SFSS nonsense
Lately i’ve been participating in the effort to impeach several members of the Simon Fraser Student Society board of directors. On wednesday there was a Special General Meeting (SGM) where a total of 1028 students participated in impeaching the “G7″ group of seven directors. The vote to impeach the president was 724 in favour, and only 6 against. With such overwhelming support for impeachment, you’d think the story would be over by now, but sadly it’s not.
Before i get into the current details, i’ll give a bit of background. The original wrong-doings have been almost forgotten, but what initially got me up in arms was the semi-secret firing of Hattie Aitken, a long-time employee of the SFSS. Hattie had been an employee for 26 years and had helped me personally and the Computing Science Student Society (and others) on many occasions, so i wondered what would cause her to be fired. I started attending board meetings, where i was soon distracted by the arrogant infraction of bylaws by the so-called G7. I saw many grad students and staff members make proposals for how various problems could start to be resolved, and the G7 just kept thumbing their noses. After puting up with a lot of bullshit from the directors, an impeachment campaign began in september.
The impeachment campaign consisted initially of gathering signatures on a petition to have an SGM where we could vote yes or no for impeachment. According to the SFSS bylaws, if anyone gathers the signatures of at least 5% of the student body to request an SGM, then the board of directors is forced to call an SGM. In our case, signatures were gathered from 9.8% of SFU students, far beyond the 5% required….but the G7 members of the board refused to call the meeting. This got quite a few people really pissed off, regardless of their opinion about all the other complicated events that had occurred in the summer, before and after the firing of Hattie.
As a next step, members of the Student Forum (made up of departmental representatives) planned to bring a motion up at the next Forum meeting to call the SGM. The Forum meeting was scheduled for September 27th, but just before it happened, Glyn Lewis (one of the G7, and the Member Services Officer at the time) tried to claim that the meeting was cancelled. According to the SFSS bylaws, no one has the power to unilaterally cancel a Forum meeting. It only gets cancelled if, at the time of the meeting, not enough people show up to meet the quorum requirements. Fortunately, Forum members ignored Glyn’s ruse and showed up anyway. They had quorum at the meeting, and after a lot of discussion about the issues, they unanimously passed a motion to call an SGM with impeachment of the G7 on the agenda.
The next attempted dirty trick came several days later when the G7 met and called the Annual General Meeting for the exact same date and time that the SGM had already been called on, as a blatant attempt to confuse students into not attending the SGM. Also, they called it on exactly the last day possible, according to the rules. There’s a minimum amount of notice that they must give for an AGM, and they had exactly that many days from when they voted to call it. This meant that no one could add anything to the AGM agenda (such as impeachment motions), because it was already past the minimum notice time when everyone else found out about the AGM. Despite this, the G7 advertised the AGM as a place where students could express their concerns and discuss impeachment, and they also claimed that the SGM was invalid due to the idiotic false claim that the Forum meeting had been cancelled. AND, besides this, the AGM was scheduled to occur in the East Gym, where fire regulations forbid limit the room to fewer occupants than are required for quorum to occur (500 people required for quorum).
So, along came the day of the SGM (wednesday, october 25th, 2006). The AGM was attended by around 60 people, many of which were the non-student friends and family of the G7. The SGM was attended by 1028 people in total, at various times. I think the highest simultaneous count was around 775. Only 500 people were required at the SGM for it to achieve quorum. As a note, it’s been about 10 years since any General Meeting has achieved quorum at SFU, including an attempt a few years back to bribe students with a half-chicken dinner if they came. The last quorate meeting was 10 years ago for the “Pornogate” scandal, where the student president was impeached for viewing porn on the office computers.
At the SGM, we passed motions to impeach all 7 of the G7. The tallies can be seen on studentunion.ca, and they were overwhelmingly in favour of impeachment for all 7. The only one that had significant opposition was the vote to impeach Erica Halpern, who had originally been elected as an independent, but later collaborated with the “Common Sense” slate and was named as part of the “G7″ who were causing the problems. the motion to impeach erica had 60 people opposed and 382 in favour…still over the 75% required to impeach. The other G7 people had 22 supporters or less, and usually had 500-600 people voting for impeachment.
Now here’s the thing that REALLY pisses me off…despite these overwhelming results, the G7 continue to pretend that they are still in office. They won’t give up their keys, they won’t give up signing authority for the $1.5M bank accounts, they won’t stop coming into the Board of Directors’ office. What do they hope to gain? I can’t understand it. To protest their moronic actions, about 40 of us went to have a “tea party” in their office on friday. One student said that if they can still claim to be president and treasurer, etc, then he could claim to be the Queen of Canada. He then started serving us tea, wearing a cardboard tiara.
We spent the rest of the afternoon ridiculing the G7 impeached directors, but they wouldn’t leave. We’re in the process of coming up with escalating strategies for the coming week. Since the school administration and campus security refuse to do anything about it, we’ll have to wait for a court ruling before we can get them to throw them out. It’ll waste many thousands of dollars if we have to wait for the lengthy court process.
anyway, for further info on all this, check the following links:
Ride hard, ride free
October 29th, 2006 at 01:13 am
Actually, people were allowed to propose special resolutions to be considered at the AGM for a week after it was called (so that such resolutions would have 2 weeks notice), but nobody did, given that an SGM had already been called with those resolutions that were of the greatest interest to students on the agenda already…
October 29th, 2006 at 06:42 am
Noah:
Actually, SFSS Bylaws *and* the Society Act require 21 day notice of the proposed motions and their wordings in the case of the motions that we passed at the SGM. No one knew when the AGM was going to be, so no one had a chance to submit said motions.
Last year, the AGM was called well in advance, and there was an advertised time period where one could add a motion to the agenda.
This year, nothing but obfuscating tactics.
October 29th, 2006 at 06:52 am
No, a special resolution has to be added before the AGM is called. Regular points could have been added but not special resolutions
November 17th, 2006 at 20:45 pm
SFSS Impeachment Email Campaign, Pass It On!
As everyone is well aware, a large portion of the SFU student body recently voted to impeach several directors of the SFSS. Glyn Lewis, Margo Dunnet, Vanessa Kelly, Wei Li, Erica Halpern, and Marion Pollock have all refused to respect the wishes of the students and step down. This has resulted in legal action and SFSS bank accounts being frozen. As mentioned in the “member update†this week in The Peak, until this financial matter is resolved no departmental student unions or clubs will receive funding. Also, as they failed to mention, the Student Society’s food services (Higher Grounds, the Highland Pub, The Ladle, and catering) have been comprised because the commercial suppliers of these services are not being paid. This will inevitably result in these operations being shut down and in the layoff of Student Society employees. Plus, possibly no beer on campus.
In their “member update,†Margo Dunnet, Glyn Lewis, Wei Li, Vanessa Kelly, Marion Pollock and Erica Halpern state that they are trying to find an “acceptable resolution†to end this situation. They mention that several alternatives have been offered, but say that these alternatives would put staff signing officers in difficult positions that may result in disciplinary action. What exactly are these alternatives? Why would these alternatives result in disciplinary action for SFSS staff? This is ridiculous; it is not the job of the SFSS to protect their staff from disciplinary action; that is the job of the Union. Why would disciplinary action even be an issue? The only reason that comes to mind is retaliatory action from the impeached board members should they be returned to office. I have yet to hear any reasonable explanation why the impeached directors are not relinquishing their signing authority while the matter is being settled in court. If they truly desire to remain in a “caretaker†role, then they should start taking care of the people they are responsible for.
The so-called G7 also stated in their latest “member update†that they will abide by whatever decision the court makes. One has to wonder why they did not abide by the decision of the 1028 students who voted to impeach them. Even if the SGM is deemed to have been invalid, does that invalidate our voices and displeasure with their actions? Do they think that we will not call another meeting and re-impeach them? Based on their actions following the impeachment I find it hard to believe that they will abide by any decision that does not suit their personal needs.
Whatever the courts decide on this matter, one thing is clear, the actions of the impeached members of the student society, and those that support them, since the SGM are clearly negligent. Their actions are not protecting staff; it is putting their livelihoods in jeopardy. Their actions are not in the best interests of students; they are only seeking to save their own skins. In my opinion these negligent actions and inaction are impeachable offences and if the courts do invalidate the SGM, I will do whatever is necessary to ensure that these members are impeached again.
It is time the students speak up again, as it would appear that we were not heard the first time. If you feel the same way, pass this on to your friends, add your name to this letter, and forward it to:
pres@sfss.ca
atlarge1@sfss.ca
atlarge2@sfss.ca
ero@sfss.ca
iro@sfss.ca
treas@sfss.ca
A Concerned Student,
Theresa Hughes