The Students’ Union, University of Calgary (commonly abbreviated to UCSU) is the undergraduate students’ association of the University of Calgary. With origins in the students’ council of the Calgary Normal School, the UCSU was established in its current incarnation by the Universities Act of 1966, which incorporated the University of Calgary as a separate entity from the University of Alberta.
A non-profit organization with an annual budget of $12 million CAD, the UCSU is led by students who are elected democratically by the undergraduate student body to serve one-year terms. The UCSU provides student services, manages on-campus businesses, and conducts student-focused advocacy before various tiers of government and external bodies.
History
1905-1944: Calgary Normal School Once Alberta became a province in 1905, its Legislative Assembly decided that Calgary would house Alberta’s first teacher training institute, the Calgary Normal School. Early student government at the school consisted of two committees, the Literary and Athletic Executives, composed of students elected to represent their peers in academic and extracurricular matters. By the 1920s, student representation was performed by one consolidated student council. Students elected representatives for their individual classes, as well as a president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and an official school pianist. Elections occurred twice each academic year, one in fall and one in spring, owing to the duration of courses at the school.
1945-1947: Becoming an undergraduate association
In 1945, all three Normal Schools in Alberta were absorbed by the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education. The Calgary school became formally known as its Faculty of Education in Calgary, and informally known as the Calgary Branch. Although the Students’ Union of the University of Alberta (UASU) initially assumed it would take on the duty of providing student representation at the Calgary Branch, students in Calgary protested against surrendering their own student council and paying the UASU's association fees. Such was the Branch’s desire to retain control over its activities and yearbook that the UASU sent one of its Vice-Presidents, Catherine Pierce, from Edmonton to Calgary in November 1945. She negotiated with the council under John “Jack” Black, president of the Calgary Branch’s student council for its fall 1945 term.
A compromise was struck between UASU and Black’s administration. UASU refunded half of the fees paid by the Calgary students and the Calgary Branch retained its own Calgary Students' Union (CSU), though its governing council would have to operate within the bounds of UASU’s constitution. Furthermore, the Calgary campus would again publish an independent edition of its yearbook. As Black’s term marked a change in the purpose of student governance from providing for trainee teachers to providing for undergraduates, the modern-day Students’ Union considers Black to be its first President.
The practice of electing a council twice a year persisted from Normal School tradition until 1947. Afterwards, students elected to the CSU’s council served one-year terms. The CSU’s council also changed its structure to align with UASU’s constitution. The top four positions of its governing council were now President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary. The rest of the council consisted of the yearbook’s editor, a social convener, representatives for the Industrial Arts programs offered by the branch, and Literary and Athletic representatives. The Calgary Branch also imported the controversial Wauneita Society from the UASU, a quasi-sorority women’s interest group. This society selected its own president, who received a de facto seat on the Calgary Students’ Council.
The council’s role evolved into chiefly overseeing the financial side of planning and maintaining student events or amenities. It therefore established subcommittees in 1948 to execute plans and policies. One such subcommittee was the University Athletic Board, which provided practical support such as equipment repairs to sports teams. The council delegated professional development activities to the Educational Undergraduate Society. Some campus clubs endured from the Normal School, and some new ones began. There were clubs for students interested in theatre, choir, debate, philosophy, and religion. Physical activities students could participate in included ping pong, basketball, bowling, hockey, cheerleading, and folk dancing. A club for veterans of the Second World War opened for staff and student alike. The CSU also oversaw the introduction of a campus newspaper.
1948-1957: Initial steps towards autonomy Dr. Andrew Doucette became the Calgary Branch's director in 1947. An engineering graduate from Nova Scotia, he had entered teaching and worked at the Calgary Normal School before enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1940. Having attained the rank of Major, he had recently returned from serving in Europe at the time of his appointment as director. That year also saw Frederick Cartwright elected president of the students' council. Cartwright, the son of two deaf parents, would go on to become Superintendent of the Alberta School for the Deaf. Doucette and Cartwright would work towards securing greater autonomy for the branch.
In the summer of 1948, Cartwright’s administration requested that changes be made to the UASU’s constitution, so that the Calgary branch could have its own Committee on Student Affairs. This Edmonton-based committee, made of delegates from the UASU and University of Alberta leadership, supervised matters of student discipline and welfare across all of the university's campuses. Despite the rocky start in 1945, relations between the CSU and UASU were good enough that the UASU supported the proposal, and the university's board of governors ratified the changes in 1949. Thus, in an early step towards self-governance, the Calgary Branch established its own student affairs committee.
In the winter of 1948, Doucette met with the Calgary University Committee, a pressure group of Calgarians who wanted to see an autonomous university in their city. Doucette encouraged them by sharing what he believed the branch would need in order to introduce university-level Arts and Science programs, which would expand the Branch from being a single Faculty of Education.
Following these developments, Doucette and Cartwright travelled to the University of Alberta's main campus together in early 1949 to report on the Branch’s progress. A University of Calgary institutional report would later reflect on Doucette and Cartwright’s work as having impressed authorities in Edmonton enough that they began giving serious consideration to calls by Calgary community activists for the city’s Branch to house multiple Faculties. Indeed, between 1952 and 1957, the Calgary Branch expanded to offer undergraduate programs in Arts, Science, Engineering, and Physical Education. Having become a university branch rather than a single faculty of education, the school was renamed to the University of Alberta in Calgary (UAC) in 1957.
1958-1966: Attaining autonomy In 1958, the provincial government found that the UAC had outgrown the building it shared with the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art and ordered construction of a new campus. UAC moved to this campus, the present-day site of the University of Calgary, in 1960. The CSU occupied the basement of the Arts building, accompanied by offices for the yearbook, campus newspaper, and a bookstore. The construction of an independent campus was the realization of a dream for Andrew Doucette, who was now facing ill health. Forced to scale back his duties, he was disappointed that he could not serve as the branch’s first president at its new location, though he remained with the institution until 1961 to acclimate incoming president Malcolm Taylor. The CSU dedicated the first edition of the yearbook published on the new campus to Doucette.
A Committee on Student Affairs was also established for the Calgary campus that year. Walter Johns, President of the University of Alberta, described the student body as “increasingly competent and responsible” at managing their own affairs. Indeed, the composition of the Calgary Students’ Union’s governing council evolved to represent the various faculties now on campus. Students continued to elect a President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer, though they now voted for Faculty Representatives for Engineering, Commerce, and Education; Arts and Science students were represented by one Faculty Representative. Other positions included coordinators responsible for overseeing cultural matters, athletics, women’s affairs, and public relations. Finally, students elected a representative of the Calgary campus for the National Federation of Canadian University Students.
Although the appetite for an independent university remained, the CSU did not actively pursue the matter until October 1963, when Walter Johns declared that an autonomous University of Calgary would be “useless and uncalled for.” This made the front page of the Calgary Herald, as Johns' statement attracted the ire of students and staff alike at the Calgary campus. The CSU held a referendum on November 22, 1963, asking students to vote on whether they wished for the Calgary branch to achieve “complete academic and administrative autonomy” from the University of Alberta; 78.5% voted yes. Johns, in turn, blamed the conduct of Calgarians for causing “bitterness and bad feeling on both sides which should not have occurred.”
Rising tension between Calgary and Edmonton spooked some student councillors, who feared the University of Alberta would retaliate by withholding their degrees. The CSU nonetheless continued supporting independence efforts in 1964, selling stickers and badges emblazoned with slogans in favour of autonomy to fund its work. By one account, these made their way on to Johns’ car in Edmonton.
The University of Alberta’s Board of Governors ultimately responded by granting the Calgary branch two independent governance bodies in late 1964. The branch would receive its own General Faculties Council, responsible for academic affairs and the supervision of student affairs; and its own Senate, responsible for external relations. This was still insufficient to pacify the Calgary University Committee, which petitioned the province to revisit the idea of granting the Calgary campus independence.
The University of Alberta subsequently recommended a full separation between both institutions, prompting the Government of Alberta to introduce a bill to that end in 1966. On April 15, 1966, royal assent was given to the Universities Act. The University of Calgary became an independent institution, and the Students’ Union, University of Calgary was incorporated as its official undergraduate representative.
Finances The UCSU derives 10% of its operating revenue from student fees and 90% from its own commercial activity. This allows UCSU to charge one of the lowest students’ association fees in Canada as of 2019, at $65 per academic year for an average full-time undergraduate. The UCSU has traditionally put any and all fee increases to a vote, even when continuing to offer services without an increase would mean operating at a loss, such as the referendum on increasing its Health and Dental Plan in 2022. As such, the UCSU’s core operating student fee has not increased since 1995. Annual financial audits are available on its website.
MacEwan Hall