March 28, 2024

BY CHRIS HUSSEY

csi Students at some of Conestoga College’s satellite campuses are going to be asked to pay a little more next year.

At a board of directors meeting on Feb. 25, Conestoga Students Inc. (CSI) unanimously approved increasing the CSI Association Fee for students at the Guelph, Waterloo, Stratford, Brantford and Ingersoll campuses. Students attending the Guelph and Waterloo campuses will see an increase of $20, whereas students taking courses at the Stratford, Brantford and Ingersoll campuses will have an increase of $30.

Jeff Scherer, CSI president, said the amount of services and benefits that students at these campuses receive is worth a lot more than how much they pay.

“We provide services for these students exponentially more than they contribute,” he said.

The fees for students at the Doon and Cambridge campuses will not be increasing.

Along with the fee increases, the board also approved spending just over $7,000 to fund the digitization of Spoke, Conestoga College’s newspaper produced by second-year journalism students. In this context, digitization refers to the process of creating digital versions of materials to ease accessibility and protect the original materials. The newspaper has been in circulation for over 40 years and has documented significant moments throughout the college’s history. Thus, it has a lot of historical and sentimental value.

Daisy Collins, a staff member from the Library Resource Centre (LRC), presented the proposal to the board and said digitizing the newspaper would be something that would be of great value to the Conestoga community, especially with the college’s 50th anniversary taking place next year.

“It would really open up access to this important student publication,” she said.

The funding for this project would go toward hiring a student to complete the digitization process later this year. This student would be under the supervision of Christina Jonas, faculty adviser of Spoke.

Although the board approved funding this project, Brian Clark, a CSI director, suggested seeking funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF). The agency is Canada’s largest granting foundation, and awards $110 million annually to charitable organizations across Canada, according to their website.

Colin Gaudet, another director with CSI, said it was worth applying for funding through OTF as a way to fund this proposal.

“That’s an extra thing we should definitely be looking into for the students,” he said.

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