,” she said. “You can only fight against a broken system for so long before you don’t want to fight it anymore.”

Hodges plans to continue working to make public transit better in Kings County.

“This is just a hiccup and is in no way going to stop me from trying to make public transit better for everyone.”

STUDENTS’ UNION RESPONSE

ASU president Kyle Vandertoorn confirmed that Hodges submitted a complaint about the voting process and later withdrew it.

In an email to Kings County News, Vandertoorn wrote that the students at Acadia have provided “a clear and unequivocal response,” with an obvious result.

A total of 435 students voted in favour of the U-Pass, and 1,073 voted against it.

Vandertoorn wrote that the vote on the U-Pass constituted a stronger turnout (39.6 per cent) than the winter general election.

The ASU also proactively put together questions and program for consideration by the students in advance of the vote.

“It’s clear that students do not support the concept of a U-Pass for the second time in seven years and have rejected the idea at this time,” Vandertoorn wrote. “Now is the time to move on with other priorities for students.”

The ASU hired both a chief returning officer (CRO) and a deputy chief returning officer (DCRO) before the election period began.

“The reason we could not do hiring until September and put the application out in August was because there was no student interest beforehand when we posted the job postings in the last semester.”

Vandertoorn said there would have been minimal interest in the positions in the summer, with fewer students on campus.

“By posting in August, we received multiple applications for both positions.”

On the issue of the voting service, Vandertoorn said the ASU issued a request for proposals for a new voting service provider, since Acadia’s technology services were no longer supporting them.

The ASU chose SimplyVoting from three proposals.

The issue of emails bouncing to the junk mail folder, Vandertoorn said, was “completely external to the students’ union.”

“SimplyVoting’s emails were being blocked from the university’s server in Tech Services,” Vandertoorn wrote.”

Vandertoorn spent hours with tech services and SimplyVoting once aware of the issue.

“We called an emergency meeting of the election committee and decided to extend voting for an entire five days to ensure that all students would receive the link to vote,” Vandertoorn wrote. “Our CRO met with SimplyVoting and tech services was fixed within a day.

“It was advertised daily through email and social media to students, as well as on-campus polling stations.”