Ushering in Change
We owe a lot here at Student Association Press to one Mr. Alex Usher, quotidian blogger extraordinaire, (quotidian in the literal sense). From the corner suite of HESA Towers, he writes about higher education generally, but an old blog post of his has stuck with me for a while. It is about student union accreditation.
Student associations aren’t accredited. Unlike post-secondary institutions which have a government stamp of quality, student associations simply exist, usually independently as separate corporations. They derive their reputation through performance and word-of-mouth, not through accreditation.
Mr. Usher argues that student associations should move towards accrediting. In particular, he points towards the risk of voluntary student unionism, a government-imposed policy that switches student associations from their usual automatic fee assessment mode to having to beg for membership fees, a death knell for how they usually work. If his 2012 blog wasn’t prescient enough, he got to reiterate and expand on his idea during the short-lived “Student Choice Initiative” of the Government of Ontario.
So I wanted to try my hand at exploring what this might look like in more detail. We’ll explore the why, who and how of reviews. We will lastly explore the what, recognizing that the what may be wider or different in practice. Finally, we’ll look at the case for why not?
Why?
The why of doing accreditation is where Usher has the most answers for us, but I see there being three main reasons why.
First, and Usher is most clear on this, accreditation provides public assurance. Medical associations and the like collectively self-regulate, and even that self-regulation around professional standards can help uplift the public consciousness. It gives associations something to point to in the case that a government wants to argue that the organizations are unaccountable.
Second, the existence of collectively determined standards will lead to a “signalling function”, a guiding light for governance thinkers in the student association space to adhere to and build their governance structures off of. These practices, if well chosen, should reduce risk-based behaviour and improve outcomes.
Who?
I contemplate a Student Association Accreditation Commission. This is envisioned as a volunteer body, unincorporated, with no finances nor staff. It would have a short system of bylaws outlining objects and the role of commissioners and the Secretary.
The organization would be structured as a one-member-one-vote body, with any graduate or undergraduate student association being able to be a member.
In April or May of each year, each student association could put forward a candidate for an 16-month term, and will vote on candidates through an STV system, possibly with regionalized or size-segregated elections. This would mean at any time, any student association could have two members be a member of the commission. The number of commissioners required to be elected every year is 1 for every 10 members. Commissioners need not be executive, though they are likely an ideal choice.
Every August/September, the commission would select one member to act as Secretary for the next 12 months, responsible for handling desk assignments of reviews, coordinating a standards working group if necessary, responsible for providing advice to commissioners with questions, scheduling an annual general meeting, soliciting donations for and maintaining a website, and chairing triannual or more frequent meetings of all commissioners. Its a big role that may rise to three digits of time dedication over a year, and an alternative structure that has a “Secretary” conducting the review components and a “Controller” who manages meeting scheduling and chairing and websites.
How?
Standards
The commission would be responsible for developing and maintaining a publicly disclosed set of standards for accreditation.
An example of a standard might be the following:
1.1 Elections
Executive and Council elections of the student association must give an electronic or mail voting option to all members of the association, with any electronic option available for a minimum of 48 hours. Mail ballots must be post-marked out from the student association no less than 10 business days before polls close.
Rationale: Physical voting locations limit the participation of disabled or remote students to participate.
Notes: Mail options need not include pre-paid postage, but ballot distribution should normally be free.
The three components here are an imperative, a rationale, and interpretive notes that expand upon on the imperative, and give areas with usual norms that help student associations, but are not required to pass the requirement.
Accreditation
Upon the creation of the commission, every member should be given a probationary status upon asserting that they meet the standards.
The important work is undergoing the start of cyclical reviews. The Secretary is responsible for maintaining the three 4-month review cycles occurring each year. Every five years, an association chooses if it wishes to continue its accreditation status.
Each reviewer will normally conduct three reviews each year for associations not their own, for a total time commitment of approximately 45 hours total through the year.
Each review will have 2 assigned reviewers, who are each independently responsible for conducting an entire review of the organization according to the standards. They may choose to collaborate insofar as they may wish to schedule a meeting with any staff. Typically the first month should involve approximately 5 hours of reviewing bylaws and policies, the second month involves conducting interviews, the third involves writing a report and submitting to the Secretary.
If the two members disagree on the status of any imperative in the fourth month, the Secretary or a designate will join to conduct a discussion, and if necessary, cast a vote to decide whether the imperative is met or failed.
At the end of the cycle, the commission votes to give the reviewed institution either a “green” status, meaning good standing, “yellow” in case there are infractions of an imperative necessitating remedy, or a “no accreditation” if there is a serious infraction in democratic or financial areas. These statuses will be released to the public. A private detailed report will be delivered to the Chair of the Board of the association.
A red or yellow would mean that a focused re-review is reconducted the next year if there is capacity. Failure to remedy the earlier issues would lead to a “no accreditation” status until the next review.
Complaints
The commission will also be responsible for fielding complaints, and the Secretary will be responsible for taking in any complaints, if they are facially credible and strictly pertinent to a specific imperative, assigning two commissioners to review the complaint. Complaints not assigned would be presented for information at the triannual meeting.
What?
Standards should be in theory, barebones. They should not be best practices. There is an important need for innovation and flexibility, and so standards should be narrowly constrained, especially to make reviews wieldy.
The standard for inclusion should be along the lines of “if the organization does not follow this imperative, will it be at high risk for financial malfeasance, lack of meaningful election, organizational collapse, or delegitimization in the eyes of a reasonable government or university”.
To this end, I propose the what be in the categories of the following:
- Conducting annual audit, with a lesser level of review engagement as an option for smaller budget organizations, if legal
- Maintaining a systematized budget process with elected student leaders somewhere “in-the-loop”
- A financial whistleblower policy, and a standard operating procedure for investigations of financial malfeasance, including pre-determined pathways for disciplinary actions, including classifying which actions necessitate staff firing or executive removal
- Availability of financial statements, auditors public summaries, and budgets
- Elections with minimum timelines for nomination, campaigning, and election, for executive and councillors
- A professionalized election apparatus, including an election code, and either a staff or non-executive student CRO
- A procedure to ensure anonymous voting by all mail, ballot or electronic ballot methods
- Open election of directors, and non-insider and transparent selection criteria for board recommendations for directors
- An ethics statement for directors and executive, with a clear removal procedure
- A transparent disciplinary procedure for executive and directors
- Minimum timelines for annual general meeting first and second notices
- A clearly maintained website, with publicly available copies of all organizational bylaws and policies, public minutes older than 4 months ago and elections information
A final area that may be of interest may be cementing “ideological neutrality” within the student association. This is a more conciliatory policy designed to appease conservative governments. This neutrality wouldn’t look like taking no political stances, but it might speak to banning enshrining political positions in constitutions or bylaws, or maintenance of a commitment to preventing the removal of Councillors (or other policy-setters) for discussion of substantive stances the organization should take or repeal. This is not a discussion to be taken lightly, and may significantly affect whether more progressive associations are likely to join. I would err on the side of excluding it, but those putting together a set of prospective bylaws may wish to have that discussion among themselves.
Excluding ideological neutrality, this leads to maybe 10-20 imperatives, a very manageable standard.
Why Not?
First, I’m not completely convinced that Usher’s proposal would actually give the level of protection from being cut off from universities or governments. To take the more extreme steps of insulating student associations from “political odiousness” would likely mean many student associations would have to vastly compromise their social justice traditions, possibly even against the wishes of supermajorities of their members.
Second, five years is a long time in student association governance, student association governance can change rapidly. But making it any faster dramatically would increase the number of commissioners required.
Thirdly, a commission would not be equipped to conduct financial analysis, so an accredited organization having financial scandal would cheapen any value of accreditation.
Fourth, the time commitments mean that not many executive would step up.
Fifth, flaky commissioners, even only a few, could make the whole schedule crumble.
Sixth, the short lifespan of executive mean that short of a funded version with staff, the lack of institutional memory could lead to collapse of the commission.
Seventh, the insatiable instinct of student leaders to always try to redo and improve things would lead to mission creep, creating restrictive standards that unduly constrain associations, longer reviews and less innovation.
Coda
I think this is possibly an area for some enterprising student executive who like this idea to implement it on a small scale.
I somewhat lack a cemented theory of change when it comes to inter-school collaborations, but in my experience, having 3-6 workhorses produce an initiative, documents and then doing a take-it-or-leave-it start can lead to timely change. It’s worth thinking both Why & Why Not, because I think this frontier is not an unambiguous winner.
But it is one that will continue to hold my interest as one that really could represent sector-level innovation of a kind we haven’t seen in a very long time.
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