After close to an hour of listening to the public plea to keep CHMR open, multiple MUNSU executives presented their own reasons as to why they believed the station needed to be cut.
HSS Representatives
Juairya Abdullah, an HSS rep for MUNSU, and a CUPE 4554 MUNSU employee addressed concerns from the community that taking away CHMR silences marginalized voices, saying “I hear a lot about black and brown and marginalized communities and how much this impacts them, and it almost comes off as little bit of, like, tokenization, as a brown, Muslim, international student.”
She also responded to some community criticisms of the 84 person survey.
She said “someone talked about going to the math society or the statistics department about doing a full survey with their cases… one of the biggest things about statistics, because I have a minor in statistics, is when you’re doing a survey, sometimes it’s not possible to get a whole sample of the population…”
“If your whole population is 11,000, you do a randomized sample to make sure you understand what it represents… because sometimes it’s not possible to do 11,000 members.”
Abdullah said a focus needs to go towards ensuring students needs are met “we’re in a recession right now. I care if someone gives me a $10 voucher to Sobeys, because that’s what’s gonna help me, because the first thing that I’m worried about is being able to make rent, if I’m able to make my tuition, if I’m able to eat properly.
“I feel like a lot of the times when the community speaks about like, well, ‘this is so important,’ of course it’s important, but you need to make sure students have the ability to live and get their actual needs met, and we’re not even able to meet their needs.”
Finally, one other point made by Abdullah was ensuring MUNSU was being smart with its money.
“I’m a student, and I care about where my $51 that I give every semester goes, and, when I know that I’m giving this $51 to the university, that I worked blood sweat and tears for… I know when it goes to help [students].”
“I would love for us to be able to fund everything… I’ve seen over the last to years that I’ve been working here, some people talk about free meal [plans]… that’s what students need.”
Another HSS rep, Hasan Habib, responded to claims that CHMR creates job opportunities for art students.
“I think it’s rather unfair to talk about student employment while not having students as full-time employees in CHMR. To the best of my knowledge, the employment option that CHMR offers to undergrads are, if I’m not mistaken, mostly MUCEPs and ISWEPs, and for those who don’t know, MUCEPs and ISWEPs pay at most around $1,500 a semester. It would perhaps be better to talk about equity and employment for arts students after such concerns within the CHMR structure is addressed.”
He also gave a response to CHMR’s station manager Rhea Rollman, who called out MUNSU for its $1 million loan to renovate the Breezeway.
He said “the Breezeway offers an amazing service, if you simply ask a student they’ll tell you that… they offer an amazing service as a venue for socialization, events, and a place to get drunk after 5pm classes, which I think it quite important for students, especially if they want to maintain a regular type of life… I think it would be quite unwise, in my opinion, to dunk on services that the student body uses regularly in order to get by their day-to-day lives.”
Business Representative
One of MUNSU’s business representatives, Jordan Dean, created the following visual:
Dean said “MUN provides different services. These are the seven main services, and the other category was too small to really mention. There’s a deficit… it is a big deficit. This is our pie, and 32% of it needs to go based on 2024 numbers, and that’s just to balance the budget.”
He continued “if you’ve got to cut 32.3% of this pie out, you can’t do that do that without reducing funding to the radio station.”
“I have spoken to many business students and other students over the past week and a half and unfortunately many are unaware of the service [CHMR], and I have to explain the whole situation because they’re just completely unaware. So that’s my stance, at least for the business faculty and business students, it’s not a service we use.”
Executive Director of Finance
MUNSU’s finance executive spoke about the Union’s current financial situation.
He said “thank you for the overwhelming support for CHMR. It means so much to me to see so much outpouring of love and support for CHMR. When I was elected into this role, MUNSU was in free fall. It still is. Right now we are at a juncture where, like, over next year, actually, if we don’t find a way to break even, then we will have to take out a loan, and then we all know how that path goes. We have another union on campus and we are all seeing what they are going through.”
“So, I have two choices, which is: do something now, or let this organization, the MUN Students Union, face bankruptcy in the next 2-3 years. This decision is not light at all, as the Executive Director of Finance and Services, I was elected to look over the finances of our services, but also the long term financial stability of the Union… and we don’t have anywhere else to go for our funding… our only source of revenue is student funds and our businesses. That’s it.”
Executive Director of External Affairs
MUNSU’s Director of External Affairs said “I fully understand the sentiment of someone on the board of CHMR who may have felt blindsided by this. But I mean, I think it’s really important to emphasize at the same time, because we have unionized staff members, that our consultation obligations would be an inappropriate space to talk about future jobs within that space.”
Many referred to a five-year plan CHMR originally proposed to MUNSU (Rollman also proposed a one-year plan on multiple occasions at the meeting). Gillingham’s response was “it does appear that we don’t really have time, and I think that’s what’s heaviest about this conversation. Our accountant had flagged just a couple of months ago that our bank account was getting so low that we might not even had enough money to pay our staff. That’s a dire condition. It causes a lot of stress amongst many of the current staff here as well.”
Student Life
MUNSU’s Director of Student Life didn’t actually speak during the public forum, but took to an Instagram comment section a day later, where he posted “I am seeing a lot of comments but not many from current students actually paying for this service. CHMR ran a community fundraiser and received a little over $300… If all the media and alumni in these comments who said they support CHMR put their money where their mouth is the union might not have had to make this decision.“
Responding to another comment, Colbran said “I don’t think it’s anyone’s “fault”. The cost has grown and the money from enrollment is down. The funds must come from somewhere. I am not expecting the community to fund CHMR but students shouldn’t either (as I see being suggested).”
“The comments, emails and responses I am seeing are clearly placing blame on the students who voted for the station’s closure as a MUNSU service. If they choose to place blame it also has to lie with the people who use the service without contributing. The fact of the matter is most students do not use the radio station – out of 11,000 students don’t you think more than 60 (not all of those were in support of the CHMR either btw) would have responded?”
“The students I have talked to all said they don’t use it and don’t understand why we are spending $300,000 on it. I do believe the motion passed on what the vast majority of students would have wanted. I would absolutely support a referendum to increase funding, let the students decide.”
Farhan Probandho, MUNSU’s director of finances, called out his colleague on the same Instagram post, and the two had a back and forth in the comments.
