I write today as a student who attended the Canadian Federation of Students Annual General Meeting, both angry and confused. I will try and give you a description of my personal experience, but know that this is only one person’s perspective of the event. I am critical enough to see the other views on both my actions and the majority of sentiments at the meeting, but do not think that being a member of a minority group makes my opinion and experiences irrelevant. So though I am still working through all my thoughts and attempting to come to terms with many different things, I will now write you my account of this highly talked-about, intense meeting.
Overview
The meeting was held at the Best Western on the Gatineau side of Ottawa municipality. It was a four-day long event, with opening plenary (setting the agenda for the meeting) on the first day, workshops and meetings on the second and third day (the federation has many constituency groups and caucuses) as well sub-committees of plenary meeting to decide the order of closing plenary. Every delegate (save Kwantlen Polytechnic’s, whose reservations were cancelled) stayed at the hotel and spent a lot of time together. There were some great people I got to meet while I was there. Many were kind and funny and were as overwhelmed or jaded by the whole thing as me. Some were angry and aggressive and mean. When we arrived, the CFS National Executive tried getting our delegation to sign a legal document (shown there for the first time) putting us financially liable for any staff complaints, and refused to let us in until we did. This was a really bad way to start the meeting. After about three hours of argument and refusal to sign the inappropriate document, we were let in and the conference officially started. Other than the weak welcome, the food was pretty good, and the hotel’s staff was great.
The meeting itself was very informative. I loved being in Women’s Caucus and the different speakers and workshops were great. A lot of very good stuff comes out of the CFS and I sincerely believe it to be a necessary organization for students around Canada to rally around. Their presentation on the CFS campaigns on Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women was inspiring, and I recognize the work it’s done, especially in smaller provinces, on tuition fees and grants. However, I find a sense of absolutism within these sorts of groups where any sort of contradictory opinion is met as an attack on both the organization and the people and political causes it supports. I hold great value in not only the ends of an organization but the means in which it achieves those ends. The way I see it, there are a lot of people who care about the ends; some people should focus more on the means.
The Concordia Context
I came to the AGM as a member of the Concordia Student Union, whose relationship with the CFS has been very stable until very recently. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this but Concordia had a riot 7 years ago when Hillel invited Benjamin Netanyahu to talk at Concordia. Palestinian activists shut down his speech and this led to a reactionary, “moderate,” and “a-political” slate coming to power. This slate, ‘Evolution not Revolution’ replicated itself for 5 years (all the while forming hostile relationships with fee levy groups by threatening their fees, literally committing electoral fraud, and squashing all activist movement on campus) until the last Concordia Student Union election, when a party composed of former members of the original party separated and challenged them. The election was charged with the same racial tensions as in 2003, but the Israel-Palestine debate took on a Jewish-Muslim lens. The splinter team, Vision, won the election, and are the ones who brought me to this conference.
The reason for the splinter in the Evolutionary strain was due to two huge errors on the part of the party (called Unity that year, but for the next election decided on ‘Change’) in power. They started last year off by attempting to dissolve the fee levy of the student group Sustainability Action Fund because of a dislike of the person who created it, who used to be a member of an Evolution party himself (just for the record these parties were called: Evolution not Revolution, New Evolution, Evolution, Experience, Unity, Unity and Change- where’s my Jungian analysis?). After the SAF fiasco, the CSU executives had a closed council meeting to disclose a huge deficit from years before (not their faults, but they didn’t release it very well). Their next mistake, after a recall petition against them was dismissed by the chair of council who resigned an hour later, was to hire the current National Deputy Chairperson of the CFS (as well as a former exec on the original Evolution slate) to be our Chairperson of CSU council. At the time the CSU executive were also pushing through a new health plan contract with the CFS-run National Student Health Network. This led many Concordia students, including myself, to look into the organization. Before that point, I honestly did not know much about the CFS, knowing more about the stronger local student organizations, FEUQ and ASSE. You see, the CFS does not really have a large a presence in Quebec because of the long-time difference in our grassroots student movement. The Day of Action in 2007 was the last drop fee campaign in Quebec and it too was shrouded in Federalist controversy as it was scheduled a couple days before the provincial march.
These inquiries led into Concordia seconding a reform package that was sent out by the McGill Post-Graduate Students Society and signed on to by five other schools, and endorsed by the CFS-Quebec. The reforms included some aggressive and drastic changes, as well as some reasonable and fair ones, and also some that when I read them (as I can’t take credit for their composition or distribution) I wondered aloud why such mechanisms are not already in place.
The Reform Package
The aggressive and drastic changes included one to reform executive salaries to reflect minimum-wage scale (which was preceded by a jab at the CFS’s minimum wage campaign’s success) which was dropped in opening plenary, as well as to remove certain members of the Federation from their post for either violent or anti-democratic/corrupt behaviour. The fair ones included publishing a list of all lawsuits the CFS is currently in, open up meetings to all members of the student press, to end legal action with Simon Fraser and the University of P.E.I. and accept their de-federations, to forgive York Federation of Students’ $700,000 CFS debt, and to allow individual students to present motions at CFS meetings with 5% support of their student body. The reforms I was surprised even needed presentation were those to form a Judicial Board, a conflict of interest policy and requiring the consent of the membership to raise the fee levy, instead of doing it underhandedly (I say underhandedly because at least at Concordia the CFS levy is raised every year at CPI, a fact not located on the ballot question I voted in favour of).
All the reforms were met hostilely by ardent CFS supporters as they were dismissed without any look to their merit. I can say that I was at Organizational and Services Development sub-committee at the AGM and there was a refusal to even amend the most important motions, even though it was only a certain sentence or specific clause that people seemed to have a problem with (in the meeting a delegate even called a Point of Personal Privilege for me to “stop trying to amend the motions.”) All but four of the reforms failed, and the passed ones were mostly amended (somehow amending the anti-harassment policy to make it weaker by removing the following text currently in the CFS’s official by-laws “the advisor shall be available year-round to serve on harassment and Grievance or Appeals committee” because it was “too hard to do.”)
This resistance to our participation was felt sincerely felt by the three Montreal schools attending the conference, as well as schools in Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. A Budget committee delegate felt the same complete dismissal to every 'controversial school's' ideas when he suggested transferring the majority of a miscellaneous budget line that was rarely used to the Aboriginal Caucus who had complained of not getting enough money. The Aboriginal Caucus delegates apparently abstained on that motion, which obviously failed. This, coupled with a motion to defeat in omnibus all motions presented by Quebec schools, was not only evidence of a lack of engagement with the reforms in any matter, but a virulent dislike of the proposers. When I speak with people about the Canadian Federation of Students, they always tell me to work from within the organization to affect change. “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater” is repeated about the need for a united student movement that is beyond these types of problems, but nothing is said about what to do when faced with a situation like this. If one sees something they consider broken in certain ways and have no mechanisms to change it, what else can they do? If only the organization considered the spirit of the issues at hand, not the 'othering' of those that suggested them. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater? Well what about our poor, drowning, thrown-miles-into-the-dark-abyss-of-nothingness babies?
Regressive Reforms
Another reform, presented by the Carleton University Graduate Students’ Association proposed a different drastic re-haul of the CFS’s operations relating to referenda, changing the 10% of the student body needed to initiate referenda to 20%, essentially allowing only 2 referenda per year and 5 years between each school’s chance to have a referendum. This was called a “democratic” act in some venues, “necessary for the organization’s security” in others. As well, the oft-repeated assessment (by Women's and Students of Colour reps no less!) that 10% of a population is an insignificant minority and that 20 or 33.3 percent is a more accurate number to discern a will in a population was downright troubling for an ostensibly pro-minority organization. This motion is said to have passed (although the debate over the weight of abstention votes will be raging for some time).
There was also great deal of antagonism doled outside the act of open and orderly political debate. I can and will only speak to the intense hostility I myself experienced but am sure there was a lot of it going around by the beleaguered look on the faces of the anti-harassment advisors. I was subject to attacks on my race (I’m not “Palestinian enough” because I disagreed), agency (apparently I am a Conservative party black ops agent sent by Stevie H to fuck with the student activists), and emotions (one man alone made me cry three times!) in a way I have never been in my life. There was some really shameful stuff said which I’ll go into when I’ve had a chance to reflect on everyone’s actions, including my own. Other people made complaints as well, and I’m not going to push anyone else into this fight, but needless to say the entire week was very tough. Someone said to me, “this is either the best or worst week of my life.” “Oh really?” I laughed, “cuz it’s been the worst week of mine.”
Thoughts on the Whole Affair
To me, this behaviour shows two things.
First is the powerful support this organization has is owed to the people who participate most actively in it. People who I know are at the front of a lot of progressive action at campuses across Canada look at this organization as a unique and unimpeachable one. For the record, I see its ends as unique and unimpeachable but its means as susceptible to entrenched interests, anti-democratic protectionist activities, power hungry (and verging on patriarchal) views of dissident voices and isolationist anti-transparent activities as the next organization.
Second is the inherent hypocrisy of an organization that supports divergent identities, minority rights (and this means all minorities) and economic equity, subsequently ignoring those critiques when it comes to turning that lens on itself and its own practices. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen a lot, but that does not make it right; indeed, it never has and never will. I guess the question is if we accept corruption as a fundamental part of corporations.
There will be a lot of discussion to come of this meeting in the next couple weeks as I see this story becoming much larger, both in the “student” world and the “adult” world. There are currently thirteen campuses across Canada which have submitted petitions to initiate a referendum to re-evaluate its membership in the organization. All of these schools are affected by the motions passed this weekend, and all of the students at those schools will be looking to see what happened at the conference this weekend.
I originally came into this conference as one of the supporters of the referendum on continued membership at Concordia. I considered this petition similar in strategy to the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions campaign targeted at Israel, although obviously inferior in scope and importance. I guess I thought that going to that meeting with that extra leverage, to be able to demand consideration and place pressure because of the importance of our school to the organization could make Concordia’s future with the CFS less bleak. Maybe the position taken by some schools, signalling that only a position that seeks to fuck with the organization's financial and political stability could be effective in affecting change is telling. But after the way the last week played out, the opinions of all the other attendees from the 19 schools that voted against Carleton Grads’ reactionary and oppressive motion (not to mention the multiple schools who abstained) are going to cause some new serious setbacks to the CFS. To me, it’s the perfect example of how sometimes securing your best interests at all costs ends up biting you in the butt. It’s just sad it had to happen to what could be the model for progressive student organizing.
I posted this on Andrew Brett's post as well, and I figure it should be here as well:
Ok, so honestly both sides of this whole CFS debate need to take a step back. Is the CFS perfect? I severely doubt many people except the most diehard loyalists would say "yes!". But what's happening at Concordia, and what happened previously at other school such as Simon Fraser, is that a collection of leftists with some greviances with their students' union team up with conservatives and liberals who want to depoliticize, marginalize and mollify the students' union. At SFU this meant impeaching executives, running a bitter anti-CFS campaign, and attacking almost anyone deemed "too CFS". Throughout it all progressives would argue on the campus, in media, and at CFS meetings that they justed wanted to reform it - they wanted to great a more "grassroots" organization at SFU and in the CFS.
What is SFU and the Simon Fraser Student Society like now? Well its run by a bunch of people who mainly identify as BC Liberals and federal Conservatives. While UBC's more historically conservative students' union is putting forward progressive ideas around tuition fees and funding, the best SFSS can pull off is a "pumpkin carving against funding cuts!" halloween event. The toxic environment created for anyone thought to be progressive has allowed for libertarians, conservatives and liberals to gain control of the students' union and campus media.
What is important to note about SFU too is that in an attempt to cripple the organization provincially they coordinated and worked with a number of people across the province to try to get multiple referendums running in BC at the same time. The people at Concordia, along with the grads at McGill, appear to have learned these lessions and have gone national. This time coordinating campaigns to decertify unions from UVic to Carleton to Guelph to Regina.
This isn't some "grassroots" campaign designed to bring reform like some more idealistic people at Concordia would claim but part of a concerted effort to cripple and perhaps destroy one of the few progressive organizations in post-secondary education today.
Student organizing in Canada has been here before. In the late 1960s the Canadian Union of Students (CUS) was torn apart when conservatives and "radical" leftists began to attack it simultaniously. Parts of those campaigns includes some oddly similar demands to what's coming from Concordia this time, such as to devide services and political organizing into two seperate organizations. In 1969 CUS collapsed and for over a decade students in Canada were left with a patchwork of organizations and little effective leadership nationally.
Now this time out there isn't a vacuum in organizating federally. If this crew of people get their way then the CFS comes out of these battles severely weakened and the right-wing Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (created after a similar coordinated attack in the early 1990s) will gladly fill the void with its refusal to participate in broader campaign, mobilze its members for actions, advocating for income contingent loans and justifying tuition fees hikes.
In addition to above I feel like even some recent examples in British Columbia to what the Gordon Campell Liberals were able to get away with in the province with respect to universities and colleges speaks to how splitered and devided the CFS and attempts to organize are there right now. On the first day of voting at SFU on membership in the CFS the government announces sweeping cuts to the sector. Faculty, staff, libraries, facilities would all be reduced.
That wasn't a mistake to pull that just when one of the more historically well-organized groups in the province on PSE was consumed with in-fighting.
In Ontario when the half dozen or so students' unions split away from the CFS to form the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance in the 1994 it proved to be perfect fodor for the soon elected Mike Harris government to legitimize their regressive policies. OUSA was more than happy to let the government off the hook and deligitimize the work of the more critical CFS. In Quebec after the student strike in 2005 the divisions between FEUQ and ASSE grew increasingly wide and hostile, which meant there was no well coordinated response to the Charest government when they decided to lift the tuition fees freeze.
Now, that if that's "progressive" then i think people need to perhaps reanalyze their politics. Destroying or weakening the CLC, OFL, BC Fed of Labour or any similar organizations is not going create for a more "grassroots" or "democratic" labour movement. it will only help to deminish working peoples' and union members' attempts to fight back against neoliberalism. Students may suffer a fate of weakened and deminished progressive leadership just in a time when post-secondary education is under one of hte most concerted attacks across Canada.
History is pretty clear: when students, for whatever reasons, decide to split themselves up there is usually one primary beneficiary: regressive provincial and federal governments.
Lioness, your argument conviently fails to address the issues and problems with the CFS today, the most important of these being the complete failure of this organization to win any significant victories for students. And no, maintaining the tuition freeze in Manitoba and eliminating interest on loans in NFLD are minor consolation prizes. You also fail to address the fact that the CFS completely resisted ANY attempt to reform itself and become more accountable, democratic, and transparent, like *having a conflict of interest policy*. I'm sorry, but in no way does adopting a conflict of interest policy weaken the student movement.
In every province save Manitoba and Quebec, tution is rising faster than inflation and has been doing so for more than 15 years now. Student debt is continuing to grow. This highly important issue gets no exposure. Given than youth unemployment rose to a historic high of 20% this summer and many students were unable to make money to pay the bills, you'd expect that this would motivate the CFS to mobilize on a national level (that's the whole point of being a national student movement yes?) and push this issue into the headlines and get policy-makers caring. But guess what, they're not doing this. They've had plently of time to do this, way before this interal dissent began, and they chose to do nothing. There was a national day of action two years ago, but anyone who's a serious union, political, or social activist organizer will tell you that a campaign that wants to ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING takes longer than a single day.
But this is not surprising, the CFS only spends 17% of its budget on campaigns and organizing, but spends 27% on litigation. This is disgraceful. No union in North American spends so little on organizing, let alone spends more on litigation outside of legal battles with employers.
Its great to argue that the student movement should be united, and I agree with this. But, no single institution comprises the "student movement" and any organization that claims to do so is supremely arrogant. The history of union organizing is filled with the corpses of corrupt, self-serving, and cowardly unions and labour federations that were cast aside. The CFS has shown that its completely unwilling to reform itself, therefor its time for students across Canada to cast them aside.
I found this article to be one of the more thoughtful on this issue, so first my thanks to the author. Those no longer part of the student movement(s) may not know this debate has been brewing for years and came to the forefront two years ago on many campuses.
The students who are wanting to leave aren't all trying to "cripple the organization" as has been suggested. There may be some who are conservative or are just jerks. Mostly, however, I believe they are fed up with being mistreated (not to mention having it endlessly implied in the blogosphere they have no idea that national organizations are important and are misguided radical lefties being co-opted by the conservatives on campus!).
Social justice work is important, working in solidarity with groups nationally (and internationally) is ideal, we can agree on that! But sometimes organizations become too sick to be worth your time and your activism and your membership. And sometimes the group you thought was pretty good turns into the group you don't want to stay involved with, and even warn others about, because you or those you love have been bullied in what seems like a coordinated effort, isolated, scared, are afraid to voice an opinion in the group, or are lied to and manipulated. And it isn't just once, it's every time you go. My union taught me to name that experience as a poisoned work environment.
My feminist activism taught me that loyalty is a great quality, but to question if it is the best approach in every situation. Most left organizers have had those terrible moments when a beloved organization turns sour and becomes intolerable. Most of us are also willing to put up with a hell of a lot of craziness to get some good work accomplished. Hopefully we can see the organization through the bad times, but sadly sometimes, the culture is irreparably negative and the only sensible thing for many members to do is leave and get on with it. And yes, sometimes dismantle it and start over. Sometimes I think activists grow up at the moment they learn at what point the means outweigh the ends.
If you think the CFS is worth your energy, I encourage you to fill your boots and get involved. I totally acknowledge the great work of the good friends and gifted activists who are among those who have worked at the CFS over the past decade (I think you know who you are
), and of course some of those friends disagree with me--always respectfully and without any of the behaviors I describe here.
For me, having attended 5 general meetings before my school left (I proudly work for the UVIC GSS) and having been involved in campus & community activism for over two decades, I am just glad the UVIC GSS are out and we can spend more time trying to advocate for students than fighting what became a completely fruitless fight to be heard and valued within the CFS. (And no, my student union hasn't been taken over by conservatives, quite the contrary.)
Yes, it would be better if we could work with an awesome national student organization, but that just isn't possible with the CFS, at least for me.
Finally, I am putting my full name, Stacy Chappel, as I think this important debate shouldn't be anonymous, and I am a long time activist and am speaking for myself, not my employer.
First of all, I do not think the fact that a leftist organization is under attack by some Conservatives is any reason for people (especially not the left) to stay silent about that organizations if they have valid concerns. Conservatives will always be trying to dismantle our progressive orgs but we need to be more diligent in discerning the difference between what is a fair criticism and what is not.
I believe that the aforementioned reforms (Judicial Board, conflict of interest policy, debt forgiveness, clearer terms of participation with students across Canada) are fair reforms. The CFS is only adding fuel to Conservative attack dogs' fire when they treat serious issues coming from concerned members of the membership as meaningless or offensive. And further distancing those who would be active and beneficial members of the organization by treating them like shit.
Furthermore, as I stated before, I care a lot about the means in which an organization operates. I think, to be honest, I may be more openly critical of leftist organizations acting unfairly than non- because I see progressive politics to be coming from a moral and conscientious place (the difference between saying "I support ____ because it's the right thing to do" vs "I support _____ because it's more cost-efficient"). We need to be judicious with our own organizations to not forget to value leftist principles, alongside leftist causes.
The CFS needs a reality check, in that a HUGE amount of leftists across Canada are growing very disillusioned with their practices. Once it is acknowledged that these people have the right to be heard, that their complaints deserve more thought than "well, we have bigger fish to fry" or "harper would love this," this debate can move forward. Unless you are a complete ideologue, you do not disagree with a lot of Conservative policies simply because they come from Conservatives and we hate Conservatives because they're Conservatives, you disagree with them because they would harm our country's social structure, etc. But if a really positive and concrete initiative came out of that gov't (not holding my breath) maybe you would at first be suspicious, but then, after doing research and coming to your own conclusions, hopefully support it. These reforms aren't even coming from the Cons!
We cannot pull the same intimidation techniques the Cons do when they dismiss their opponents by calling them socialists or separatists (or in this case the "ultra-left" or "Conservative hacks"). We, the compassionate, just, and learned left must oppose this lazy self-destructive behaviour wherever it appears.
On a personal note, Lioness, despite what you think about the Concordia context, alleging I'm trying to depoliticize the CSU is terribly unfair, as many of those who are directly responsible for the de-politicization of the CSU are currently employed by the Canadian Federation of Students. I have been active in, and gained a reputation for, fighting this depoliticization and corporatization of my students' union and consider my attempts to affect change in the CFS in the same vein, but obviously much more personally taxing (because I never really believed in the old CSU's ends, as I do the CFS).
If we could all please deal with the content of the reforms and addressing ways to get them passed at the May SGM that would be both beneficial to the CFS and its members. If the debate is simply going to remain in the realm of fear-mongering and finger pointing, then... well what is anyone fighting for?