province: Students expelled from student union property
Jonathan Woodward, CUP B.C. Bureau Chief
VANCOUVER - The Langara College Student Union has banned two "defamatory and disruptive" activists from its property, saying that they hijacked a student committee and tried to funnel hundreds of dollars of student union money into their anti-war group.
Organiser Nicole Burton and co-chair Kira Daley of Movement Against War and Occupation were escorted out of the Langara Student Union Building last week when councillors voted that the only way to fix the hijacked committee was to dissolve it and start again.
"We had no idea of the extent to which they were taking over our peace and social issues committee," said student councillor Erin Sikora. "We had no idea about the bills they sent us for things that were not legitimate."
As part of organising a week of student activism at the college in mid-September, Burton was commissioned with making $200 worth of buttons bearing the LSU logo. Instead, the pins came back with only the MAWO logo, and Burton asked to be reimbursed for the cost.
Speakers during the week from MAWO were given $300, which the student union was also expected to pay, Sikora said.
The LSU is also on the hook for over a thousand photocopies of MAWO posters.
"They kept trying new ways to get money, and the fact that they kept trying to put one by us is unacceptable," Sikora added.
The anti-war group MAWO can no longer organise on campus nor accept money from student government.
Sikora says that when confronted about the spending, the two women hid behind charges of racism and sexism, making it impossible for them to work with the student union. That's why they were expelled, she explained.
But Burton said the expulsion had more to do with a harassment claim Burton and Daley filed against a permanent LSU staff member Richard Bell.
During a meeting, the three got into a shouting match that ended with Bell yelling, "Shut up!" according to Burton.
"When an older man says such things to two younger women, these complaints of harassment should be taken seriously and should be investigated," Burton said.
In a forum last Wednesday, Burton and Daley called themselves the "Langara Two" and started a petition to repeal their ban from the building that they still pay student fees to maintain.
A flyer handed out at the forum titled "Women, Harassment and Abuse," vowed to "outline and expose the sexist attack and violation of women's rights that occured [sic] last week."
But the LSU women's liaison saw the exchange between Bell, Burton, and Daley, and had no problem with it, Sikora said.
"They're claiming that this is about women's rights?" she asked. "It's ridiculous."
MAWO was formed by members of another anti-war group that was kicked out of prominent Vancouver anti-war group Stopwar.ca a year ago, said Rick Gordon, a philosophy professor at Langara and a Stopwar.ca organiser.
For more than a year they hijacked committees, usurped power, spent money without approval, and liberally defamed people who didn't agree with them, Gordon said.
"The student union woke up to this faster than Stopwar.ca did," he said.
Canadian University Press