On November 20th, 2014, Imprint published the article “AFSA not going anywhere anytime soon” which focused on Accounting and Finance Student Association (AFSA) “face[ing] obstacles in being recognized as a Feds Society”. As Imprint phrased, “an alternate solution” to becoming a society was to institute a levy on the students. Imprint’s claims are false and misinformed. AFSA’s intentions to become a student society were simply a byproduct of the levy. As AFSA noted to all members and students, the main goal of the referendum was to introduce the concept of a levy. AFSA was under the impression by UW Finance that being a society was mandatory to facilitate fee collections. By working closely with Federation of Students (FEDs), School of Accounting and Finance (SAF), and Arts Student Union (ASU), AFSA uncovered unique alternatives to the collection process that would allow AFSA to bypass society status complications. Naturally, AFSA chose to pursue these alternatives to accomplish the same end result (the levy) as it would be much faster and more efficient.
We would like to re-enforce that AFSA, ASU and FEDs have a strong collaborative relationship. All groups have been working together over for the past few months to ensure that the levy will be successful and that SAF students have the resources they need to compete with other schools as well as have better control over their $50 contribution.
AFSA and ASU have been working together to get the levy closer to approval. In fact, on November 12th, representatives from AFSA presented the levy to the bi-weekly Arts Council meeting, which was then approved. ASU has been in support of the levy and agrees that AFSA and our students in SAF would benefit from a levy structure.
ASU understands that although SAF is not a business school, it still competes directly with other prestigious business schools across Canada. The quotes from the Imprint article were taken out of context and phrased in a way that implied ASU was discrediting SAF’s status and competitiveness. ASU wants to help AFSA become more competitive and have access to a levy.
Furthermore, the article states that Dylan Ball, ASU President, is looking to eliminate the Accounting & Finance Orientation Week (AFOW). This is also completely inaccurate. Our students in SAF will still participate in Arts Orientation Week, which occurs the week before lectures begin, as well as the Accounting & Finance Orientation Week (AFOW) which happens during the first week of lectures. There was no intention of eliminating AFOW to begin with.
We hope this clarifies any issues or concerns over the Imprint article that was published.
If you have any concerns, please feel free to email any of us noted below.
Warm regards, Dylan Ball (ASU President) – dylan.r.ball@gmail.com Gerry Zhan (AFSA President) – g.zhan@uwafsa.ca Maaz I. Yasin (FEDs VP Internal) – vpin@feds.uwaterloo.ca Koren Leung (ASU VP Finance) – korenleung@gmail.com Michael Yang (AFSA Board of Directors) – m.yang@uwafsa.ca
