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FEDS History

FEDS HISTORY: During John Lai's Presidency, in Fall 1998, FEDS made one of their periodic power grabs. They attempted to introduce a new clubs policy that would require all clubs to run their finances through FEDS, give FEDS ownership of all the clubs' assets, and generally, allow FEDS to micromanage each club in a very intrusive way. Many clubs objected to this, and John Lai led a series of joint meetings among CTRL-A and several other clubs, basically behind FEDS' back, to figure out what to do about the new policy. After those meetings, CTRL-A decided to become an independent organization, not part of FEDS. Documents relating to that split are in the "archive" box in the office. Other clubs remained in FEDS and attempted to get them to change their policy. The oral tradition (I wasn't able to find documentation on this) says that it was a coalition of WATSFIC, GLOW (Gays and Lesbians Of Waterloo), and the CCF (Chinese Christian Fellowship) - probably the only time those three groups ever agreed on anything - that finally talked FEDS down and got a better clubs policy in place. But by that time CTRL-A had long since separated.

During Eric Gerlach's Presidency (Winter and Summer 2003) he attempted a broad range of Constitutional reforms, including merging us back into being a FEDS club. By being a FEDS club we'd get some possible benefits including advertising opportunities and access to the newly-opened office spaces in the SLC. The FEDS administration at the time seemed relatively friendly towards us and willing to deal with us in a reasonable way. However, there were some issues that had to be resolved, including FEDS wanting clubs to be primarily for UW undergrad students, and us not wanting FEDS, at any time in the future when their administration might no longer be friendly, to be able to do the micromanagement thing that they tried in 1998. After a lot of negotiations within CTRL-A and between CTRL-A and FEDS, an agreement was drafted intended to secure CTRL-A's independence while allowing us to be a FEDS club. It includes exceptions to the FEDS policies to, for instance, allow us to keep a separate bank account, and for us to allow persons other that UW undergrads full membership rights. FEDS have since revised their clubs policy to allow grad students to participate in clubs in general anyway; at the time, grad students could only be "associate" members in most FEDS clubs. Non-students, or non-UW students, remain second-class members in most FEDS clubs.

Around the start of Matt Skala's Presidency (Summer 2004) FEDS acquired a new Clubs Director, Rick Theis. Like most FEDS Clubs Directors, he attempted to reform and make more "businesslike" FEDS's clubs procedures, and that included introduction of the FEDS Event Form, with minimal announcement or consultation (see Manipulation). In fairness to Rick, he also corrected some existing errors and streamlined some of the then-current silliness in the existing FEDS clubs policy. After some discussion within CTRL-A it was decided that we could not sign off on the FEDS Event Form in its then-current form because it purported to give FEDS the power to unilaterally cancel any of our events for any or no reason and leave us financially on the hook. Matt, and John Kooistra (then VP of CTRL-A) negotiated with Rick, using the FEDS Agreement as support, and he agreed to change the wording on the form to limit FEDS's power - in the new wording, they can at most cancel their own support and participation in an event, so that for instance if we were holding an event on FEDS property (such as in the Bomber) they could kick us out of there without refunding whatever rental we had paid. Even that seems like an awful lot of power, but it's power they think they need because of issues they've had with some other clubs, and since our events are not held on FEDS property anyway, it's a minimal concession from us. The important distinction is that they don't anymore have the power to actually cancel our event, if we can run it independently of them (as we always do anyway).