Paige MacPherson, Opinions Contributor
Sometimes, when political events become scandals, they are ‘gated.’ We saw it with Bill Clinton’s ‘Nannygate,’ the climate science community’s ‘Climategate,’ and by far the most scandalous, Janet Jackson’s ‘Nipplegate.’
On Friday, Nov. 19, the Dalhousie Student Union (DSU) faced its own scandal: ‘Bagelgate.’
It started when a friend of mine angrily told me that our five union executives — president, VP internal, VP academic and external, VP student life, and VP finance and operations — “get $20/day from us plus free Tim’s bagels.” Twenty dollars a day for DSU executives to eat at any of the SUB’s Sodexho-run establishments, and free bagels, in addition to their student-funded salaries? Twenty dollars a day for five executives per year is roughly $35,000 annually. I immediately posted the rumour on Twitter.
The large reaction I received from students on Twitter was, in my accountability-loving mind, fantastic. My account was trending as the second most popular in Halifax due to all the replies I was getting. Saint Thomas Student Union President Ella Henry wrote, “That’s crazy. I’m not at Dal — but when I lived in res. my meal plan for the year was about half that.”
“Wouldn’t it be illegal not to claim that as a taxable benefit?” asked Kevin Weiner. Shannon Zimmerman, a former DSU President, said on her Twitter account @shannyz that this “was a decision made by Execs/Sodexho 10 years ago,” implicitly confirming the benefit. Stephen Taylor, a known Ottawa political pundit, picked up the story and officially labeled it ‘#bagelgate.’
It was established soon after that DSU executives receive $20/day to spend on food in the SUB, including bagels, but that, as former DSU exec member Kris Osmond tweeted, “there are not unlimited free bagels for the exec.”
Bagelgate, like many other political scandals, was admittedly based on a misconception — my own.
The $20/day that DSU executives receive is not student money. It’s a perk that Sodexho gives them, to ‘test the food.’ For students who can’t afford SUB food, the fact that DSU executives receive $20/day for quality monitoring purposes is a little hard to swallow (pun intended). The deal was made years ago, and not by our current executives.
It’s impossible to find this agreement anywhere. I only learned about the $20/day through tweeting and talking ‘off the record’ to former and current DSU executives.
The reason students were outraged is that we didn’t know about this perk, and technically, we couldn’t find it if we tried. Where the money comes from doesn’t change this.
This all happened in light of a recent debate regarding the state of our food services on campus. Soon, the DSU will be involved in a negotiation in which they may even hand over control of SUB food services to the university. In summer 2011, Sodexho’s contract with the DSU is up, and an open food services bidding war will begin in the winter term in anticipation of that.
*The Gazette’s* Katie Toth questioned on the @gazetteopinions Twitter account whether DSU executives having these perks from Sodexho poses a conflict of interest for the coming negotiations. Like a lobbyist taking government officials out to a fancy dinner the night before a vote, Sodexho is arguably giving our executives incentive to choose Sodexho.
I have a little more faith in our executives than to think they’d put $20/day before the interests of Dalhousie students. Not to mention the fact that, if they re-signed with Sodexho, they wouldn’t be the executives on the receiving end of the perk, as new executives would be elected. But in any case, this should all be made transparent for students, so we can know the facts.
But why wouldn’t students be privy to this information? It is necessary for the accountability of our union leadership that such contract perks be posted online, and made clearly accessible for all students to see.
With the recent student consultation sessions regarding food services on campus, the DSU executive is definitely moving in the right direction. But many accountability improvements can still be made.
Bagelgate raised the issue of transparency. If the executives who are making decisions on our behalf are receiving perks — any perks — students should know about them.
We must remember that our DSU executives are elected by us, and their job is to represent us. We should be consulted and kept in the loop about financial decisions, and about executive perks.
Especially if those perks include free bagels.
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