Editor,
I read with interest “CSU finances not secret” by Melissa Baril in the February 25, 2003 issue.
I wrote bylaw 15.1(e), so I am in a position to know precisely what it intends and how it must be applied.
This bylaw intends precisely that detailed financial records accounting for all money coming in to or going out of the CSU be made available at all times to all members of the CSU at the head office – amounts, dates, and what the money came from or went to. For the accountants out there, this might translate to journals, income statements, and balance sheets.
Bylaw 15.1 makes this information public, without censorship of its content, and without discriminating between classes of students.
The CSU can not decide to not follow this bylaw any more than they can decide to not hold elections.
The present CSU Council is now complicit with the CSU executive in willfully and explicitly contravening the CSU bylaws. Under the Quebec Civil Code (s. 313, s. 321), what the CSU executive and directors (Council) are doing is illegal, a fact of which the CSU lawyer is possibly aware. The CSU also has the money to pay their lawyer to fend off lawsuits, a fact of which the CSU lawyer is certainly aware.
The people voting for this clique, and who have voted for it for the last five years, are the core of the left among students, the core of activists who fight for justice, and for equality, and for rights. The current CSU ruling clique has not only brought discredit to Concordia, they have brought discredit to the people who keep them in power.
I hope that these same people will recognize that you cannot have justice without accountability, and you cannot have rights without responsibility. Secrecy, obfuscation, demonization, dishonesty, arrogance – these are attributes of the right, of totalitarians, of imperialists, of capital, of the things and people you struggle against daily – why are you voting for people who display the same attributes?
Robert Sonin
History
