All Posts Tagged With: "University of Victoria Students Society"
UVSS and CFS finally have their day in court
UVic’s student union is attempting to hold a referendum on leaving
After many months of behind the scenes wrangling, the University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS) finally went to court with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) in an attempt to force a referendum to leave the sometimes maligned, often litigious student association.
(To tell an exceedingly long story in 66 words: Last year a petition was circulated at UVic to leave the CFS. It had the signatures of more than 10% of students. Then, a counter-petition was circulated. The CFS decided those that had signed both petitions had essentially revoked their original signature in wanting a referendum, and therefore wouldn’t count. Ipso facto, they refused to accept the petition. The UVSS got mad, and here we are.)
The courtroom battle will continue today, but from the looks of tweets from the Martlet’s Kailey Willetts and a detailed writeup from the blog Eye on the UVSS, it looks favourable for the UVSS. The judge, Malcolm Macaulay, found the CFS’ position that their executive could find ways of invalidating signatures of real students flawed.
“It’s a slippery slope,” he said, according to Eye on the UVSS. “If you can go further and inquire, ‘Did you really mean it when you signed it,’ it requires them to conduct what may be a very flawed investigation, we don’t know. They’ve taken evidence that someone else presented to them–was that not an investigation?”
More notably, the CFS’ secondary claim against the validity of a referendum—that the UVSS owes over $100,000 due to fees from the student union to the CFS not keeping up with inflation for a period of time—was ruled irrelevant by Macaulay. This isn’t to say that the fees couldn’t come up in a later courtroom battle, but in this particular case on whether the UVSS can hold a referendum, it has become a moot issue.
Student execs are being paid what?
Alberta student leaders to get 28.5% raise
The other day, I caught a item in The Gateway, the University of Alberta’s newspaper, about student union executives having their pay raised from $25,668 to $33,000, or by 28.5 per cent. Unsurprisingly, the article had more than its usual share of online comments from students.
Last year, On Campus compiled many of the student executive salaries across the country, and they varied between $20,000 and $35,000, often with very little correlation between the university in question and the amount of money/number of students they governed.
It’s fair for student leaders to think they deserve more money—they work long hours and are in charge of millions of dollars. They’re comparing themselves to executives of other organizations of similar budgets.
But students compare them to, well, students. Students who also have to work jobs and take classes at the same time, and who often don’t see the same benefits coming from their student union as other places they pay fees to—like their actual tuition dollars.
Much like university president salaries, student executive salaries are a hot-button issue, especially during times of relative economic hardship, because of the general gut reaction of “My Money Is Going Where?” At the same time, student union leaders tend to think that what they do is very, very important, and of course they deserve to be fairly compensated. Unsurprisingly, this creates tension, rarely of the productive type.
For example, at UVic, the student society realized they were in a financial crisis, the executive did what they could to reduce their salaries, held a referendum to increase student fees, and it passed.
At UBC however, the student executive of the Alma Mater Society (AMS) announced they were in financial trouble, only to ask for a $1,200 yearly health benefit package for themselves within the budget. Shockingly (at least to them), council took a month to pass their budget (though they got their health benefits), and the student body at large was so against a proposed referendum on increasing student fees to help the AMS’ finances that they postponed it until the new year. I’m not at UVic, and I don’t know how much impact the symbolic salary decrease had at that campus—but it is a line-item in the budget which always arouses tension, regardless of what province you happen to reside in.
UVic student union gives in to pro-life club
Youth Protecting Youth to be reimbursed for withheld funding going back two years
A lawsuit launched by a University of Victoria pro-life club against the student society has been settled out of court. Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) has had its status as a student group fully restored, and the University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS) has agreed to reimburse the group for the funding that has been withheld for two years.
The spat began in October 2008 when the UVSS refused to give YPY the same meagre funding all UVic student clubs receive. Clubs approved by a committee are entitled to $232 each year and such perks as banner supplies and free room bookings. Upon review in 2009, the committee approved YPY. But the students’ society board stepped in and once again revoked the funding. In a meeting, last fall the society’s directors accused YPY of “harassing” female students (although they mentioned no specifics). Although its funding had been withdrawn, it wasn’t until February of this year, that YPY had its status as an official student group revoked.
In May, YPY filed a petition with B.C. Supreme Court seeking restitution for denied funding, reinstatement as a student group, and a removal of policies that defined pro-life advocacy as harassment. In June, the group noted on its website that the student society had agreed to most of its terms, but that YPY was seeking assurances that its status as a legitimate student group, entitled to the funding guaranteed to all other campus clubs would not be threatened again. Towards this end, the UVSS has agreed to allow the lawsuit to stand in abeyance, meaning it can be reactivated at any point in the future if the pro-life club again comes under threat.
YPY received legal counseling and representation from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.
With files from Erin Millar
Lets turn universities into street corners
Why submitting universities to the Charter is a bad idea
If you question the morality of abortion then a university campus is no place for you. Anti-abortion student clubs are more likely to be subjected to an inquisition or denounced as misogynistic than to be invited to participate in robust debate. Student unions and university administrations have removed their funding, banned them from campus, and have even called the police.
These are not simply internal disputes. Pro-life groups have fought back through the courts, moves that, if successful, may ultimately bring universities within the purview of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. To be sure, the militancy and hostility to diverse opinion of pro-choice student unions offends the libertarian norms of the Ivory Tower. But if campaigns to have expressive rights extended to universities are successful, then the precedent could demolish any notion of university autonomy.
While I hold no brief for campus censors, stripping universities of their independence, even for an exquisitely liberal purpose, is a greater threat. Universities should retain the authority to regulate what is and isn’t permitted on their campuses, particularly when it comes to non-academic activities. Just because political advocacy may occur on a university campus does not make it a scholarly exercise.
A University of Victoria pro-life group, Youth Protecting Youth (YPY), recently filed a lawsuit with the B.C. Supreme Court against the University of Victoria Students’ Society over a decision to deny the group the same funding that other student groups receive. Although that funding has since been restored, according to their website, the group wants assurances that it won’t be “silenced again.”
If the case makes it to court, it will centre, in part, around the question of whether the student society is in violation of B.C.’s University Act, which states that a student union’s “purpose is to represent the interests of the general undergraduate or graduate student body.”
This is supported by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), which argues in an affidavit that accompanied its recent application for intervener status in the case that, “for one group of students to purport to ‘govern’ by suppressing and singling out a group whose lawful expression it does not like is unlawful as being fundamentally offensive to fundamental legal principles.”
Although BCCLA executive director John Dixon has stated several times, including to Maclean’s, that his group believes denying pro-life clubs funding or space violates the Charter, the civil liberties group does not plan to make that argument this time around. Instead, in order to expedite the process, BCCLA simply plans to assist YPY in its lawsuit.
That doesn’t mean a quest to bring universities under constitutional control has been shelved for good. “We’ll look for the right case,” Dixon told me.
Immunity from the Charter, that student unions and university administrations cite in defence of their proclivity toward censorship, dates back to a precedent-setting 1990 Supreme Court ruling. At issue, was a case that sought to have the University of Guelph’s mandatory retirement policy struck down on Charter grounds. As the Charter is only applicable to Parliament and provincial legislatures, the Court first considered whether universities are under government control and ultimately ruled that they were not.
The majority did concede that universities are “creatures of statute carrying out an important public service,” and that “their powers, objects, activities and governing structures are determined by government.”
However, the Court ruled that “universities are legally autonomous” because of the existence of an independent board of governors that does not represent the government. Despite legislative constraints and financial reliance, university institutions “control their own affairs and enjoy independence from government regarding all important internal matters.” In effect, “their decisions are not government decisions.”
Despite this ruling, Dixon points out that the decision did not entrench universities as non-governmental entities as clearly as is asserted by student unions and university administrations. The late Justice John Sopinka, who sided with the majority, wrote in his own opinion of the case that while universities are to be guaranteed strict autonomy in their selection of staff, “some university activities, however, may be governmental in nature.”
In a talk given at the University of Guelph a few years later, Sopinka elaborated on what he meant. “If governing bodies engage in acts of censorship, they run the risk of being classed as government action and subject to the control of the Charter,” he said.
UVic student union revokes club status of pro-life club
Latest move to silence abortion debate at UVic will likely lead to legal showdown
The University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS) cranked up their fight against the pro-life student club Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) last week by revoking the club’s status. Previous efforts to silence the club’s controversial message only went so far as to deny the club funding. This latest move denies the very existence of the group, upping the stakes significantly in a conflict that is sure to end up in court.
The spat began in October 2008 when the university’s students’ society refused to give YPY the same meagre funding all UVic student clubs receive. Clubs approved by a committee are entitled to $232 each year in addition to such perks as banner supplies and free room bookings. Upon review in 2009, the committee approved funding for YPY. But the students’ society board stepped in and once again revoked the funding, yet still permitted it to operate on campus.
In an October 2009 meeting, the society’s directors accused YPY of “harassing” female students with anti-abortion posters. Those opposed to YPY have also complained about a YPY sponsored event that featured the controversial pro-life activist Stephanie Gray debate distinguished medical ethicist Eike-Henner Kluge. Director Tracey Ho summed up the society’s position by saying, “No one should debate my rights over my own body.”
YPY fought back by contacting the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), in hopes the organization would defend its right to freedom of speech. BCCLA agreed and in late 2009 threatened to launch a lawsuit on behalf of YPY if the UVSS didn’t reinstate the club’s funding. The UVSS brushed the BCCLA off. (Read our previous coverage here.)
In a UVSS meeting that stretched past 11pm last Monday night, the student society decided to revoke the club’s status for one year, meaning that in addition to losing funding, YPY can no longer rent rooms or access other perks available to clubs. YPY may be able to regain status if it complies to certain restrictions. The catch is that the UVSS hasn’t yet determined what those restriction are, so YPY’s status won’t change until the restrictions are written at some unspecified time in the future.
The decision was in part a response to a complaint filed by the UVSS Women’s Centre. “Reproductive rights are elemental in women’s collective and individual potential for equity in all realms of social life,” the complaint letter states. “Access to abortion free from harassment is one of these reproductive rights that YPY continually undermine through the proliferation of inaccurate information and the creation of hostile environments.”
“YPY’s identity and actions as a pro-life organization inherently discriminates against women. Through intimidation tactics and moralist evangelizing, YPY limits the ability of women on campus to access accurate information about abortion free from harassment.”
John Dixon, president of BCCLA, finds this argument illogical. “It is worthwhile to consider, for a moment, what this really means,” he wrote in an email. “It means that the very civil, moderate pro-life YPY club at UVic doesn’t even have to get out of bed in the morning to discriminate against women; it means that no matter how mild, moderate, and circumscribed its advocacy, it discriminates against women. There is no appeal to reason here, but a weird evocation of a kind of secular flavour of sacrilege.”
In a Thursday email to UVSS chairperson Veronica Harrison, YPY president Anastasia Pearse asked the UVSS to call a special general meeting to reconsider their status. “We are unaware of any policy or bylaw that gives the Board discretion to withhold club status indefinitely based upon a yet-to-be-developed policy,” Pearse wrote. “We refuse to participate.”
Harrison has maintained that the UVSS has every right to deny funding to YPY. “Freedom of speech of course can happen, but not when it’s harassing or oppressing other people,” she said in December.
UVSS Director Nathan Warner was one of the minority who voted against revoking YPY’s status. “I’m pro-choice but I’m also pro-debate,” he told Maclean’s. “Abortion is not an easy topic for anyone and I believe that no matter what you ask it will likely offend someone. I don’t think that is reason enough to merit banning a club from campus.”
Warner concedes that YPY is asking tough questions in its anti-abortion campaign. But, as he points out, YPY’s posters don’t include graphic images that have been associated with other pro-life campus activism. “This attack on freedom of expression is unfounded and needs to be stopped,” he said.
It seems unlikely that the BCCLA will back off either. According to Dixon: “At the University of Victoria, the values of freedom of conscience, opinion, religion, and expression are decried as quaint residues of an irrelevant past. The Board of the Student Society has drunk deeply at the well of post-modernist ideology, and they are determined to drive the very moderate and civil student pro-life club from the campus. What certainly seems separate from this university is the faintest memory of the very idea of a ‘university’ as a place dedicated to the preference of dialogue over force.”
Related: Closed for debate. Also see, Uvic’s pro-choicers up the ante against pro-life club
- With files from David Foster
UVic’s pro-choicers up the ante against pro-life club
Latest petition goes so far as to question existence of pro-life club Youth Protecting Youth
David J. A. Foster, a student blogger at the University of Victoria, reports that he has come across a petition calling for the indefinite suspension of the pro-life club Youth Protecting Youth. The petition, which was found in UVic’s students union building, goes farther than previous efforts by the University of Victoria Students’ Society to limit the club’s activities.
For nearly a year and a half, Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) and the University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS) have locked horns. Since October 2008, the UVSS has denied $232 in annual funding to which all clubs are entitled to. In October 2009 the UVSS board again voted to deny funding. Recently, the BC Civil Liberties Association asked the UVSS board to reconsider their position, arguing that denying funding is an unreasonable limit to freedom of speech on a university campus that should be a bastion of open debate. The board refused and BCCLA is threatening legal action. The Canadian Federation of Students has reportedly stepped up to offer the UVSS legal funding if the BCCLA makes good on its threat.
However, while UVSS has repeatedly refused to fund the anti-abortion club, it has not outright denied its status as a club. This gives the group the right to book space and other perks. This latest petition brings the controversy a step further by asking that the club be denied status full stop.
The petition asks the UVSS clubs council to consider a motion calling for the suspension of the group for “their repeated offensive actions.” These offensive actions, as described in a letter preceding the petition, include: use of GAP (Genocide Awareness Project) materials on campus and hosting the controversial anti-abortion activist Stephanie Gray on campus, who participated in a debate with a philosophy professor. “This is hate speech that caused harm to many people on campus, including but not limited to many women on campus who have had abortions,” the letter reads. “The images and the captions on the posters harassed women and tried to make us feel guilty about a choice that we have a right to make.”
First thing first, according to everyone I’ve spoken to about the topic, GAP materials–which typically feature graphic images of abortions next to those of horrific events like the Rwandan Genocide–have never been used on UVic campus. Ever. Not by Stephanie Gray or anyone. So what this boils down to is a group of students feeling offended by the posters and Stephanie Gray.
I wrote an article on the BCCLA’s legal action against the UVSS in December, which included a description of the event at which Gray spoke. You can read it here.
And as far as I can tell, this dispute is going to go as far as the courts allow. John Dixon of the BCCLA is candid about his organization’s determination to fight for YPY’s freedom of speech and I can’t think of a more aggressive sparring partner than a stubborn students’ association funded by the CFS.
Closed for debate
Pro-life student clubs are being shut out across the country
It was standing room only at the University of Victoria on Oct. 21, when anti-abortion activist Stephanie Gray visited from Calgary to debate distinguished medical ethicist Eike-Henner Kluge. Gray and Kluge duked it out twice that day, to accommodate those who couldn’t fit into the 200-seat room for round one. Not one to disappoint, Gray, who is executive director of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, employed the tactics that make her so controversial: she compared abortion to the Holocaust and showed a video of an abortion.
Yet compared to some of the activism on Canadian campuses, the debate was mild, the audience civil, even polite. Periodically, when Gray began speaking, a group of students would hold up signs sporting slogans like “My body is not up for debate.” And there were scattered heckles when she accused pro-choicers of believing that “a woman has the right to directly and intentionally dismember and decapitate and disembowel her child.” But she wasn’t accosted, yelled at, or in any way prevented from speaking her mind. Nevertheless, the debate and other events organized by UVic’s pro-life club, called Youth Protecting Youth (YPY), are shaping up to be the basis of a legal battle over free speech that could change the way student unions and even universities operate.
The spat began in October 2008 when the university’s students’ society refused to give YPY the same meagre funding all UVic student clubs receive. Clubs approved by a committee are entitled to $232 each year and such perks as banner supplies and free room bookings. Upon review in 2009, the committee approved YPY. But the students’ society board stepped in and once again revoked the funding. In an Oct. 5 meeting, the society’s directors accused YPY of “harassing” female students (although they mentioned no specifics). Director Tracey Ho summed up the society’s position by saying, “No one should debate my rights over my own body.”
Ho’s sentiment is particularly troubling when it is put into force at universities, which should be bastions of intellectual freedom and open debate, says John Dixon, director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. So when YPY approached the association to complain of discrimination, it was happy to help. “This is a freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of opinion, freedom of expression case,” Dixon says.
The UVic students’ society, on the other hand, maintains that events such as the Gray-Kluge debate go beyond the limits of free expression. “Freedom of speech of course can happen, but not when it’s harassing or oppressing other people,” says Veronica Harrison, the society’s chairperson. Dixon’s response: “There used to be people who would run up to women outside abortion clinics with video cameras and say: ‘We’re going to show your priests, mothers, teachers, classmates.’ That’s harassment. I don’t see how you can be harassed by somebody giving a speech—if you don’t want to hear it, don’t go.”
What’s wrong with the UVSS?
The University of Victoria Students’ Society reopened its pub Monday night after a strike which kept the bar closed since the beginning of September. The UVSS had the taps running but kept the kitchen closed with a sign on the door informing patrons “No food, drinks only” according to a report published by The Martlet. [...]
The University of Victoria Students’ Society reopened its pub Monday night after a strike which kept the bar closed since the beginning of September.
The UVSS had the taps running but kept the kitchen closed with a sign on the door informing patrons “No food, drinks only” according to a report published by The Martlet.
This is significant because the union’s liquor license requires the pub to offer food.
The manager of the bar told The Martlet that while there was no food menu, pizza and fries were available if any patron requested them. The manager could not say if patrons were informed of this or if anyone actually purchase this food.
The UVSS lost their liquor license twice last year and was unable to serve alcohol for 26 days. They were also fined 10,000 dollars.
One would think the UVSS would have been more vigilant following those incidents.
Settlement reached in bitter UVSS strike
The University of Victoria Student Society and the union representing its student union building employees have reached a settlement to end their labour dispute. The Martlet reports the union succeeded in getting a $1.50 per hour wage increase which will be phased in over three years. The agreement has been ratified by both sides and [...]
The University of Victoria Student Society and the union representing its student union building employees have reached a settlement to end their labour dispute.
The Martlet reports the union succeeded in getting a $1.50 per hour wage increase which will be phased in over three years.
The agreement has been ratified by both sides and UVSS businesses, such as the campus pub, will reopen on Monday.
Lines of communication reopen in UVSS SUB strike
C-Fax 1070 reports that the two sides in the UVSS strike sat down face-to-face for the first time in three weeks today. Attempts to force an impeachment referendum against the present UVSS executive continue after union activists and supporters were not able to move a referendum motion at the UVSS AGM. A couple weeks ago, [...]
C-Fax 1070 reports that the two sides in the UVSS strike sat down face-to-face for the first time in three weeks today.
Attempts to force an impeachment referendum against the present UVSS executive continue after union activists and supporters were not able to move a referendum motion at the UVSS AGM.
A couple weeks ago, a petition to place the motion on the AGM agenda was ignored by the UVSS. The UVSS board failed to meet quorum and the petition was not considered in time.
The chair of the AGM meeting, former CFS national chairperson Amanda Aziz, ruled the referendum motion in violation of UVSS bylaws and out of order. The ruling was challenged and the majority of the room supported Aziz’s ruling.
The union activist and UVSS member leading the charge for an impeachment referendum, Jose Barrios, is promising to collect the necessary signatures on a petition to force the UVSS to conduct an impeachment referendum.
Looks like things will continue to heat up over the next few weeks.
UVSS strike continues
United Steelworkers members reject latest offer
United Steelworkers members reject latest offer
