It is the governance issue that keeps on giving.
Vice-presidential election reform is back in the student politics spotlight after a petition was submitted to vice-president (Administration) earlier this year calling for VPs to be elected by the student body.
At the Oct. 16 meeting, the Student Representative Assembly debated what stance to take and why.
The discussion lasted two hours, and ultimately, the SRA recommends students vote no to vice-presidential reform. We explore the issue and arguments made.
Negative stance on vice-president at-large referendum
After two hours of discussion, the SRA took a negative stance on the topic. This means the SRA is recommending that students maintain the current system, where vice-presidents are elected by the SRA.
According to McMaster Students Union policy, the SRA must take a positive, neutral or negative stance on constitutional amendments.
At-large vice-presidential elections have been part of the MSU conversation for years.
In 2016, there was a vice-president referendum question put on the MSU Presidential ballot after an SRA member went to the 2015 MSU General Assembly – where most attendees were there for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement – and submitted a motion to make vice-presidents elected by the student body.
This move was met with social media backlash from some members of that SRA, but students voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion. However, the vote did not have quorum, so the motion went to the SRA.
The Student Mobilization Syndicate, a student group started in 2015 that aims to educate and empower students to advocate for themselves, ensured the referendum question would be on the ballot by circulating a petition and getting over 800 signatures.
Under the MSU governance structure, petitions that get three per cent of the student population’s signatures are brought to referendum.
The 2015-16 SRA chose to take a neutral stance on this issue, though the decision was contentious, with the MSU President saying he wanted the group to take a stance.
Despite 66.4 per cent of voters choosing “yes”, the referendum failed.
Constitutional amendments require a 66.7 per cent vote to pass. Of the 9,478 votes, 2,567 students abstained.
The call for nominations for SRA positions runs from Oct. 19-27, and official campaign sides will be announced.
There is a strong belief within MSU circles that there will be an official campaign that urges students to “vote yes” for the referendum, but there is less optimism about an official “vote no” side.
Why take a negative stance?
The motion was introduced by vice-president (Education) Blake Oliver and seconded by vice-president (Finance) Ryan MacDonald.
Oliver opened the conversation with her arguments about why the SRA should take a negative stance.
“Changing the process of electing VPs has not been a new conversation. Since 2012, there has been three different committees struck at the SRA level to investigate our democratic reform: one in 2012-13, one in 2013-14 and most recently in 2015-16,” said Oliver.
“[These three committees] recommended continuing to elect VPs in the internal process, with some modifications that were made this year.”
Oliver also noted other reasons for taking a negative stance: voter fatigue, at-large systems turning into popularity contests, the lack of student understanding of what the vice-president roles are and “communications from the student body”.
But Oliver discussed the role of sexism in an at-large system at length, noting that three women have been elected MSU President in the history of the union.
As the seconder, MacDonald made the argument that SRA members spend 15-25 hours talking to vice-president candidates ahead of the internal election, therefore creating a rigorous hiring process.
He also noted that at-large elections could negatively impact the effectiveness of the MSU.
“What happens when a vice-president (Education) is elected at-large with a completely different approach to advocacy than the president? I can tell you what’s going to happen. They are going to disagree all the time and nothing is going to get done,” said MacDonald.
Making the argument for a neutral stance
Not all SRA members believed that the group should take a negative stance.
Esra Bengizi, SRA Humanities and a former manager of the “vote yes” to vice-president reform side during the 2016 presidential campaign, introduced a motion for the SRA to stay neutral on the subject.
“I thought that it would be best to stay neutral that way we’re not influencing students how to vote, and they can make their own educated decision. Although I did speak in favour of VP at large several times, I thought it wasn’t in our position to tell students how to vote on this issue especially after seeing the results from last year,” said Bengizi, referring to 66.4 per cent of the voters voting “yes” to reform.
Bengizi was also critical of the decision because of the way it reflects the SRA.
Not all SRA members agreed on this issue, so making the SRA take a stance creates an unfair characterization of what some members think.
The SRA Humanities rep also believes the decision to take a negative stance “confirms the nepotism that we’ve been talking about”.
There is a belief amongst some who follow MSU politics that the current system reinforces the MSU bubble, meaning that people who are elected to vice-president positions have been working or involved with the union for years.
Bengizi was not alone in her desire to take a neutral stance. MSU president Justin Monaco-Barnes and vice-president (Administration) Shaarujaa Nadarajah both took a neutral stance, as well as some other SRA members.
This SRA meeting was not intended to be a debate between the “vote yes” and “vote no” sides, but there were compelling arguments made about the issue.
Video of the discussion can be found on the McMaster Students Union Livestream account, and the conversation starts around the 2:57:00 mark.
Sam Colbert
Managing Editor
After sending it to a committee for further review at a meeting almost a month prior, the Student Representative Assembly (SRA) ultimately decided on Feb. 5 that the McMaster Students Union (MSU) would not support the End the Ban campaign.
The campaign, which would be adopted from the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and its partner groups, is pushing Canadian Blood Services (CBS) to lift its lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have had sex with other men since 1977.
“Everyone felt that there needed to be a change in policy, and they felt that this was an issue that needed to be dealt with,” said MSU president, Matthew Dillon-Leitch. “The reason why we voted against supporting this motion was that we felt there was a better way for us to do it.”
Following the vote, six members walked out of the meeting, disappointed that the Assembly did not choose to support the cause.
“I was frustrated, and, to be honest, I was a bit ashamed of the MSU,” said Riaz Sayani-Mulji, who tabled the motion on Jan. 8 following a presentation with fellow SRA Health Sciences member Joshua Wiener.
CBS has a partnership with the students Union that allows the group to hold blood donation clinics on campus. Despite the cooperation, Sayani-Mulji stressed the growing base of support for End the Ban, which includes campus departments, politicians and national organizations.
“We’re not trying to demonize Canadian Blood Services,” he said. “That’s not what End the Ban does. It merely says that we have to be critical, and we have to be aware that there is a discriminatory practice in place that is not justified by science.”
Supporters of the campaign at McMaster have been circulating a petition in favour of its adoption, and received more than 1,000 signatures within one week.
The End the Ban campaign is run through a partnership between CFS, Canadian AIDS Society and Égale Canada, an LGBT human rights organization.
The three groups have been working together on the issue since 1998, and initiated the campaign in 2007 to further propel their initiatives.
Given the non-political mandate of the MSU’s Queer Students Community Centre (QSCC), as well as the cooperation between the Student Health Education Centre (SHEC) and CBS, some representatives were questioned how the campaign would be run.
Additionally, concerns were raised regarding the support of a campaign held on behalf of CFS, given that it is a rival lobbying group to the ones that represent the MSU.
“We didn’t really feel comfortable going through a third-party lobbying organization,” said Dillon-Leitch.
He added, “Our own services and our own staff weren’t quite comfortable with the way things were worded in that campaign. We felt that we could effectively get the message out that we wanted to get out there and be in control of that message.”
Nabil Khaja, a first-year student in Science, earned a spot on the Student Representative Assembly (SRA) after winning in a by-election in mid-October. Though he was part of his high school’s student council, he’s now learning that the SRA operates a little differently.
“It’s very political,” he said. “It’s not like your typical high school student council. Everyone has a political stance and goals that they’re looking to further.”
Khaja says that not only has there been difference of opinion, but difference of perceived purpose for the Assembly.
“We’re all people working toward good goals, but there’s not total consensus on what the ultimate goal or direction should be that I see clearly right now,” he said.
Unlike in years past, this SRA, for better or for worse, is looking outside the services and operations of the McMaster Students Union (MSU), which it is charged with governing. There’s a group of members committed to bringing broader issues of social justice to the attention of the Assembly, encouraging it to take a stand on behalf of students.
Some members see this as a progressive break-away from the ‘status quo’ mentality of past assemblies. Others are asking whether this is really what McMaster students want or need. As SRA elections continue to receive low voter turnout, there’s disagreement among members on how to make their student government relevant, especially since most of the day-to-day work is being done by full-time employees.
Meanwhile, petty arguments and personal attacks during meetings further slow progress. Members are picking sides, applauding for friends and snickering at political opponents. For some involved, its been a major source of frustration.
Standing alone
At the Nov. 13 SRA meeting, some debate sparked after a motion from SRA Social Science Ryan Sparrow, which suggested that the MSU officially stand in support of Quebec student protesters, who are fighting 75 per cent tuition hikes.
“I think as a student union, we should be cognizant of the struggles that are going on across Canada, even throughout the world at times,” said Sparrow in an interview.
The motion, though, outlined no other plan for action. “There was really no other direction that went along with it, but it’s up to students and the McMaster community to determine what they want to do with a stance like this,” said Sparrow.
“The SRA, in recent years, has been viewed as a body that mostly deals with internal issues … like what happens with TwelvEighty, Union Market; Bread Bin’s another big one this year,” said Chris Erl, SRA Humanities. “This [resolution] kind of gets us looking to the outside world into the larger student movement, as opposed to simply within the MSU.”
He added, “This year, the politicization has, I think, exponentially increased our relevance in the eyes of students and the conflict that comes along with that.”
Matt Wright, a former SRA member and runner up in last year’s MSU presidential election, was in attendance at the meeting as an observer. It was after the motion that he rose, simply to explain that if a Social Science member on the Assembly did something that was not in the interests of his or her constituents (of which Wright is one), there were procedures in place for recall of that member.
Sparrow asked MSU Speaker Jeff Wyngaarden, who chairs the meetings, if there was any way to have Wright removed from the room. But before the idea could get anywhere, Wright left on his own.
“I have no idea what students want,” said Simon Granat, SRA Social Sciences, speaking about making the SRA relevant to students. “I’m guessing. I’m trying to give it my best guess, but I’m guessing … I think right now, the focus is very broad; we’re talking about everything and the kitchen sink, but we don’t know what of all that is a student concern.” He also noted that “the focus of the Assembly this year is really split” between internal matters of MSU operations and broader social justice issues.
Granat has tried to keep focus on internal issues like student hunger, quality of teaching and study space. “Those aren’t glorious issues. No one’s going to praise us for them, but they’re things that are really going to help people,” he said.
Playing nice
Before Wright brought up the possibility of recall, he was sitting at the back of the room as an observer. He wrote on his Facebook wall, “SRA 2011/2012 is my new favourite TV show. Except the characters suck because they can't seem to remember their rehearsed lines. And the plot doesn't really make sense. And there isn't really any drama except for people tripping over their ego. I would've cancelled after the pilot.”
The post received 28 likes and 44 comments, many of which were made during the meeting, some by SRA members.
Facebook commentary was not isolated to Wright’s post. Earlier in the meeting, the Speaker asked that all members of the SRA leave their laptops and phones at the front of the room during the meeting. Sarah Ali, member of the Social Science caucus, responded by saying that there were members of the Assembly that had family in the hospital, and that she wanted to keep her phone on her in case her family tried to contact her. Other members asked to keep their laptops in case they needed to look up information relevant to the meeting. For those reasons, Wyngaarden allowed them to keep their devices.
During the meeting, Ali posted a derogatory remark on Facebook about VP-Administration Katie Ferguson regarding points she had made. The post has since been deleted.
Toward the end of the meeting, SRA Science Andrea Somers addressed the behaviour of other members. Somers declined interview, wishing to not worsen the situation, but did explain that “I rose on a point of privilege and called for a little more respect and decorum around the table. I stated that I personally believe that in order to function as a unified body we need to start with respecting each other.”
At the meeting, she spoke passionately, to the point of yelling, according to other members. Social Science representative Samira Sayed Rahman responded in a similar tone, asking Somers to speak more quietly.
During a role call at the end of meeting, Sayed Rahman acknowledged her name with the tongue-in-cheek response, “Don’t cry at meetings,” directed at Somers.
“Personal attacks have absolutely no place in the assembly at all,” said Granat. “Voter apathy is high, and I think this is one of the reasons why ... [students] are just going to tune out and say that we’re completely useless.”
According to reports, motions to censure have been coming forward, though it’s not yet known who the targets are. The censure process involves singling members of the Assembly out for their behaviour, allowing other members to air grievances about the person before voting on whether or not to officially label their actions as inappropriate.
The matter will be addressed at the next meeting on Nov. 27.
