An Open Letter to SMUSA

Written by Alex Phillips
Thumbnail & Banner Photo by Alex Phillips

SMUSA: the Saint Mary’s University Students’ Association. “Students working for students,” according to their website. We are all familiar with SMUSA; they plan dozens of events, give us our health plan, bus pass, and provide student resources where needed. But to what extent is “students working for students” true? 

My gripes about SMUSA’s operations are few and far between, yet there is one thing in particular that gets on my nerves: societies’ operations. Joining a society is one of the best ways for students to get involved on campus, and I highly encourage everyone to seek out societies that interest them! Societies get students engaged with their academics and hobbies, as well as allow them to meet people with similar interests and backgrounds. During the Societies Expo, you walk through the quad and see dozens of tables at which societies are promoted, but how many of these societies are active within the year? How many posters, events, etc, do you see from them? How many societies do you never hear back from, despite signing up for them? Have you wondered why this is? Well, there really only is one reason: SMUSA’s organization of societies is… lacking. 

Most students are not society executives and cannot credibly address SMUSA’s shortcomings. I have been an executive society member for two years and I spoke with a few executive members of other societies, who have chosen to remain anonymous, in order to provide an adequate critique. A statement from one executive began with, “I want to preface by saying that I sympathize with SMUSA and absolutely adore the people who work there. Most of them are students like us. That being said, I also believe that it’s important to keep organizations accountable.” I agree with this and encourage readers to keep that in mind as I address the frustrations that societies have had, beginning with communication. 

Communication, or the Lack Thereof

After an executive team has planned an event, they must submit a Society Event Risk Management (SERM) form, which must be submitted for all meetings and events a society wants to arrange. Meetings require a two-paged form and events require a five-paged form. According to the rules listed at the top of this form, it should be submitted at least two weeks in advance, and you may not promote the event until after the SERM form has been approved by SMUSA. If you submit your SERM form fourteen days before the event is going to take place, which is the recommended time, you may not get approval in time to effectively promote your event. To give an example of the issue with this, the society that I am an executive of has had this issue multiple times. We submitted a SERM form on Thursday, October 19th. We received approval on Monday, October 30th. That is eleven days later. I do not know what SMUSA’S internal approval process is like, but if fourteen days is allegedly enough time to get a form approved and an event promoted, then it is completely unacceptable for the form to have taken eleven days to get approved. Fortunately for us, we are accustomed to the slow and arduous process of SERM form approvals, so we deliberately did not schedule our event until the end of November. Another society executive agreed with me, saying, “We have found SMUSA to be less than timely on many matters, taking weeks to approve SERM forms, which may cause a lot of unnecessary anxiety for events.” The point here is that the time it takes to get a response from SMUSA can be a week, at minimum. 

The lack of communication from SMUSA is a frustration that all societies are feeling. All of the societies that I spoke with expressed that they have felt left in the dark, as SMUSA takes weeks to respond to emails. One society informed me that they have not yet received the funding that all societies are eligible for in their first year: we are now in the second semester, and they have not received any updates on it. Even here at The SMU Journal, communication from SMUSA has been inadequate. There had been plans for a teambuilding activity for our staff and contributors, but we had not received the go-ahead for quite some time. Furthermore, the team was going to receive gifts for the winter holidays, which did not happen as a result of the communication issues. When matters are more pressing, executive members find themselves wandering the Student Union building as they attempt to track down the “right person” to talk to for their needs. The extreme delay in responses from SMUSA, sometimes upwards of two weeks, hinders societies’ ability to function efficiently and reach the quality of performance that they hold themselves to. 

Funding and Finances: Even More Forms

Societies are required to collect membership fees. Some societies have found things that work for them, but getting people to come and pay their society fees when it is already difficult for the society to plan any events is exhausting. Many society executive members themselves disagree with the need for a membership fee, as most of us are broke university students. Even the minimum fee of $5.00 could be a lot for a student who is running on student loans, the Halifax housing crisis, five hours of sleep, and a black coffee. While many societies do not end up collecting the required fees, most do require them in order to stay afloat, whether for funding their events or maintaining the $200.00 minimum that a society is required to have in their bank account by the end of the academic year. While this may not be a struggle for certain societies, small ones in particular do struggle. 

SMUSA offers funding and a bank account under SMUSA’s umbrella account. That sounds brilliantly accommodating, right? Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Societies are required to personally visit the bank in order to take out or deposit any cash, while online banking, e-transfers, etc, are simply not an option. Not to mention the banking fees for having an account which causes smaller societies to struggle with finances every year. While I understand the security reasons for prohibiting online banking, and it is not on SMUSA that RBC has fees, one would think that there would be ways such things could be navigated. For example, setting up a system for online banking through SMUSA, in which someone can monitor that the expenses are not going towards personal use. SMUSA helps societies by paying up to half of an event’s costs, which is incredible, yet even that can be disheartening as “Funding requests have taken months to get approved and shown themselves to be something a society can’t really depend upon at all. Of course, some funding is better than no funding, so make no mistake, the gratitude is there. But I do wish societies could put more faith in SMUSA,” according to one executive.

Photo by SMUSA

 The Lifeless Society Summit

Twice a year, SMUSA hosts its Societies Summit, which is a society information session that two members of an executive team are required to attend. At this summit, SMUSA goes over the resources offered to societies and informs executives about how a society functions. This summit is incredibly useful to new society executives who are unsure of what is available to them and the processes and policies that societies must follow. At the summit, societies may also bring forward any questions or concerns that they may have. While overall, I believe that the Societies Summit is beneficial, much of it is incredibly long and contains repetitive slideshows that can easily be shortened. Furthermore, attendance at both summits is required if a society wants to remain ratified for the term. Despite this, the content of the summit is the same in September as it is in January. The summit should not be a requirement for societies that have not had a change in their executive team between the first and second semesters since they will just be receiving the information that they already know. This attendance requirement can also be difficult for some societies to achieve. They are always on Fridays from 10am to 2pm, which is a time that many students have labs or recitations for their classes. If the executive team has schedule conflicts, there should be a form to opt out of the summit both for those who have not had an executive team change and for those who are unable to attend due to prior commitments. As one executive said to me, “While SMUSA has been, for the majority, great for us, I have often found the Society Summits less than useful. I understand that attendance has to be mandatory, otherwise people wouldn’t show up; but to threaten ratification seems strange, especially when we have no control over the time and date and may have other commitments.” 

The Email Enigma and Bias 

As a society executive for two years now, I have been to the Societies Summit numerous times. Every single time, the exact same issues are brought up, and every single time, the response is  “We will look into improving that.” The latest issue that societies have been facing involves emails. A new university policy requires that all university-related business be conducted via SMU emails. This now extends to societies; however, societies do not have SMU emails, but Gmail accounts instead. SMU societies are required to list their members' contact information using SMU email addresses to verify that they are a SMU student. Because our student Outlook accounts only deal with other SMU accounts, members will not receive society emails since Gmail accounts are blocked and automatically tossed into the spam folder. When the issue was brought up at the latest Societies Summit, the response was that well-established societies would be given priority for receiving SMU email addresses. How is this fair? If my small society wants to email professors for assistance, Conference Services to book rooms, and members to keep them updated on society affairs, we are disadvantaged and must contact individuals with our personal email addresses, while “established” societies do not. How are well-established societies being defined? By membership numbers? The number of events planned? Attendance at events? These email changes reflect blatant favouritism towards certain societies with greater membership and whose events are promoted on SMUSA’s Instagram page. On that note, this favouritism can also be seen in terms of SMUSA’s socials: if a society is hosting an event and posts event promotions on its social media accounts, it can tag SMUSA who will then repost it. However, certain societies do not see their posts shared very often, whereas others are shared multiple times. Understandably, SMUSA is a large Instagram account that likely gets tagged in dozens of posts which makes it easy to miss some. However, missing some promotional posts does not look good on SMUSA and frustrates smaller societies trying to increase attendance at their events. 

SMUSA’s management of societies needs to be improved. I do not believe that the fault lies with any single person, and I do not point the blame on any individuals.“I am personally grateful for the students over there putting in the hard work and wish to send them my love,” expressed one executive, and I agree with them. I do not believe that the issues societies have with SMUSA are a result of any particular person, as they have persisted for years across various SMUSA teams. What I do believe is that there is far too much work put on far too few people to manage societies. With the number of societies that need managing on top of SMUSA executives’ coursework, it would not surprise me one bit if those in charge are overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid. Whether it’s a larger society management team, a series of simpler processes, or hiring a permanent full-time position, there needs to be change within SMUSA’s society management and infrastructure so that societies, both big and small, can function smoothly and free from frustration.