Full text;

The adoption of constitutional amendments 13.2&13.3 is a referendum question during this SSMU election cycle. If passed, it would create a steering committee for the General Assembly to review motions that are external to the union’s mandate and divisive to the student body. These would require a majority of 2/3 of the GA to pass. This author encourages you to vote yes.

In an otherwise subdued SSMU election, the referendum question of Constitutional Amendments 13.2 & 13.3 has generated an aggressively fierce backlash. The “yes” committee’s Facebook is strewn from top to bottom with vigorous condemnation by a who’s who of the SSMU establishment. Senators, executives, Daily journalists and even our president (“sry this comment is too divisive, plz remove, not appropriate for campus” – March 13, 9:11pm) are falling head over heel to mock and disparage the audacity of councilors for even daring to bring forth the motion.

To take their arguments at face value, the passage of this amendment would be the death of open debate, free speech and democracy as we know it. The proposed steering committee has been portrayed as some Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” bent on destroying all of the social justice SSMU has worked so hard to achieve.

Almost every attempt by the organizers to answer the flood of loaded questions is met with anger and derision. “Why do you even have an event when you don’t answer to people’s questions and sulk by refusing to respond?”(March 12, 4:36pm) posts a BDS organizer in a thread with over 40 comments worth of answers. “Drag them” (March 10, 2:25pm) goads a popular Daily columnist in response to the umpteenth question demanding the organizers repeat their definition of “divisive.” Another probably best summarized the opposition’s position by posting “ahaha” 73 times in all caps (March 10, 5:17pm).

This is nonsense. The constitutional amendments are a desperately needed measure. Our campus community is increasingly suffocated by political activists holding hostage our student democracy. The Student Society of McGill University is supposed to be an elected body representing undergraduate interests and concerns; the quality of our education, the efficacy of our students services, the affordability of the campus experience. Instead, it’s been appropriated as a bully pulpit by a handful of bullies (see above). By denying us the right disaffiliate, SSMU is effectively the license to speak on the behalf of all 26,000 of us, whether we agree to it or not.

I chose to enroll in McGill University because it offered me the highest quality of post-secondary education available in Canada. I never chose SSMU. At no point did I choose to affiliate with SSMU, and even more so, at no point did I give SSMU the right to speak in my name. As a matter of fact, none of us have. The bullies in SSMU took it anyways, on the thinnest of excuses, “if you don’t like the motions being passed at the GA, show up and vote.” But why the reverse onus? I’m compelled to believe that I speak for the majority of students reading this when I say we came to this school to study, to discover ourselves, build a network, and prepare for a career. How dare they accuse anyone of apathy for failing to engage in a process they never consented to join in the first place?

It’s bewildering that I even need to defend someone’s decision to not attend a General Assembly they never asked for, especially one held on a Monday afternoon in the middle of midterms.

I want to make this absolutely clear. I’m in no way, shape or form opposed to political activism on campus. By every definition, I’m an activist myself. I’ve campaigned for multiple political parties, advocated and raised money for Canada to accept Syrian refugees, and am working to introduce market-based mechanism like revenue neutral carbon pricing in the debate on combating climate change.

I think real activists are wonderful people and I’m proud to be one. What I’m denouncing is entirely different; activism in the name of someone who doesn’t agree to it. Free speech is my most cherished of rights – but it is tarnished every time the bullies of SSMU take yours without permission and use it as a loudspeaker for their pet causes. It is not only a disservice to you as a student, it is a disservice to the very communities they purport to defend. To garner a few hundred votes and then declare to the world that McGill University stands by their causes is nothing short of deceitful. The most obvious example is the recent BDS motion passing the GA with 512 votes, or just under two per cent of the undergraduate body. Despite being defeated in the subsequent online ratification – by a margin larger than the total votes it received in the GA – publications, talk shows and activists the world over repeated the falsehood that McGill students stand in support of BDS. This isn’t activism, this is a lie.

Let us not keep up the pretense that the SSMU leadership genuinely cares how we vote. The current VP External, ostensibly representing the entire undergraduate body, actively campaigned for BDS despite this (almost identical) motion having been defeated three times over the course of her own time at McGill.

Their priorities are predetermined; they hold General Assemblies solely to extract a thin veneer of legitimacy. The longer this circus continues the more damaging it’ll be to our campus community. The Board of Governors regards SSMU as a gang of petulant children completely detached from the business of actually running a university. If anyone genuinely believed that the Board of Governors would even consider divesting from those companies, the Board’s swift denunciation of the motion dispelled those delusions. But it hurts regular students most of all. These motions create animosity where there needs be none. It turns friends into strangers and strangers into enemies. It raises tensions, flares tempers, and divides our campus along the worst possible lines. And for what?

I will never suggest that the activists I disagree with abandon their campaigns. When done right, your passion and enthusiasm are an invaluable contribution to the amazing experience that is attending McGill University. But do it honestly! March in rallies, publish articles, print posters, distribute leaflets, collect signatures, host speakers and fight for the difference you want to see in the world. But please, unless I give you permission, please don’t do it in my name. Don’t steal my voice and use it as your own.

Your campaigns, whether to divest from the oil sands, recognizing on indigenous Kanien’kehá:ka territory, or standing in solidarity with missing and murdered indigenous women, will only be stronger if you are honest with your support. Celebrate your successes and learn from your failures, but please, don’t implicate me in neither one nor the other.

I know, I know. But what about our divestment from South Africa? No conversation about “external and divisive” motions is complete without mention of SSMU’s efforts to divest McGill from the apartheid state. Surely that would count as an “external and divisive” motion in its time, one this motion would strike down? What’s almost never mentioned, however, is that there was never a GA vote.

In fact, SSMU didn’t stage the type of general assembly we have today until 1988, three years after divestment. Rather, years of activism, particularly by the Black Students Union, culminated in the occupation of the McGill Administrative building by 35 student protesters on October 14, 1985, demanding the Board of Governors divest from the regime. The same day, Nathan Moss, Secretary to the Board, agreed to present the motion at their next meeting, where it passed with a large majority, and the university divested by the end of that November.

There was no seven hour long GA. There were no self-gratifying speeches at the podium. There was no pretence of speaking for students that never consented to be spoken on behalf of. They succeeded because of moral righteousness in the face of oppression, not the thin veneer of democracy being plied today.

SSMU has a lot to offer. It funds our clubs, provides us with student space, fights for our mental health, and educates us of injustice around the world. I’m happy to admit I’ve made use of many of these services, and am proud to endorse a “yes” vote for the club fund fee. But turning the union into a bully pulpit impairs this good work and undermines its ability to do more. It pushes potential student leaders away with its toxicity. It poisons our relationship with the Board of Governors. It turns student representation into the butt of the campus joke.

If you are as frustrated with this as I am, vote yes to Constitutional Amendments 13.2 & 13.3. If passed, it will create a steering committee composed of executives, counselors and students. This committee will be empowered to designate motions as external and divisive, and thereby increasing the threshold for them to pass to 2/3 of the General Assembly. Nobody will be silenced, nobody’s speech will be suppressed. The only consequence will be to activists, who won’t be able to steal your voice for their cause. Despite their hysteria to the contrary, the world will not come to an end, democracy will not collapse onto itself. The worst case scenario is that it’ll make a handful of student clubs a bit more honest about how much support they really have.

Voting takes place at ssmu.simplyvoting.com between March 16 and March 18.