SSMU smushed Tuesday’s GA
It’s General Assembly time again at SSMU, but who would know it? Over the last week SSMU has sprinkled campus with some of the most uninspiring General Assembly (GA) publicity since their failure to spread the word about last fall’s GA. The white 8.5×11 posters and the ads taken out too late in campus newspapers not only fail inform the student body, they fail to give you the information you need to get a motion on the agenda.
SSMU would have you believe that motions can either be emailed in or referred by Council. Whoops! They can’t. In reality, as per SSMU’s own constitution, you need the signatures of either 100 students from 4 faculties or 4 SSMU councillors, and you need to hand them in. This comes after they botched the initial scheduling of the GA. A unilingual Facebook event set the original due date for motions in the third week of classes, as the constitution mandates the GA to be held in the fifth week. It wasn’t until late in the third week that we learned that the GA had been scheduled for the sixth week, and the due date had been moved.
What’s going on here, and why should we care about the fumblings of SSMU? For all intents and purposes, SSMU is undermining the accessibility of the decision-making process. Because SSMU misinformed the general membership, only the political elite (ourselves included) were able to set the agenda of the GA. Last winter, in the only well-advertised GA to date, motions came from everywhere. This fall, as a result of SSMU’s failure, it is a very different tale. Contrary to what the opponents of direct democracy might have you believe, we couldn’t be more upset that our motions comprise a shocking 80 per cent of the agenda.
SSMU appears afraid that the membership might have their own ideas about the way things should be run. Student associations across Quebec manage to have general assemblies very regularly. They are able to do this without too much trouble, despite the fact that many of these associations have less resources available to them than SSMU does. Is it really that hard to print attractive posters, take out readable ads in the campus newspapers, and include all of the relevant information? When it comes to the basic tenants of democratic functioning, our student union is a disgrace.
It is deeply disturbing that this passive undermining of democracy on campus is under the leadership of known GA-hater Jake Itzkowitz, President of SSMU. He works full-time on the student dime to, among other things, enforce the SSMU constitution. Advertising for the GA is therefore his responsibility. We know Itzkowitz would like to get rid of GAs altogether, but now he’s done the next best thing by allowing the agenda-setting process to fail. There’s no better way to kill a fledging endeavour than to ignore it. If you’re anticipating a reversal of the student union’s pathetic negligence, don’t hold your breath: you might go the way of democracy at SSMU.
The Grassroots Association for Student Power (GRASPé) is a radical leftist student group that frequently co-opts The Daily’s editorial pages.
