Impeachment Petition Delivered to SFSS
Students for a Democratic University (of which I am a member) today delivered a petition containing 2,541 signatures to the Simon Fraser Student Society, petitioning for a Special General Meeting for certain purposes (which you can read here.) Less than 1,500 signatures were required to force such a Special General Meeting, according to the organization's bylaws.
This letter was accompanied by a cover letter [PDF] outlining the SFSS's legal responsibilities with respect to this petition.
Also, one can find several news items, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor on this issue in this week's Peak.
Students for a Democratic University (of which I am a member) today delivered a petition containing 2,541 signatures to the Simon Fraser Student Society, petitioning for a Special General Meeting for certain purposes (which you can read here.) Less than 1,500 signatures were required to force such a Special General Meeting, according to the organization's bylaws.
This letter was accompanied by a cover letter [PDF] outlining the SFSS's legal responsibilities with respect to this petition.
Also, one can find several news items, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor on this issue in this week's Peak.
Labels: sfu
10 Comments:
Titus!
The link is not working.
Thanks.
The link should be fixed now.
thanks
Is it just me or is the whole idea of a "Special General Meeting" a bunch of direct-democracy-60s hog-wash? Many student unions have them, but I have never understood how they actually encourage democratic legitimacy. It is not a referendum (in which everyone has an equal chance to make their statement), nor is it normal representative democracy. It is something in-between, something which can be controlled by someone with an agenda (as it was, for instance at Kwantlen) who can mobilize a couple of hundred people for a couple of hours. Beloved of 60s syndicalists, they are a weird hangover that bypasses normal democractic procedures and leaves institutions open to hi-jack.
This is *not* a comment on the cause at issue at SFU - it is simply a comment on governance at student unions. Good governance is difficult enough at organizations with high personnel turn-over without this kind of opportunity for rabble-rousers, cloaking themselves in pious "democratic" clothing, to bypass normal democratic procedures
Good luck! It's about time student executives learned a lesson that they are voted in to uphold principals, not derail an organizaiton for their own personal beliefs and platforms.
General Meetings (of all sorts) are the standard means by which decisions are made in ordinary societies.
When it comes to students' unions, however, there are three disadvantages of general meetings. First, students' unions are mandatory membership organizations, so there may be a large number of members who may be sufficiently motivated to vote in referenda, but not sufficiently motivated to attend general meetings. Second, not all students can attend a particular general meeting (due to classes, etc.), whereas referenda are generally held over a period of several days. Third, it is difficult and cumbersome for decisions to be made by a very, very large group of people, of whom many might not be familiar with the issues at hand.
There are significant disadvantages to referenda, however. The primary disadvantage is that referenda do not allow amendments to motions - either the members support the proposal in its entirety or they don't.
In the SFSS, increases and decreases in fees can only be done by referenda, while bylaw amendments and impeachments can only be done at general meetings. Other students' unions are different: the Alma Mater Society of UBC can amend their bylaws by referenda; the Alma Mater Society of Queen's University can increase/decrease fees at a general meeting; and Alberta students' unions don't have any general meetings whatsoever (thanks to the Post-Secondary Learning Act of Alberta).
The requirement to have an SGM is actually written in statute (the Society Act) not in the student union's internal governance.
Nonetheless, I think General Meetings are a good thing: they allow for public debate and a higher level of democratic participation than referenda. Tyrants will always find ways to avoid rules. General Meetings are no more open to hi-jacking than any other form of democratic decision-making.
-KT
But at least with referenda the question is known long in advance and permits informed debate. In general Meetings, motions can come out of left field for all kinds of bullshit (I seem to recall one GM out west where the engineers pushed through a motion altering the constitution so as to change the name of the position of "President" to "the Big Enchilada" .
The same is true of council meetings of course, but most constitutions have some kind of mechanism to limit the damage that a council can do short (no changing the constitution, etc.).
Still - let me float this idea: events like the Kwantlen morass are dangerous for *all* student unions. Eventually, somebody in Canada - probably a Tory - will latch on to the voluntary student unionism stuff from Australia and make the case that student unions are irresponsible, spendthrift, etc using cases like Kwantlen (or VCC, or any number of scandals at Concordia) as evidence. The ability to wingnuts to circumvent both representative democracy (council) and direct demorcacy (referenda) would undoubtedly come into play.
Were this to happen, all student unions would be in deep shit beause they would no longer be able to count on $ from students. To forestall this - don't people think it is time that student unions got together and started to talk more seriously about what constiutes good governance? By publicly adopting and adhering to certain standards of governance, student unions could probably ward off the possibility of voluntary student unionism. Think of it as an insurance policy against childishness - if student unions as a whole set up a mechanism to police "good governance" (think of it as an accreditation body) and award or strip "good governance" status to each student organization, it could act as an external check on the excesses of what someone on this thread called "the tyrants".
And then Titus and co wouldn't be forced to go to an SGM to redress such an obvious lapse in governance as occurred at SFU...
Comments?
The student union movement is in real need for this debate, you are right, Anonymous.
However, Titus is correct that AGMs are standard procedures for all non-profit societies, and indeed for public corporations generally. I like the fact that they afford an opportunity for face-to-face dialogue on issues, and make it impossible for an elected body to hide behind closed doors all the time.
All that said, debate about governance at student unions is exactly why I, and everyone I know in the movement, both left and right, pro and anti CFS, reads the studentunion.ca site every day!
I totally agree we need more of it. And I think it would be great for student unions to seek such debate and training within the broader non-profit community. The united way, for example, offers board training workshops right across the country, and in such workshops, student union board members would meet people on all sorts of boards, and with tons of experience to learn from. Those on student union boards tend to be less experienced, and mentoring from someone who has served 15 years on community boards can be invaluable.
But the difference between student unions and other non-profits is precisely the compulsory nature of student union membership. It is one thing when voluntary dues paying members of an association decide things by AGM...it is completely anothe when membership is compulsory. To my knowledge, labour unions (probably the legal entities whch resemble student unions the most) do not decide internal matters via AGM - they do it via ballot of all members (direct democracy) or through meetings of the local presidents (indirect democracy). I'm no expert but I bet if you go back in union history, you will find that the reason they did this was precisely to take power away from demagogues.
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