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Concordia has no immediate plans to address boil-water advisory in the annexes

Student Organizations feel Concordia’s struggle to permanently address water-advisories is indicative of other maintenance issues

Since water advisories were first posted on Concordia’s downtown campus, little has been done to implement a long-term solution and provide clean running water to Concordia’s annex buildings.

In a September 2021 communication by Concordia Environmental Health and Safety (EHS), it was announced that “​​preliminary findings appear to indicate the presence of lead in the water of certain annex buildings on the Sir George Williams campus.”

The response by Concordia was to provide water bottles to the annexes, until free standing water coolers were eventually installed. They also posted signage at sinks and faucets.

Further testing was completed to determine the severity of the lead content in the annexes. Following a second test, the water advisory in some buildings was removed. However, many buildings were still determined to have unsafe drinking water and were placed under water advisory. According to Internal Affairs Coordinator of the CSU, Harrison Kirshner, two of the annexes that were particularly affected were the P and K buildings, where many club offices are located.

“There is an investigation that needs to be done. It’s not a quick fix, unfortunately,” said Lina Filacchione, the manager of occupational health and hygiene for EHS. “We have to know where it’s coming from, what the actual problem is before you start to figure out what’s the solution to this.”

The origin of the lead will determine if the water issue falls under the city of Montreal or Concordia’s jurisdiction.

But, the investigation to determine the origins of the lead is delayed and permanently fixing the issue is not Concordia’s first priority at the moment.

“The main issue is really making sure that they have drinking water. That’s the base priority,” said Filacchione.

Despite Concorida’s response, student organizations are feeling uninformed about the situation. Matthew Dodds is the office manager of Concordia’s Graduate Students’ Association, which is based out of the annex. He says the last communication regarding the water advisory came out last November.

“Some updates like ‘we are still testing the water, or here are some infrastructure solutions we’re working on’ would have been nice,” said Dodds. “These are old buildings, we do deserve to know what’s going on in them, we do work in them. We provide services out of them.”

While Dodds and other student organizations affected by the advisory want to be kept in the loop, there is not much more to tell them according to the EHS. “There’s been no new updates since then. We send updates when we are doing some testing,” said Filacchione.

“It’s still ongoing. It’s still on the agenda, but as for the ‘when’ and ‘how long it will take,’ I don’t have the answer for that unfortunately.”

The most likely next step according to Filacchione would be to get consultants to come and determine the source of the lead, but even that has not yet been put into motion.

The lack of communication from Concordia’s maintenance services echoes other issues that Dodds has experienced working out of the annexes.

“It took me two weeks to get a lightbulb changed,” said Dodds. “I wonder sometimes if the maintenance team at the university is smaller than it should be.”

Kirshner has been in communication with the university regarding the water advisory and other maintenance issues. Like Dodds, he says that this response from the university is nothing new. Many organizations have struggled in the past to receive prompt maintenance support.

“It’s important for them to take action, because students deserve to have an on-campus environment no matter what building they’re in, including the P and K annexes. I think those are the annexes that most of student life takes place in, and clubs deserve to have adequate resources in their office space,” said Kirshner.

“It’s typical of this institution. So, for example, the Muslim Students Association have a library at the ground floor of the E annex and the roof is about to collapse. So they can’t use the library. I’ve been trying to follow up [with Concordia] since September on this and they say ‘we’re working on it.’ Well, okay, but what are you doing about it?”

Despite the fact that the university has followed through on their promise to supply water coolers, Kirshner wants to see greater action on maintenance issues.

Kirshner says he has a scheduled meeting with EHS regarding clubs and the annexes in general where he wants to “get the ball rolling” on these issues. But for now, there are no long-term plans to provide clean running water to the annexes other than the installation of water coolers.

Filacchione said they know these spaces are occupied and used by many departments and faculty. “We need to be cognizant of that and make sure we’re meeting their needs.”

Photos by Kaitlynn Rodney

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GSA members not surveyed about harassment, discrimination

Graduate Student Association (GSA) president Srinivas Bathini said the association has no recent statistics on graduate student-supervisor relationships. Photo by Alex Hutchins

Dean of graduate studies says university receives few complaints from graduate students

After finding that many of the consultations and complaints filed with Laval University’s student help centre, the university’s centre for the prevention and intervention of harassment, as well as the university ombudsman came from graduate students, the school’s graduate student association (AELIES) surveyed its members and released its findings in November 2017.

The results: 58 per cent of the graduate students surveyed said they had uncomfortable interactions with their master’s or doctorate supervisor “on a few occasions,” and 16 per cent of students surveyed said those situations happened “regularly.” In November, AELIES president Pierre Parent Sirois told Le Devoir he found the statistics “worrying.”

Concordia undergraduate students were recently asked questions regarding on-campus harassment and discrimination as part of the 2017 Concordia Student Union General Undergraduate Student Survey, which was presented to the CSU council on Oct. 11. However, a similar survey of its members has not been conducted by the Graduate Student Association, according to the association’s president, Srinivas Bathini. The GSA’s vice-president of academic and advocacy, Thufile Ariful Mohamed Sirajudeen, said the association would consider surveying its members.

According to the Le Devoir article, students and their supervisors at Laval University sign mentoring agreements (“ententes d’encadrement”) to prevent conflict or discomfort. AELIES’s survey revealed that, in 70 per cent of cases, the agreements had a positive impact on the relationship between the student and the supervisor, and on the progress of the work.
In an email to The Concordian, Paula Wood-Adams, Concordia’s dean of graduate studies, wrote that the university does not have the same type of contract, “as is the case with a good number of universities.” She added that Concordia has “clear guidelines explaining the responsibilities of the students, supervisors and their respective programs.” The guidelines, she said, were revised last year and are “clearly posted” on the university website.

The master’s and PhD supervision guidelines each state that, “while it is important to acknowledge that students are partners in the university enterprise, it is equally important to recognize their differential power status, especially as it relates to their supervisors.”

According to Wood-Adams, the School of Graduate Studies communicates the guidelines to new graduate students twice a year, in January and September.

The guidelines indicate that, if an issue arises between a student and supervisor and an informal resolution is “unsuccessful or inappropriate,” and the graduate program director determines that the student-supervisor relationship is “beyond repair,” the director “must make a recommendation to the dean of graduate studies to terminate the relationship.”

Wood-Adams added that the School of Graduate Studies only receives a few complaints every year through the office of the ombudsman or the School of Graduate Studies itself—two avenues students can use to come forward.

“Most issues are resolved following a meeting with the student where we provide advice on how they might clarify or resolve the situation,” Wood-Adams said. Students can also bring along an advocate from the GSA or student advocacy office, she explained.

Wood-Adams said consultations with the School of Graduate Studies remain confidential, “except in cases where they are alleging conduct that might be illegal.” The final option available to both students and supervisors is to terminate the supervision.

“I should emphasize these are very rare situations,” Wood-Adams wrote.

Photo by Alex Hutchins

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GSA tensions turn into a complaint

Graphic by Florence Yee

Former GSA president files case against GSA for discrimination and harassment from former directors

A former president of Concordia’s Graduate Student’s Association (GSA) is filing a civil rights complaint against the organization and some of its directors for harassment and discrimination.

During his year-long term as the organization’s president, Alex Ocheoha said he was subjected to hostile treatment from GSA directors starting from the organization’s first council meeting in June 2015.

“They were addressing me in a disrespectful manner, they were shouting at me, they were… trying to cause trouble at the meetings,” he said.

The GSA is made up of a five-person executive team and 20 directors who vote in the organization’s council.

After the first council meeting, Ocheoha said he thought the hostility might have stemmed from a small misunderstanding of how the GSA is supposed to function. “I thought it was something we could talk over and clear it up,” he said. “We tried to have a meeting, but [the directors] didn’t agree to come… They were not interested in coming.”

Ocheoha said the directors continually found ways to prevent him from fulfilling his mandate as GSA president and that their email communications felt like racial and cyber harassment.

“It was a terrible period for me,” he said. “I had never experienced anything like that before in my life.”

In emails obtained by The Concordian, GSA directors responded to Ocheoha’s complaints of harassment in emails shared with everyone in the organization. On Oct 29, Ocheoha received a response to an email from then-GSA director Rahul Kumar—the whole GSA organization was cc’d on said email. It read, “What do you want to prove from this, Alex? That you are full of shit?”

When Ocheoha pointed out that this was an example of ongoing harassment, another former director, Mathilde Ngo Mbom, responded: “Aaaaw the grown-up man feels harassed! Take your balls out of the pockets, put them where (i.e: between your legs) they should be and stop being a crying baby.”

“The next time you show some sense of mental disorder, I’ll send these emails to the police and they will request that you meet a psychiatrist (by force) because you need one,” she wrote.  

In an interview with The Concordian on Nov. 27, Ngo Mbom expressed regret for the tone of the email. “We were passionate,” she said. “We wanted what’s best for students. I was too forceful, but I’m glad I fought for the students, not for the executives.”

“I’m not saying we had the right to say what we did,” she added.

Ngo Mbom said the tone in those emails resulted from workplace tension caused by Ocheoha. She said even before the Oct. 29 exchange, Ocheoha would take any criticisms of his role as harassment and threaten to sue the GSA directors.

Those threats, Ngo Mbom said, caused fear in many of the GSA’s directors. Many of them were international students and she said international students actively avoid getting into legal trouble which could affect their study visa. This inhibited directors from working with him, she said.

“At a certain point, you don’t want to push because of the complaint of harassment,” said Ngo Mbom. “If [Ocheoha] says no, you back off.”

Kumar said the tension had been building up, “and I snapped. It wasn’t mature and I regret that.”

Both Kumar and Ngo Mbom said they apologized to Ocheoha for the comments they made, but that he didn’t seem willing to work with them afterwards. Instead, they said it felt like Ocheoha spent the rest of the year trying to build a legal case against them.

However, Ocheoha said there were never formal apologies for the emails sent on Oct. 29.

Ocheoha said the harassment also manifested itself through the organization’s newly-created oversight committee. The committee’s role was to review work reports from executives and recommend to the GSA council whether or not executives were fulfilling their work responsibilities and deserved their full bursary. Both Kumar and Ngo Mbom were members of that committee.

Both former directors said Ocheoha inadequately answered questions they had about his reports.

“He took asking him why he couldn’t do a task as harassment,” said Kumar.

Rupinder Kaur, who served as the GSA’s vice president of academic and advocacy until December 2015, said several directors would fight Ocheoha at every turn. “Whatever he said, they had to disagree,” she said. “He wasn’t getting any kind of cooperation.”

Kaur found the whole environment too stressful for her, which is why she left before the end of her term. “The environment was very unhealthy,” she said.

Ocheoha sought help from the university’s Office of Rights and Responsibilities as well as Concordia’s dean of students. While Ocheoha said the ORR wouldn’t help because the GSA is it’s own independent organization, he said the dean of students helped arrange a reconciliatory meeting— which saw little turnout.

The GSA itself has no internal body or organization to handle complaints like this, said Ngo Mbom.

“There’s no system,” she said, adding that, in 2014, the GSA directors made a list of recommendations to deal with this type of tension. “Even if there was, I’m not sure it would have been enforced.”

“There were internal difficulties, internal infighting even before Alex was elected,” said Fo Niemi, the director of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, which is representing Ocheoha in the complaint. “When Alex was president of the GSA, he experienced harassment by some directors of the GSA. Even if there was an advocacy person there, conflict of interests could’ve arisen because it’s so internal. It’s an internal mess.”

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GSA’s General Assembly at Loyola sends clear messages

The General Assembly (GA) of Concordia’s Graduate Student Association (GSA) held on Dec. 1 at Loyola campus failed to reach the 1 per cent quorum. Only 25 to 30 students showed up including only three Loyola students. This would have been the first GA held in Loyola in the history of GSA. As the councilor who moved for a GA in Loyola, I feel that I should speak out to emphasize that this should not discourage from engaging Loyola students but rather motivate doing so; should echo a message of reform and a call for leaders.

Trying to hold the first Loyola GA is a big responsibility for this council since failure discourages people from taking the risk again and doom Loyola students to yet a longer era of neglect. Many explanations to this failure are voiced, like mobilization failure, bad timing or that Loyola is bad due to “math”. Ergo, we should never hold a GA in Loyola again! While there are some truths to these arguments, they only scratch the surface reaching a wrong conclusion. I think the problem is deeper.

GSA adopts “direct democracy” (the idea of having everyone in a room to collectively vote on decisions). I am not a fan of direct democracy as it can be impractical and people prefer that others do the work. However, in the educational context of a university, it is invaluable. It teaches students how to work with one another; how to listen to those with passionately different opinions than their own; how to debate, negotiate, compromise and get things done together; how to develop empathy and be socially responsible. It transforms students to active members of society, ready to tackle the most challenging issues of our time. Also, it can mobilize thousands of students for a cause. But, be weary of drawbacks. When an overwhelming majority has an overwhelming voting power, minorities get oppressed.

Engagement is cumulative; it takes a lot to build and so little to destroy. The GSA house is downtown, all council and committee meetings are downtown, practically all GSA events are downtown, never in the history of GSA has a GA been held in Loyola! The result? Only 3 Loyola students showed up to a GA in Loyola! This is how marginalized and alienated Loyola students have become after a history of neglect. This is a call for council to not give up on Loyola; to engage Loyola students; to do more in Loyola.

There is another systematic problem. It was raised that the last GA, held downtown, never met quorum either. Last GA, after elections, the majority of students left, ignoring the rest of the GA business. The students remaining were not more than those 30 students showing up in Loyola. The truth is, without elections, we never meet quorum. The fact that the two GAs that were held at two different times, in two different places and organized by two different VP mobilization, never, in effect, met quorum, points to a systematic problem having little to do with time, place or mobilizers. Council failed to meet quorum two months in a row this summer! For the bigger part of this year, GSA has been functioning with half an executive team whose president is acclaimed and half a council with mostly appointed members who had no competition (including myself). It organized almost no events in the fall, beyond orientation. It does not have an approved budget yet. It censured its president, its Board of Governors representative and tried to sanction a GSA member. This is how disconnected GSA has grown to be!

GSA matters! With government imposed cuts on education, it matters now more than ever. And just like in 2012, we CAN do better! Direct democracy or not, decisions are made by those who show up; those who show up to lead! This is a call for YOU to intervene to reform the GSA.

I wish to offer a different point of view that leads to taking the harder path of engaging Loyola students and reforming the GSA as opposed to hanging failure on time and place requiring no action on our part.

-Keroles Riad

Follow me (@Kerologist)

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GSA hoping cooler heads prevail

First-ever Loyola General Assembly to wrap up what previous one couldn’t

The Concordia Graduate Student Association (GSA), which represents around 6,500 graduate students at Concordia, will have its second general assembly of the semester on Dec. 1, and many hope will go smoother than October’s raucous meeting.

The previous assembly held in October proved to be a fiasco with claims of voter intimidation, disruptive behaviour, and lax enforcement. All of these failings were best represented during the election for VP Academic and Advocacy between candidates Dina Alizadeh and Trevor Smith in an initially contentious vote of 58-57, respectively, that went through several recounts as students left, further widening the lead. Attempts to decide the voting by secret ballot failed, leading to shouts, flailing hands, and walkouts. The chaotic voting atmosphere ultimately caused the vote to be tabled and rescheduled for the Dec. 1 assembly after some GSA members and executives claimed the open ballot was easily abused by the largest voting bloc present: the engineering students. They, for their part, claimed their victory wasn’t honoured and displayed a violation of democracy.

The Engineering and Computer Science Graduate Association’s (ECSGA) VP of Finance, Mostapha Marzban, went before the GSA council on Nov. 18 to defend himself against a sanctioning motion calling him a key figure in the disruptions. (Marzban, in addition to VP Finance, is the husband of Alizadeh.) An amended motion was passed to that effect but some have expressed concern it was watered down to the point of being completely ineffective and overly vague. As it was in closed session, the details cannot appear in print. The GSA may expel an individual from the immediate general assembly but there exists no formal method of punishing members aside from a theoretical funding blacklist that has seldom, if ever, been used.

“It would be a lot more productive if we simply asked him to acknowledge what he did was inappropriate,” said GSA Councillor and Senator Keroles Riad, who originally suggested the location move for December’s general assembly primarily to more closely involve the GSA’s 300 or so Loyola members, and in the hopes the change of place may relax tensions.

Marzban for his part is unrepentant and says he has not received any official document from the GSA notifying him of the association’s decision, or what the sanctioning will mean. He admits to being angry at the assembly, but says it was brought on by the organizers’ bias.

“Accusation of only me, while everyone including executives were supporting their desired candidate with their power, is not fair and constructive,” he said, adding that he’d given the recount the benefit of the doubt at first but found the final decision to table the vote as incomprehensible. He also considers the subsequent write-ups of the event in The Link and personal blogs as disrespectful to the engineering students.

Marzban says the way forward is to detach the voting from the general assembly.

“If the GSA council of directors want to make sure this will not happen anymore—executives clearly supporting one candidate and [while] other students are disagree with them—they should change the rules in a way that elections happen outside of GA. In my point of view, [the general assembly] happens two to three times a year and this is a very precious time … we should not waste that time with stuffs [sic] like elections (which takes almost all of GA) while we can do them outside of GA through secret ballot.”

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A call for retroactive audits falls short

The Graduate Students’ Association voted to table a controversial motion and pass one of their own Tuesday following proposals from current and former Concordia Student Broadcasting Corporation’s Board of Directors members regarding retroactive audits.
The tabled motion introduced by former CSBC BoD member Sabine Friesinger and Chadi Marouf, would have the GSA encourage CSBC to begin retroactive audits going back three years. If this was not done, the motion would allow the GSA to pull their fee-levies from CJLO, the student radio station that CSBC manages. Instead of accepting that, the GSA passed a motion advocating that the CSBC revise their bylaws in order to provide democratic and transparent practices within one year and publish three years worth of financial statements on their website.
Friesinger and Marouf spoke first on the matter, outlining what they interpreted as a history of financial mismanagement and unanswered allegations from an organization that Friesinger said received the most in student fee-levies of any group on campus but had the least oversight.
A second topic which became the focus of much concern was the CSBC’s membership list, the existence of which many at the meeting were unaware of. The list, which dictates who is and who is not considered a member of the organization, only contains the names of individuals who ask to be included despite the fact that all graduate and undergraduate students pay fee-levies into the corporation.
Angelica Calcagnile, president of the CSBC, argued that retroactive audits were an unnecessary expense and a waste of student money. The auditor employed by both the CSBC and the GSA advised CSBC’s board that audits were not needed for a corporation of their size, and that a financial review would be the industry standard. As Calcagnile explained, the difference between financial reviews and audits are that a review is less expensive but also less thorough than an audit, and is used by almost every organization on campus. The Concordia Student Union, as a multi-million dollar corporation, is legally obligated to provide audits.
During the question period that followed, GSA executives and members raised concerns on a number of issues, including the CSBC’s membership policies. According to Calcagnile, fee-paying students must sign up to be considered voting members of the CSBC according to laws that require them to hold a list of all their members. Due to privacy concerns, the university cannot give the CSBC a list of all fee-paying students, which means that they must keep one themselves.
“We are open to any undergrad or grad student to come and vote at our [Annual General Meeting,]” Calcagnile said. “All they need to do is register with us that they are an undergrad or graduate student, and the agreement that we make people sign basically says ‘I am a student and I have a vested interest or I am interested in voting.’ Nobody has ever been denied and there’s no reason for us to.”
Once both Calcagnile and Friesinger left the room, the GSA debated what actions would be the best response to the motion in question and the concerns they now had. Simon Vickers, one of the GSA’s Arts and Science directors, said at the meeting that he was concerned with the tone of the presentations and some of the additional information provided by Friesinger. This included a copy of a personal email exchange with Wendy Kraus-Heitmann, a former member of CUTV’s provisional BoD.
“It seems to me that they’re positioning us between some sort of infighting that deals with things that are outside of this audit,” Vickers said. “It seems that we’re being asked to attack [CSBC], and I don’t think that we should move forward with this, I think that we should find an alternative.”
Friesinger’s motion was eventually tabled until a future meeting to allow the GSA more time to investigate the matter, and to allow them to pass their own motion in response.
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Reconciliation lies in the admittance of guilt

This past Monday, Concordia’s Graduate Student Association hosted a public forum entitled, BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions): Do we have a role in the Palestine-Israel conflict? One of the panelists, Mary-Jo Nadeau, accused Israeli forces of targeting civilian homes, schools, mosques, United Nations shelters, and educational institutions in its recent assaults on the West Bank. When Nadeau, a lecturer at the University of Toronto, asked students “why [they thought Israel would] bomb schools and universities,” no one responded, myself included. Although I wanted to stand up, throw my clothes off like the woman in Titianic, and yell, “yes, yes Ms. Nadeau, please explain to me why Israel purposely bombs public schools,” I could not. I failed to be myself, thus allowing for yet another, very quiet Monday afternoon.

Hypocritical and slanderous statements like the ones made in this forum are precisely the reason why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has yet to be resolved. Leaders on both sides seem keener on pointing out the flaws of their opposition rather than making the admissions of guilt necessary for peace. While the Palestinian Authority doesn’t miss a chance to condemn Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, Israelis lament the rocket fire coming out of Gaza. Instead of pointing fingers, why can’t both sides not only admit, but stress their own wrongdoings?

I am a Jew. I am a Zionist. I am an ardent supporter of the two-state solution. I admit without reservation that Israel’s handling of the Palestinian crisis in recent years has been grossly ignorant and irresponsible. However, in Monday’s forum, there was no such recognition of guilt.

Panelists spent their allotted time criticizing the actions of Israel and failed to mention any responsibility on the part of Palestinians. As a result, the forum proved to be more of a slanderous outcry for action than a productive dialogue.

The BDS campaign, the central topic of Monday’s forum, is a movement which is, in my opinion, in a direct opposition to peace. It demands an end to “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” and for the complete dismantling of the security fence currently dividing Israel from the West Bank and Gaza. Such demands are not only one-sided, but are also prone to widespread misinterpretation.

Jeremy Ben Ami, founder of the pro-peace group J-Street, writes that “too many in and around the BDS movement refuse to acknowledge either the legitimacy of Israel or the right of the Jewish people as well as the Palestinian people to a state.”

In addition, singling out what could be called the only democratic state in the Middle East seems hypocritical. Why not boycott the likes of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Iran, where human rights violations are rampant and corruption widespread?

Yves Engler, one of the panelists, fervently argued for the boycott of Israeli made goods, yet fell short of supporting this year’s government sanctions on Iranian oil.

The situation isn’t improved by the fact that some of Nadeau’s statements are a bit misleading. Israel does not, in fact, intentionally bomb public institutions. Rather, it makes a considerable effort to avoid civilian casualties. Yet when Hamas continues to fire rockets from densely populated areas, it becomes increasingly difficult for Israel to fight its enemies.

With such a polarized debate, it is easy to point fingers and perhaps that is precisely what I am doing here in these concluding remarks. However, it is only to highlight the shortcomings of the panel. Instead of vilifying one another, let us be more commodious in our arguments so that we may come one step closer to reconciliation.

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Concordia has strength in numbers

The Concordia Student Union and the Canadian Federation of Students are back at it again.

The CSU called a special meeting last Wednesday to address the ongoing lawsuit between it and the CFS, the nation’s largest student association that works at a federal level.

The meeting, with a brief introduction from former CSU President Lex Gill, was conducted in closed session to discuss the potential joining of the separate cases filed by the CSU and the university’s Graduate Students’ Association against the CFS.

Both student groups have been trying to leave the CFS unsuccessfully for years, resulting in a slew of accusations from the CFS that both the CSU and the GSA owe unpaid and mounting dues.

On Friday, Jan. 11, the GSA unanimously voted in favour of collaborating with the CSU pending the undergraduate association’s approval.

CSU President Schubert Laforest said the CFS has been notified of the motion.

“After a lengthy discussion where council weighed the pros and potential cons of joining the cases, council decided unanimously to join the cases,” said Laforest. “The CFS is aware of this but we haven’t gotten any response about it as of yet.”

This Wednesday, a motion will be brought before the courts to allow the merging of the two cases against the CFS so they can be tried at the same time.

In March 2010, the CSU held a referendum where an overwhelming percentage of students voted to leave the CFS. The association in turn claimed the process was illegitimate and barred the CSU from leaving. Similarly, when students voted for the departure of the GSA from the CFS in April 2010, the CFS refused to acknowledge the referendum.

Approximately a year later following failed negotiations, the CSU filed a lawsuit for the organization to officially recognize the results and allow them to leave.

In response, the CFS countered with their own lawsuit against the CSU in early 2012, claiming that the union that governs the undergraduate student body owed them close to $2 million in unpaid fees. Since 2010, the CFS has been claiming that the student association have an obligation to pay $1 million.

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Executive and JMSB positions acclaimed in GSA election

Incoming Graduate Student Association President Daria Saryan.
Incoming Graduate Student Association President Daria Saryan.

The Graduate Students’ Association general elections set to take place from April 3 to 5 have attracted a record number of candidates this year.
While the three executive positions and the John Molson School of Business directors’ positions have already been acclaimed, eight candidates are running for a total of six seats in arts and science, and nine are running for the six in engineering and computer science. Also, for the first time in recent history, there will be a competition for the single fine arts seat on the council of directors with two candidates running.
According to GSA chief returning officer Roddy Doucet, there will be no ballots for the executive positions in the upcoming election with a “Yes” or “No” option because the association’s constitution stipulates that as long as one candidate is running for the position, they will automatically be acclaimed.
Many of the candidates running for council are affiliated with the elections’ sole slate, Your Voice, which took the majority of seats in last year’s election. Doucet noted that the ongoing tuition hikes debate has been a recurring theme during the campaign period.
“The primary concern is about tuition and where it’s going,” Doucet said. “A great number of our members that have come forth have put this as a centrepiece of their election campaigns.”
As for the team of executives, Daria Saryan, who helped put together the Your Voice slate, ran unopposed for president of the GSA and was automatically given the position, as was the case with the new VP internal Roya Azarm and VP external, Nadia Hausfather.
“I think we’re going to work really well together especially given that we’re all three women executives,” said Saryan. “I don’t know that this has ever happened before.”
One of Saryan’s main goals is to improve and expand on the services that the GSA offers, such as French language courses.
“The current GSA has laid the groundwork for some really great things and my goal is to keep up with what they’ve started,” she said.
Dominic Leppla, a first-year PhD student in film and moving images studies, got involved with Your Voice because of the strike and is running for fine arts director. He recently became impressed with the GSA’s ability to represent the graduate student body’s interests.
“Fine arts students are particularly affected by [tuition increases] because what fine arts students are giving society is not something you can quantify,” said Leppla. “We feel that the fight against the tuition hike is also part of larger movement, for a larger goal to protect knowledge as a public good and fight against this kind of instrumentalization and corporate mentality.”
Giulietta Di Mambro is in her first year of graduate-level translation studies and is running to be an arts and science representative on council. Having completed her first degree at Université du Québec à Montréal, Di Mambro observed a contrast in the levels of student participation in campus politics which motivated her to run for council.
“My goals are to strengthen ties between associations, facilitate better participation and better communication between associations and all graduate students,” she said.
In addition to voting on student representation, graduate students will be asked to vote on two fee levy questions. Both Le Frigo Vert and the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy are appealing to the graduate student body for support by asking for fee levies of $1.50 and $0.50, respectively, per semester.
The new GSA team will assume office June 1.

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Faculty show support for general strike online

An online declaration calling for support from Concordia’s faculty in the fight against tuition hikes has already gathered more than 160 signatures in less than three weeks.
The Concordia Declaration was drafted by the Concordia Student Union, the Graduate Students’ Association and a number of faculty members consulted in the process. It was posted online on Feb. 17, asking university professors, research assistants and teaching assistants to accommodate students who may miss class or assignments due to their involvement in a potential general strike.
“The declaration was a response to faculty talking to [the CSU] and saying they wanted a way of making sure students know that they support them,” said CSU President Lex Gill. “Since we put the declaration online, signatures have been growing really fast. It’s really exciting, we did not expect so many signatures.”
Gill explained that the declaration could play a crucial role in influencing the provost’s decision to grant an amnesty as “it shows faculty members on Senate that [a general strike] is something faculty, research and teaching assistants clearly support.”
Gill added that there were more signatures pending approval on the website’s account.
Concordia spokesperson Chris Mota, however, pointed out that an academic amnesty could not be granted by the provost, nor the Senate, “because no one and nobody has the authority to require that [faculty] abide by one.”
“When I spoke with [Graham] last week, he was of the same opinion that he was in the time of Nov. 10, even after knowing about the declaration,” said Mota. “The situation is very clear: faculty are expected to teach and professors are expected to come in and do their jobs. We need to keep providing services for those who choose to continue studying.”
Graham could not be reached to comment directly on the declaration.
Mota added that for those who choose to “boycott” classes, some individual accommodations could be made “for a day or two,” but something at the level of an academic amnesty is not being considered right now.
The Concordia Declaration, which can be found on http://concordiadeclaration.wordpress.com, asks for every signatory to leave name, position and comments if desired.
Teaching assistant and GSA President Robert Sonin said he signed because he did not want to see Concordia turn into a university “in name only, a for-profit diploma mill with no academic integrity or legitimacy.”
“The strike against tuition fee increases is not merely about money,” Sonin said. “It is a struggle against a trend that is cheapening what we do, that is undermining the seriousness and value of higher education and academic research, and that can only value things — including human beings — in terms of money.”

CLARIFICATION: In a previous version of this article, Concordia spokesperson Chris Mota indicated that the decision for imposing academic amnesty was solely up to Provost David Graham. After following up with Graham, Mota later told The Concordian that no one has the authority to grant a ‘blanket’ amnesty. Instead, faculty members, as long as they are abiding by regulations set by Senate, can deal with individual cases in their class themselves.

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Proposed transparency motions touch a nerve at board meeting

Concordia’s Board of Governors is in agreement with one representative’s call for increased transparency at their meetings—they just can’t agree on how to do it.

The board is rethinking the way it holds its meetings after graduate representative Erik Chevrier proposed to much debate last Thursday a series of motions formulated to open up the Board’s activities to a wider audience.

After rejecting one motion, the board decided to send two discussion points to the executive committee for further review.

Chevrier said that the motions were presented in the hopes of getting the board to take “a proactive stance” against controversy.

“Concordia picked up quite a big deal of bad press when Judith Woodsworth was let go,” said Chevrier, referring to the dismissal of Concordia’s former president last December, asking that the board take steps to avoid future conflicts by adopting some sort of transparency agreement.

The defeated motion called for the location of the board meetings to be able to have no less than 50 seats for those who wish to attend in the same room.

Changes were also proposed to the way board meetings are run, calling for all open session board meetings to be video recorded and broadcast, and to establish a 20-minute period in which the public at large can ask questions or comment.

The board’s executive committee will study these two ideas, then present their recommendations to the full board. No specific deadline was given for the report.

Each motion was presented individually, resulting in nearly an hour of heated discussion between board members.

One board member, Robert Barnes, representing the alumni for the Sir George Williams Alumni Association, warned the student representatives to “be mindful of the time other people are giving and in the way that you are trying to get your point forward.”

“I’ve heard probably seven times this morning the underlying reason for something in one of your motions is about your representation on the board. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” said Barnes, referring to the decision made in September to lessen the number of undergraduate student reps from four to one.

“If you come in attack mode you’re going to continually see every one of your motions shot down in flames and that’s what’s been happening over the last few meetings. You have not gained one motion because you’re ticking people off,” Barnes said.

During this discourse, chair Peter Kruyt told undergraduate student governor and Concordia Student Union president Lex Gill to “please don’t interrupt” after she asked for a point of privilege.

Undergrad representative Laura Beach spoke out in support of the motion, which she referred to as “a tool that we can use as a board to demonstrate that what we do is in the best interest of the Concordia community.”

“The media is at best your friend and worst your enemy,” said Beach. “We can’t and we shouldn’t rely on the media to represent what goes on at this board in an impartial manner.”

However, opinions varied on how this goal of transparency could be best achieved. With regards to the idea of broadcasting board meetings, several board members conveyed their worries that this would make people feel less inclined to speak openly, resulting in lengthier meetings that have more closed session discussions.

”I certainly don’t want to feel that our board is portrayed as closed so that people in our larger university community feel excluded, but at the same time our board has to operate efficiently,” said Concordia president and vice-chancellor Frederick Lowy.

Concerns were also expressed that a 20-minute question period would not be productive, fearing that the open forum would degenerate into rants as members of the general public lack access to all of the board’s documents and may not be informed enough to make effective cases on issues.

New boardroom, less room

The discussion at last week’s meeting surrounding the motion to increase public seating at Board of Governors meetings to a minimum of 50 seats was stymied by the completion of a brand new boardroom whose capacity was unknown to members at the time.

Located on the fourth floor of the GM building, the new boardroom can seat approximately 45 people.

According to university spokesperson Chris Mota, the new boardroom may not be available for use until 2012.

“The room has been completed but is not yet available as a result of the major renovation project that is ongoing in the GM building,” Mota wrote in an email, adding that the “room was configured in anticipation of a smaller board.”

Chair Peter Kruyt said at the meeting that the current board had no say in the specifications of the room and that plans were done by previous management.

“We have what we have,” said Kruyt.

Board of Governors meetings currently take place in a modified classroom on the 2nd floor of the EV building.

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Students vote to strike on Nov. 10

Students filled the Hall building auditorium, raising their hands to vote in favour of striking on Nov. 10.
Students filled the Hall building auditorium, raising their hands to vote in favour of striking on Nov. 10.

Graduate students and arts and science undergraduates voted in favour of an academic strike mandate for Nov. 10, the day of the province-wide protest against tuition hikes, at a special general meeting held last Thursday.
Out of the 570 students present at the SGM, six undergraduate and two graduate students voted against the mandate and one student abstained, according to ASFA’s records.
“This is our opportunity as Concordia students and as an English school in Montreal to show that we have a school spirit strong enough to stand together united with one message,” said Concordia Student Union VP external and projects Chad Walcott. “That message is ‘no’ to this tuition increase.”
ASFA VP external and sustainability Paul Jerajian called the meeting’s outcome “a major step for ASFA.”
The CSU organized the SGM along with ASFA and the Graduate Students’ Association.
There were no faculty or administrative representatives at the meeting and the strike mandate as it currently stands does not exclude the possibility of academic consequences for strikers. According to Jerajian, a motion which states the meeting’s result still needs to be approved by the faculty in order to have a clear academic amnesty. Walcott said that the CSU is sending the SGM result to the administration to inform them of the ASFA strike mandate. Meanwhile, Provost David Graham sent out a recommendation to faculties and departments to be lenient on Nov. 10 in matters of attendance and late assignments, Walcott said.
“A strike mandate from ASFA’s membership means that 18,000 students have democratically decided not to go to school and to support the action on Nov. 10,” said CSU president Lex Gill. “If the university tries to go against the motion and punish students for not going to class on that day they are putting themselves in a very bad position.”
ASFA and the GSA needed to meet quorum—a minimum of 371 undergraduate students and 60 graduate students, respectively—in order to obtain a legal vote. When quorum was met an hour after the meeting started, students voted to skip the information presentation on tuition hikes and to vote for a strike mandate straightaway. They also skipped the open microphone session in the process, a decision which left some students unable to voice their opinions.
“We are both against the mandate and we wanted to speak before the vote,” said Erik Scanlon, and Philip Ryan-Gyroux, two economics students. “They never actually opened the microphone for people who disagree with the mandate. This is unacceptable in a so-called democratic process.”
If the Nov. 10 protest does not meet the expected results, students could meet again to vote for an unlimited general strike, where students would strike continuously until demands are met or until students decide to stop striking. 

A march to join the 2 p.m. general rally at Place Émilie-Gamelin near Berri-UQAM metro station will leave the Reggie’s terrace at 1:10 p.m., and will pass by McGill University. The CSU is organizing a pre-gathering downtown from 11 a.m. onwards on the terrace. The student union has also arranged for buses to pick up students from the Loyola campus at 12:30 p.m. and bring them to Reggie’s to join the rest of the delegation

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