Campaigns committee meeting sparks heated discussions
Students mandate SFUO to run five campaigns for 2009-10
AFTER A FOUR-and-a half hour, debate-filled meeting, the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) now has five new campaigns to run this year.
After rescheduling the meeting twice because of religious holidays and various other scheduling conflicts, the SFUO held its first Campaigns Committee meeting of the year on Nov. 1.
SFUO members—all levy-paying undergraduate students—were welcome to attend the meeting and had voting rights as long as they could provide proof of student status. Non-voting spectators were also welcome at the meeting; however, they were seated separately from voting members in order to keep the assembly organized.
The agenda consisted of seven motions that were put forward by various student groups. Five were passed, one failed, and the other—seventh-year mathematics student Marc Kelly’s “Right to Campus” campaign to support his fight against the administration’s barring him from campus—was tabled until the winter semester because there were many questions regarding whether or not the SFUO would be able to support this campaign due to legal concerns.
The first motion, called “Right to Education” (R2E), got the meeting rolling. R2E calls for international action “against violations against the basic right to education in the occupied Palestinian territories.” Due to controversy over the wording of the original motion, an amendment was made, and the motion passed 74 to 52.
Motion supporter and SFUO Board of Administration director for the Faculty of Arts Robert Prazeres was pleased with the outcome.
“Obviously, we’re quite happy it passed. We weren’t sure what kind opposition it was going to bring up,” he said. “One of the reasons we brought Right to Education was because we thought, from our point of view, that this wasn’t as controversial a campaign as other things that the [Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights] does on its own.
“Whoever can bring as many people out will get the vote at the end of the day, so we weren’t sure [on] whose side that weight would fall,” Prazeres continued.
SFUO VP University Affairs and meeting chair Ted Horton noted he was pleased with the overall professionalism of the committee members.
“The motions for debate certainly inspire passion in many students, and it’s natural that debate is energetic,” said Horton.
He further noted that the discourse of the committee members is controlled by Robert’s Rules (10th edition) and the SFUO Constitution.
Another heated debate took place over the “Red Fridays” motion that would promote wearing red on Fridays to show support for the Canadian Forces. The motion ultimately failed with only 32 in support and 62 against.
Red Fridays campaign supporter Jeff English noted that the motion failed possibly because people may not have understood that the campaign was to support Canadian soldiers and not specific Canadian missions, as he mentioned that many people continued to bring up the topic of Afghanistan.
“Obviously our side came out disappointed from it. We really didn’t see the issue of Canada’s university’s supporting Canadian troops quite as controversial as those who voted against it,” English said. “We brought as many [people] as we could and tried to argue our case, but at the end of the day we didn’t have support in the room, so we’ll regroup, and we’ll try it again.”
In terms of the voting process, English suggested that a secret-ballot system may alter the results because people aren’t as likely to be pressured into voting a certain way if others can’t see their vote.
“It would be nice to see some sort of a secret- ballot [system] just so that people aren’t swayed perhaps by those next to them,” said English.
Horton noted that the next step to getting the campaigns off the ground will be to meet with the student groups behind each campaign to see how they can work together over the next year.
