CMUSC Presidency

Between writing papers and working at the pool, I have mused about running for the presidency of the Canadian Mennonite University's Student Council. Right now I am the Returning Student representative on CMUSC and my accomplishments reach beyond voicing student concerns at council meetings.

The Canadian Mennonite University is approaching, what I believe, to be a very complex and critical junction in it's history. With Mennonite Church Canada cutting it's funding to CMU considerably over the last three years, and further cuts foreseen (from around 350,000/year to 180,000/year) and the Mennonite Brethren Conference of Manitoba already cutting their entire funding to CMU (leaving funding the responsibility of individual churches, which is a loss of 200,000/year - that is, unless the churches can make all this up) the administration is at the very whim of the churches who support our institution and therefore, the direction in which our growth is going to take is a particular one.

Some debate on whether or not churches are going to support CMU has to do with the types of classes CMU is offering. If we are going to offer more "secular" classes then some churches may not be so inclined to donate money to us, or they would be apathetic (or encourage) funding cuts to CMU because of such programming. Some churches want us to be a bible college again, others wish us to be a music college, a select few wish to see us as a University with a multitude of degrees varying in the arts, theology, philosophy, and the sciences.

For the reasons above, I was not too surprised when our Computer Science B.A was cut from our programming this year and to see the expansion of our Music department. Also, there are rumors of our Athletic dept. cutting a varsity team from their budget simply because they do not have the funding necessary to keep up all their sports. Meanwhile we are short two full-time biblical and theological professors.

How to make up all this money? More students. How to attract more students? Offer a variety of courses and degree programs! But in this process we may dilute our Mennonite student population and replace it with more protestant/Anabaptist students of various denominations. I have no problem with that, as long as our Mennonite identity does not go out with the decrease of Mennonite students.

This is where my candidacy for President of the CMUSC comes into play. As a concerned student about the rise of tuition, cuts to programs, and decreased funding from MC Canada and MB Manitoba; lead me to believe that our growth is not going to be decided how the students and the administration want it to, unless we get involved.

Preserving our Mennonite identity is central to the issue of what kind of an institution we want to be. That being said, we cannot limit ourselves to Biblical/Theological/Musical programming if we wish to gain MORE students. For us to gain more students we need more programming, and for more programming we need the conferences support. Christians receiving a B.A in Computer Science from a Christian institution will not only give them the education they need to find work in the secular world, but will help their spiritual lives grow and make them better witness' to their workplaces. Not to mention that the better educated a Christian is in theology, the better Christian they will be.

On March 15-16th students will have a chance to vote for me to be their next student council president. Advocating for more dialogue between our institution and the conferences who support us, to give CMU the support we need to become Canada's best Christian University.