Accept impeachment
Brianna Turner
On October 25, I participated in something absolutely incredible. I showed up at the SGM, determined to use my vote and have my voice heard, and realised just how many other students had been motivated to come out and demonstrate their concern. At its peak, the SGM held over 700 students. If you count all the people who came in and left at various points in the meeting, 1,028 students participated in the SGM. One thousand people took time out of their day to sit outside, shivering in the awful, bloody cold, so that they could turn their concern and frustration into votes. That marks the first time in over 10 years that an SFSS general meeting has met quorum.
I point this out for a simple reason. Over the last few weeks, I have been extremely disappointed to hear Board execs and students alike dismissing the issue as “SFSS vs. SDU.” Iain Reeve, associate news editor for The Peak, wrote a very impassioned opinion piece attacking SFSS and SDU-ers alike for making a big deal out of an issue that he believed no one really cared about [October 16, 2006]. Board execs repeatedly, and mistakenly, assumed that everyone who spoke out against the Board was part of the SDU, which allowed the Board to minimise and grossly underestimate the pervasiveness of the concern. In fact, while over 700 students sat gathered in the Convo Mall bundled against the cold, one of the speakers at the SGM had the audacity to refer to the students who were concerned about the issue as a “small minority.” I strongly believe that the phenomenal turnout at the SGM demonstrated once and for all that there is no small minority. The SGM was attended by students from all different backgrounds, departments, and levels of study. This was not just the SDU. This was not just grad students. This was not a small group of radical students with secret political aspirations and wacky ideas about what matters for the student body. These were students who were concerned, frustrated, and angry, and who genuinely care about the governance of their student society.
This meeting was attended by 1,000 of the Board’s constituents.
I emphasise this because, since the meeting, the Board has declared that they will not recognise the SGM and have thus proclaimed themselves ‘still in power.’ I find this somewhat ironic, given that these same Board members not only attended the “illegitimate” SGM, but also voted at it (with the exception of Hunsdale, who could not be admitted because he does not have valid student ID).
Now, if the seven Board executives who showed up and voted against their own impeachments want to carry their defiance of democratic processes at SFU to the utterly ridiculous extent that they deny the validity of meetings that they themselves attend, I don’t suppose I stand much of a chance of reasoning with them. However, I’m going to try.
To the Board members who were impeached at the SGM: Most of you were there for the meeting. Most of you watched as a sea of over 600 hands surged into the air when the chair called “all in favour” to your impeachment. Many of you complained that three minutes was not long enough to defend yourselves. You didn’t have three minutes — you had three months. In those three months, students informed themselves and made up their minds, and you were each first-hand witnesses to the results. Regardless of whether you believe the SGM was legally valid (and I believe it was), I urge each of you to recognise the historical significance of what just happened. I urge you to remember how many students you saw at that meeting, and how many hands were in the air. I urge you to do what any decent, respectful, elected representative would do after witnessing these things. Accept impeachment, or resign.