Student Politics

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Yesterday like hundreds of fellow UQAM students, I occupied the J-A. De Sève building. Like hundreds of my fellow students, I occupied my university to send a simple and clear message to a megalomaniac and intransigent administration,.completely high on power administration; a dignified university; and a post-secondary educational institution that calls itself such belongs first and foremost to the students and the teachers.

Yesterday, I couldn’t have been prouder of being a UQAM student. I was proud of my fellow students, of the ecstatic sense of solidarity that filled the air, and of being part of it. Yesterday, I couldn’t have been prouder of my teachers, who stood arm in arm with us on the front lines and denounced the presence of anti-riot squads within our campus.

Applying to university many people look for prestige, for a name on a diploma. I applied to UQAM because UQAM fights, because education is more than just sitting in a classroom, because we learn as we struggle, as we fight together.

Today, the mainstream media, as per habit, will rain down blame and accusations on the students, those “ragged bunch of anarchists” and “masked terrorists” who rampaged and put to fire and sword our beloved university. There will be calls across the board to put an end to the “violence” and “intimidation.”

But let’s be clear here. Is there any violence that is symbolically or quantitatively more violent than that of university administration calling on riot-cops to club and charge their own students? Within a university, there isn’t greater violence than that of silencing dissident voices!

Certainly, however, there have been excesses at UQAM and that’s the excesses of the administration, that isn’t recognized by those it supposedly represents!

Like many in the past weeks, I have been discouraged and demoralized by the internal fighting that has plagued our movement, in particular surrounding the former executive of ASSÉ. This harmed the movement and the articulation of our message more than anything else.

Some have said we’re in need of a unifying moment, we found such a moment yesterday!

To all of those who don’t want to get involved, unfortunately you have no other choice – we collectively have no other choice. Either we take full repossession of our university – we re-take what is rightfully ours – or we capitulate at the feet of a logic of commodification that uses brute force to impose its world view. Either we uphold the democratic decisions of our student association, our student democracy, and the right for students to have a say in their education, or we lose democracy altogether!

To civil society, to those that are students, but not students of UQAM, to the workers, and in general, to those most affected by the austerity measures, do you not see the inequality of opportunity this government wants to impose on us? This struggle is yours as well!

This struggle belongs to all of those that believe in the “radical” idea that education and profit aren’t synonymous. They’re antithetical! This struggle belongs to those that believe that a university isn’t a factory, that we can aspire to more than being service-sector, minimum wage, 9 to 5, cubicle confined workers.

This struggle belongs to everyone who believes in the fundamental idea that some things are more important than “profit” – that people are more important than profit! Our struggle is a struggle to uphold one of the most fundamental freedoms and a guiding principle that should be laid at the foundation of every society: the principle that the transmission of knowledge should be non-merchandised, universally accessible to all regardless of your class, your race, your gender, your sexual orientation, your political beliefs, your religious beliefs.

If you believe in such things your place is alongside us, with us on the front lines.

We won’t give-up a centimeter, we will resist, we will overcome!

La lutte continue!

Photograph by Benjamin Prunty.

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Student politics may not seem like the most interesting of ‘current affairs’ to follow. That’s understandable. After all, if you are not a student, a lot of the things that students care about don’t really matter to you. That can be contested, however.

I have two strands of student politics in mind. One of them actually takes place within campuses, with elected student representatives doing their business. There is, however, a broader sphere of student politics, which actually involves lobbying governments, provincial and even federal.

Let us focus on the federal level for today, because what is happening right now is some Westeros-level political intrigue. The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) is the largest student association in Canada. Basically, student unions from universities are able to become members of CFS; just like how individual labour unions can unite under a larger confederacy. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, 81 student unions are members of CFS; but here’s the kicker, not all of them want to be members anymore.

What usually happens, if you feel like you want to stop being a member of a federation? If you are a large union yourself, you hold a referendum, asking your constituency, “Hey, do we want to keep on being members of this thing?” Your constituency says either yay or nay, and then you go on your merry way.

CFS LOGOO

See, that’s not how CFS rolls. In CFS, first you need to hold a petition, collecting hand-written signatures of 20 per cent of your members. Then, you need to send this document full of hand-written signatures to CFS, where CFS will count the number of signatures, and determine whether or not the signatures are ‘legible.’ That is, if they receive the petition and that it doesn’t get ‘lost.’

Anywhere during this, CFS may just declare your petition to be invalid on any of the reasons I’ve stated above. In the case of McGill University’s Post-graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) – the case I’m most familiar with – the invalidation of the petition was brought to the Quebec Superior Court; where the judge presiding compared the situation to a ‘bad marriage.’

But that’s not all! Even if you manage to get the petition in, and force CFS to recognise its validity, holding a membership referendum itself is extremely restricted. Everything and anything that the people campaigning to leave CFS say must actually be approved by a CFS appointed overseer before it’s released to the public. The rules of the game are set by CFS. If there is any violation, CFS will declare the referendum invalid. And then, you cannot petition for a referendum for another five years!

(Also, PGSS is holding a referendum this week. Took them roughly five years to get here.)

I’ll get to the financial aspect of this entire spiel momentarily.

On their website, CFS says that there are four student unions in Quebec that are its members. What it doesn’t say is that all four of them are struggling really hard, or have been lucky enough to leave CFS. Concordia’s student unions also are struggling with CFS, and they’re in much more of a pickle than PGSS.

PALAIS DE JUSTICE
Palais de Justice de Montreal. Photo by Jean Gagnon (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The University of Toronto’s Graduate Student Union (UTGSU) also tried to leave CFS, and last November they held their own referendum. Allegedly, 66 per cent of the eligible voters voted no to CFS, but they failed to meet the quorum of 1606 people, by seven people. Because seven people failed to vote, UTGSU cannot hold a referendum for another five years.

There are a bunch of other examples, but I’m not gonna bore you with details. You can find details here, and here if you want to be bored, or if you are genuinely curious about this, for which I thank you.

What does that mean? I promised I’d talk about finances, so here’s finances. CFS charges its member unions $13 per student per year. UTGSU has roughly 16 000 members. That makes $208 000 per year. UTGSU cannot hold another referendum for five years. The cost of failing to leave CFS, therefore, is $1 040 000.

But wait, there’s more! I mentioned before that some student unions take this to the court. You can imagine, easily, that legal fees for running years long legal battles against a federation the size of a medium city (CFS has a total of roughly 1.5 million students under its umbrella). Conversely, CFS also needs to pay legal fees. Where does that money come from? That’s right! The very students they are suing!

But why do student unions want to leave CFS? What the hell is wrong with it? To be perfectly fair, CFS does have some interesting campaigns. For instance, they have a campaign called “Let People Vote,” which essentially involves CFS lobbying against the federal Bill C-23. Bill C-23 is law now, so clearly their lobbying did not work – perhaps, along with other reasons, but still.

Students and their allies joined communities across Canada in actions today opposing Bill C-23, the Unfair Elections Act. (CNW Group/Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario)
April 26, 2014. CFS protest opposing Bill C-23, the Unfair Elections Act. (CNW Group/Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario)

I’m just going to give you a few seconds to let the irony of having a campaign called “Let People Vote” while making it extremely difficult for people to hold referendums sink in.

Going back to Quebec in specific, CFS has not been active in la Belle Province since 2010. That year was crazy in terms of CFS politics, because some internal leadership disputes caused the provincial wing of CFS – aptly called CFS-Quebec – to leave CFS. Or rather CFS disowned CFS-Q. Or perhaps CFS-Q transformed into something called Rassemblement des associations etudiantes? It was more or less all of this.

CFS did create a new Quebec wing, however the actual members from Quebec (namely Dawson Students’ Union, Concordia Students’ Union, Concordia Graduate Students’ Association, and PGSS) were not part of this new wing. So there was no Quebec representation in the National General Meeting of CFS.

Also, CFS has a national general meeting, where they make decisions about the regulations regarding leaving CFS. With no Quebec representation, it’s obvious why problems may arise.

I’ll cut to the chase. If this was about the small labour unions or local political parties trying to leave their federal umbrella organizations, but actively denied their right to free association (that is, freedom to become or stop being a member of any organization/club/whatever of your desire), it would make top news – political party more so than the labour union, but I digress.

There are unimaginable political games happening within the realm of student politics, and it is mostly going under the radar. If these stories ever appear in mainstream media, they are treated as trivial. In fact, CFS still retains its title as the ‘legitimate’ voice of student concerns on a federal level, yet with all these legal battles against it, its lack of accountability, and overall shadiness shows to me that it should be otherwise.

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Katie Larson, President of SSMU, in a recent interview with the McGill Tribune condescendingly accused students of ignorance. The Tribune quotes her as saying the students “did not do their part.” Katie Larson, and the SSMU executive, you did not do your part.

She’s cross because the students rejected a referendum for a student fee increase. The increase would pay for a recently negotiated lease for the student union building. This lease is the university’s upper administration’s way of meeting its budget targets.

Instead of  cutting their own opulence, the admin are trying to destroy the student union. McGill’s student politicians in the executive of the student union, or as I call them, SSMUcrats, have been extraordinarily weak to respond.

There are essentially two reasons why someone runs to become a student politician. The first reason is to represent students, advocate for them, and provide leadership to them. The second reason is to add some spice to a resume. If those SSMUcrats were truly involved for the first reason, they would not be chastising us for the student union’s eminent destruction because of the lease.

The lease itself is shrouded in mystery. The SSMUcrats must think the student body is pretty stupid, because they made no attempt to explain it while it was being negotiated and after it was negotiated. Insultingly, they expected the students to vote yes to everything they threw on the election referendum. Like a bunch of sheep.

But we are not sheep, and if we are, those SSMUcrats are not good herders. If SSMU is a democratic civil society organization, than like any democratic civil society organization, it is the leadership’s responsibility, if the leadership is responsible, to explain what is going on.

SSMU members pay the salaries of the SSMUcrats, they have a duty to inform us. But they don’t. Almost never. And now, with the lease, their culture of superiority and thinking the students are a bunch of idiots has backedfired.

Preceding SSMU executives were not much better. The lease has been an ongoing issue. Most civil society organizations, such as real labour unions, would set public demands in a negotiation, even if the negotiation was confidential. If the conditions are unjust, they might even run a public pressure campaign with clear demands, write letters, and cause a ruckus.

People might disagree about tactics, but no one can deny the presence. Even for the most unimportant contracts and issues, many civil society organizations would do this. But not SSMU, the executive clearly thinks its members can’t handle the information. This isn’t unimportant, this is a matter of existence. Nothing could be more important. This is life or death of the union. And they don’t think and didn’t think we’re worth the fight.

I used to be a Student Senator with SSMU during the years 2012 and 2013. I sat on the University’s Senate, and stood up for students the best I could. I fought against McGill’s support of the Asbestos industry, McGill’s support of Dr. Arthur Porter, and even fought for SEDE.

I remember when I heard about the lease, I was outraged. I spoke out against it at the Senate and wrote about it in the McGill Tribune. I tried and I tried, last year and this year, to convince other student politicians to do the same. To stand up for students. They could not be convinced. And when they could have spoken out, they cowered. It was confidential, they said. The lease negotiations were confidential, sure, but the issues were not. The demands didn’t have to be.

The SSMUcrats chose to be secretive. They chose not to advocate for us. The students who voted no to the referendum understood this much. If the SSMUcrats decide to care, they can still run a public campaign and put some pressure on those bullies up in James Administration (who don’t pay for their building or their lavish offices, funny how student unions and student services are not considered essential to running a university but fine wood decor and Group of Seven paintings are).

It becomes clearer with this line of logic that there are two possibilities. If the SSMUcrats do care for us, they must accept they messed up and apologize. They have no right to blame us for their mistakes. If they don’t apologize than it is clear: they don’t care about our clubs, they don’t care about our daycare, and they don’t care about the great things we’ve built together as a student society.

If they don’t apologize, they’re just in it for their resumes.

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There are steps in the fallen snow somewhere in Gatineau, Quebec. Student politicians traveled from across the country to protest other student politicians who came to meet from across the country on a frigid Saturday in late November.

The Canadian Federation of Students, the CFS, a national student advocacy and service provider meets among the huddled bureaucratic buildings in a capital region Best Western for an Annual General Meeting. The future looks as stark as the day’s grey sky. Battling protesting heretics who want to see it dismantled and destroyed and a political landscape where its desperate voice resonates only so far into obscurity, CFS delegates must see the season’s first snow as poetic. It is going to be a long winter.

The cracks came years ago. In the 90s, sparse universities and colleges marked their detestation with referendums to disaffiliate. The CFS resorted to lawfare. The strategy must have seemed straight forward. Admit no loss; the façade must not be fractured. Local student politicians lead their flocks against what they conceived as an evil corrupt empire.

Whether the incompetence or carelessness, of staffers or the ploys of right wing insurgents, the CFS has become embroiled in trouble. Referendum after referendum, the CFS became smaller and smaller. Now it fights with all its legal and organizational capacity to hold onto to its last provincial forts on an increasingly hostile frontier. In 2009, 13 campuses wanted to leave. In 2013, it is at least 15. The CFS is cornered.

cropped-CFS-VOTE-NO-VOTE-YES
(image studentunion.ca)

There are only two options. It can continue to defend its lingering and lost legitimacy or rise and reinvent itself.

The CFS needs immediate innovation. The status quo simply can no longer do; most students either perceive it with anger or apathy. If the CFS choses to rise, it can do a couple things. Unifor, Canada’s largest industrial union, has the promising potential to change the Canadian landscape. They are looking to branch out. CFS could join them, save tens of thousands by combining administrative infrastructure, streamline services and give itself a new mandate when dealing with its members. Unifor could champion free education and the CFS could appeal to its working students, unionize their work places and create stronger lines of solidarity across society.

If that isn’t appealing, the CFS could rethink how it operates. This could be done with three Ls: Localize, Limit and Link-up. Create local legitimacy with binding general assemblies, limit the power of staffers and build institutional links with grassroots organizations and PIRGs.

Some thinking, a little elbow grease, and a lot of inspiration can make the great services the CFS provides greater. Instead of its flurry of press releases going straight into the trash cans of journalists and its organizing efforts bringing fewer and fewer people with every gathering, it can reorganize and galvanize.

The pessimism must be refused and rebuked. Those on the left should make no alliances with the conservatives who would like nothing more than to see every progressive institution, or institution capable of being progressive, destroyed. The CFS’ leadership should take note and act quickly.

It is bleak. Their belligerence and negligence must be ended soon, either by their own desire for positive, progressive change or the slow and painful result of their own stagnancy, stupidity and hard-headedness, the inevitable destruction and complete irrelevance of the CFS.