April 12, 2007 THE CADRE + 7

CAMPUS

2 Presence in Ottawa - Based on office and support staff present in the Ottawa in each organization. 3. Auxiliary Services - The service provided by each organization, aside from advocacy. 4, Voting Structure - Based on the ability for each school to vote on internal policy of the Organization. > Cost - The cost of fees collected by each organization.

For the criteria of regional representation, the committee considered two aspects: local offices of the organization, and membership of the organization within the schools of the region. The CFS has a representative in every province, whereas CASA divides the country into three regions, and has two representatives in each of those regions.

It was discussed that it is advantageous that the CFS has a representative in each province in that PEI would have a dedicated representative, while it was also advantageous that CASA had representation divided among three regions evenly, thus ensuring that Atlantic Canada has an equal voice and effect to that of the other regions, despite being smaller in population.

In terms of member schools, it was found that an over-whelming majority of the larger Atlantic Canadian schools were members of CASA, and as a result, that Atlantic Canada is an important and influential part of CASA.

As aresult, the committee found that CASA held an advantage over the CFS in terms of regional representation. - |

For presence in Ottawa, CASA’s staff includes an Office Manager, Policy and Research Officer, Government Relations Officer, Member Relations Officer, and Public Relations and Communication Officer. The CFS Ottawa staff includes a Director of Organising, Director of Services, Government Relations Coordinator and a Researcher. While this means CASA has one additional Officer staffer than the CFS, the committee agreed that neither organization held a considerable advantage over the other on that basis.

When the committee discussed auxiliary services it was decided that this was not to be one of the key factors in our decision, as we had agreed that the main goal of our discussion was to ensure that the voice of the UPEI SU was heard in Ottawa. There are several services boasted on the

_CFS website, but it was found that most of these were available to all students, whether members of the CFS or not. In addition to this, the committee discussed that several of the services seemed geared towards an older demographic of students than undergraduates, who make up the majority of the UPEI SU membership. But again, as the main goal of our research was to find how our organization could be best represented on the national level.

Voting structure was the fourth criteria we examined, and it was found that both organizations allow one vote to each school member. This ensures that the UPEI SU would have an influence on the policy and initiatives within either organization. Being that CASA is the smaller organization, this would give UPEL, and the Atlantic region as a while a more powerful voice, but again, we felt that neither organization conclusively had an edge in this respect.

As for the cost of both organizations, it was estimated that membership within CASA would cost approximately $2.40 a year per student. For membership with the CFS, it was estimated that each