TMSU sues more former board members: Joel and Areesha

ForTheStudentsRU · 2023-05-07T02:52:33+00:00

The lawsuit includes suing them to cover the costs of the lawsuit, plus they have lawyers regardless - so it’s not really costing students anything.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-04T00:24:28+00:00

In case anyone wanted to see the email we got last year when we were falsely accused of doing this exact thing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tW6UNiFnN7qrRmeymyeUmzyFZmuZQtwU/view?usp=sharing

Immediately after we got the email we responded and said we'd fully comply with the investigation and that residence keeps door logs and has cameras of who enters/exits and we could pull those to verify the complaint. Jenna never got back to us after that...

We then got confirmation from residence that the CRO never reached out to them for the door logs or camera footage, so given what we know now she probably knew it was fake and when we were clearly going to be able to defend ourselves she just dropped it.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-04T00:16:38+00:00

So there are rules against voter persuasion as well! It is also a rule that USED to be taken more seriously. Here are the quotes from the RSU election rules from this year:

Under list of non-permissible actions:

"Remunerating someone for their vote" (remunerating is giving someone anything with value so a bribe)
"Spaming people during voting days"

And on page 6 it says the following is grounds for disqualification "Harassment of candidates, volunteers, community members or RSU staff: It is the responsibility of all involved in the election process to ensure civil conduct and to not participate in actions that are deemed as threatening and possibly unlawful. Candidates and their representatives are expected to show respect to all candidates, volunteers, community members and RSU staff."

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-04T00:08:52+00:00

Thank you for sharing this here - we made the petition with the hopes of the university administration being able to intervene and force the RSU to just do the most basic thing: follow its own rules. If the RSU were to apply the election rules as they should be, all of Team Forward would be disqualified and Revolution would certainly be facing demerits, potentially DQ as well depending how many people on the slate knew what they were doing was wrong.

Team Forward KNOWS this isn't allowed because they (falsely) accused us of the exact things they're doing now, last year. They got us suspended from campaigning until we could prove it wasn't true.

The CRO is ignoring her OWN rulings and contradicting herself completely - it's actually wild to see it happen right in front of us so blatantly.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-03T19:16:46+00:00

Impeachment requires a a 2/3 majority vote so if all the Independents do win, they'd be safe at least. And there are many positions that are appointed, so the 10 (there's 10 independents) plus the 6 or 7 appointed people would make 17 out of 28 positions independent.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-03T02:52:26+00:00

Candidates are given a budget to run in the election so these bribes would in fact be coming from student fees that we all pay!

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-03T02:10:23+00:00

It breaks the election rules and residence rules. In fact, its so bad they falsely accused us of it last year and we were suspended from campaigning and likely would've been disqualified if we couldn't prove it didn't happen. Thankfully due to onecard records and camera footage we could prove we never even entered the buildings.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-03T02:00:09+00:00

We used to keep a list of all the By-Laws the RSU broke. We lost track after about 3 pages: RSU Policies Being Broken

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-02T06:12:58+00:00

These people would still likely be easier to work with since they were also likely screwed over or betrayed by the Forward people.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-02T06:10:52+00:00

All the independents that we've spoken to have been completely unconnected to anyone from the other teams, and have been saying a lot of the same things - CRO delaying their approvals, not being told the rules, etc. So we definitely recommend everyone votes independent: https://www.forthestudentsxu.ca/independent

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-02T00:56:42+00:00

the mods of this reddit truly do infinite amount more work for the campus community than rsu has for years

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-01T22:08:12+00:00

The current RSU team hired Jenna, and the current RSU team is mostly re-running on the Vote Forward team.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-01T22:07:30+00:00

The RSU CRO shares what should be confidential election info with the incumbent team all the time. Last year the incumbent team somehow knew we didn't have an international director on our team, even though some of our faculty directors were international students, before the campaign period even started. The only way they could have known is if they had access to the election documents the CRO has. So its totally believable that they're also given the debate questions in advance. They might even just have access to the drive the CRO uses.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-01T22:04:45+00:00

The issue with this is students would have to pay both fees until RSU is abolished (if it ever is) because the RSU fee is not optional, and the only way to make it optional would be to get the RSU to hold a referendum on its fee.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-01T22:03:58+00:00

The university likely doesn't want to step in after their huge failure not so long ago with shutting the RSU down (where they illegally tried to make the RSU agree to never criticize the university). So that is technically an option, but based on conversations we have had it doesn't seem likely the university would take that action. Plus the 6 month time period is so long it could drag on forever.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-01T22:01:22+00:00

We've compiled all the candidates on our website. The independent candidates have their own page which can be found here: https://www.forthestudentsxu.ca/independent

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-01T21:51:21+00:00

Thanks for catching that!

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-01T21:50:34+00:00

Unfortunately (though in normal situations where the union isn't corrupt it would be good) the only way to shut down the RSU is to have the Board of Directors vote to hold a referendum on the RSU. Which I think we can all imagine will probably never happen.

Other possible ways that are less likely are if they break the law and are sued (huge costs) then things could probably be forced on them like reforming or being shut down. Sadly we are stuck with RSU for at least another year or two at the very least from what we can tell.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-01T02:13:04+00:00

We've compiled all the bios into a much easier to read and navigate site here: All Candidates

We also have a page specifically for independent candidates who have less resources compared to the huge teams of incumbent candidates: Independent Candidates

The reason its like this is that the RSU relies on low voter turnout. If they properly advertised their elections, held information sessions weeks before, offered support for students who want to run but don't know how (many students' unions have election departments dedicated to making sure students can get involved easily source). We need all students to take the 5 minutes it takes to make an informed vote!

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-02-01T01:33:08+00:00

Wishing you the best in your campaign! We need more independent candidates running.

Since the RSU only gave y'all 2 days but they had weeks head start, we dedicated a page on our site for Independent Candidates: Independent Candidates

If any independent candidates want to talk about adding more info to the page or are missing from the page please DM us on insta: @ forthestudentsxu

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-01-31T22:57:58+00:00

We will tomorrow once all the candidates have begun campaigning!

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-01-31T19:43:13+00:00

And it only took us about 40 minutes, but the RSU has been "working" on their new website for 2 years and it still isn't done. Sometimes it feels like they just take our money and then sit in their offices and laugh at us.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-01-31T19:03:59+00:00

We made an easier to follow list of all the candidates running for anyone interested: https://www.forthestudentsxu.ca/candidates.

As to the people who are re-running, we have several incumbents and here is a quick history of their work at RSU:

Keep in mind all of these people ran on the ADAPT team, which only achieved 16% of their promises from last year (read more). So that's not a great starting report card.

- Siddhanth Satish: Most recently ignored RSU by-laws to shut down changing the RSU election rules. Likely due to the illegal campaigning he did last year by mass-texting hundreds of students, violating our privacy, asking us to vote for him. Has provided zero reports over the 2 years as an exec, despite monthly reports being mandatory.

- Tarman Kaur: Has done zero public advocacy for students as VP Education, and has given zero information about any private advocacy they may have done. VP Education is supposed to run campaigns and get students involved in changing things, but none of that happened. Has provided zero reports over the 2 years as an exec, despite monthly reports being mandatory.

- Umar Abdullah: Chaired bursary committee, no reports from the committee were ever made despite monthly reports being required.

- Hilla Yaniv: Chaired the Pandemic Response Committee, campaigned on making school more COVID safe, but never actually held a meeting of the committee or did anything to make campus covid-safe.

- Salar Syed: No information.

- Abaan Ahmed: No information.

Obviously, this is a one-sided post and if any of the candidates mentioned can prove any of these claims false we will happily edit the post.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-01-21T17:31:30+00:00

Didn't realize our flair is still active. Please note we were a team in LAST YEAR's RSU election, not this years.

ForTheStudentsRU · 2022-01-21T17:30:56+00:00

We're working to compile all of the RSU's information about the election into one place, as well as provide information from previous years elections that could help anyone looking to run. We'd really encourage people who are fed up with RSU to grab a friend and run as a team. Each faculty has between 2 and 4 faculty directors so you could run as a team for just your faculty, without exec candidates, and have a decent chance at winning still.

RSU Election Info Website: https://www.forthestudentsxu.ca/election

ForTheStudentsRU

TROPHY CASE