The Tariq Khan Drama

The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) saw its fair share of the short-lived SSMU President Tariq Khan this year. Elections SSMU invalidated Khan’s election as SSMU President on April 1, 2014 – a week after he was elected president by a margin of only 78 votes – due to SSMU bylaw infractions committed during his campaign. The violations included the participation of individuals external to SSMU in his campaign, the sending of unsolicited text messages to the public – for which he had been censured on March 21, the last day of the campaign period – inconsistencies in campaign expenditures, and the impingement of the spirit of a fair campaign and of the voting process.

Following his invalidation, Khan filed an appeal with the SSMU Judicial Board (J-Board), which upheld his invalidation on April 29. Khan later took this issue to the Superior Court of Quebec and filed a request on May 29 for a preliminary injunction to reinstate him as SSMU President until the full hearing for a permanent injunction. The Court dismissed his application on June 3, reasoning that his reinstatement would have incurred additional costs and caused undue inconvenience on the part of SSMU. Khan later withdrew his court case in October before its full hearing due to financial motivations and the decreasing timeliness of the case.

Khan resurfaced on the first day of the 2015-16 SSMU elections when screenshots of a Facebook conversation were released on reddit, revealing recently-elected SSMU President Kareem Ibrahim’s suggestion to hack Khan’s Facebook account last year. Upon news of the screenshots, he revealed his intentions to update the police report that he filed after his account was allegedly hacked on March 27, 2014.

—Emma Noradounkian

Campus unions get moving

Compared with 2011’s McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) strike, the past few years have been fairly quiet on the union front. This year, however, has seen a flurry of activity at McGill unions.
Floor fellows began a union drive over a year ago in November 2013, driven by the University’s earlier push for a change in residence models. Since then, floor fellows have succeeded at forming a union, and joined the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) last May. The process, however, has not been without hiccups: this January,collective agreement negotiations between the University and the floor fellows bargaining unit stalled over the exclusion of the “core values” of floor fellows (namely their anti-oppressive mandate and harm reduction approach) from the proposed agreement. The negotiations have started again and are currently ongoing.

McGill’s Teaching Union, AGSEM, has also been working to unionize undergraduate teaching support staff, which include course graders, note-takers, and teaching assistants (TAs). Despite receiving support from post-grads and undergrads, the process has not been without tensions: McGill challenged AGSEM’s promotion of its own union campaign due to disputing interpretations of the Quebec Labour Code. At the date of publication, the union drive is still ongoing.
This year also saw a merger between AMUSE and MUNACA, despite some internal trepidation over their differing sizes. Joint bylaws are on the way.

—Molly Korab

“I cannot celebrate the status quo of mental health support at McGill.”

The mental health landscape at McGill for the 2014-15 academic year has been a disappointing one. Though a working group was struck under the purview of Senate in October 2013, most of the recommendations issued by the group in June 2014 have yet to be implemented. Of the 36 initiatives on the roster, only two have been completed, the first being the development of a student services app, and the second publicly presented only as “further [development] of a robust early alert program.”

While both the administration and student government have been pursuing mental health services reform, they do not appear to be working closely. SSMU VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan told The Daily in October, around the time the University announced its intention to create a ‘wellness portal,’ that the relationship between the two was “a consultative arrangement, not a partnership. Given that SSMU is named as a partner on the website, consultation is not enough.”

There have been no updates on the ‘wellness portal,’ projected to be launched in Winter 2015.

Most of the visible events that have taken place this year – in particular, the second annual Students In Mind conference on mental health in October and the Mental Health Awareness Week in November – were largely student-driven and student-led initiatives. Additionally, the most vocal advocates for mental health reform have been students.

In addition to managing the planning and execution of the Mental Health Awareness Week, Stewart-Kanigan oversaw the successful launch of SSMU’s new mental health department, which involved the hire of a coordinator and the development of a mental health listserv to promote peer and professional support services for students and forward student-led anti-stigma initiatives.

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—Emily Saul

Tense debates at General Assemblies

After years of SSMU General Assemblies (GAs) that have failed to reach quorum or present particularly political motions, portions of this year’s GAs saw huge turnout – with over 700 students attending the Fall 2014 GA and over 500 students at the Winter 2015 GA – as well as plenty of controversy.

Most notably, both GAs saw motions that poked at the long-dormant Israel-Palestine divide on campus. At the Fall 2014 GA, a motion to stand in solidarity with the people of the occupied Palestinian territories and condemn Israel’s violence toward Palestine over the summer was postponed indefinitely, with 402 in favour and 337 against, after hours of debate. At the Winter 2015 GA, a motion to divest from companies profiting from the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories garnered the endorsement of many campus groups (including The Daily), but failed by only 64 votes.

Despite the intense attention given to these two motions, a number of other political motions passed, mandating SSMU to take action on diverse issues such as unpaid internships, military research, climate change, and austerity. SSMU also saw a J-Board challenge after the contentious postponement of the Fall 2014 Palestine motion, where the judicial body ruled that simplified standing rules should be adopted and publicized at GAs to better facilitate debate.
More broadly, this year’s GAs have prompted a campus-wide (and still ongoing) dialogue on the political role of the student union – which most notably played itself out in the recent 2015-16 SSMU executive elections – with some students questioning whether SSMU should take stances on ‘divisive’ political issues.

—Dana Wray

Students against austerity

This year has seen a whirlwind of opposition against austerity measures and budget cuts set in place by the Liberal provincial government, which have reduced funding to social services, including welfare, healthcare, and education. In the fall, as part of an ongoing push that began even before this academic year, students at UQAM organized a group to allow students and community members to work together to protest these cuts: the Comité Printemps 2015, which helped mobilize around 80,000 students to go on strike on Halloween, and over 80,000 students planned to strike against austerity during March and April. This mobilization has not evaded McGill, as French language and literature students recently voted to go on strike for a week, and other departments have planned strike votes.

These student initiatives contrast with the stance taken by the McGill administration, which has been accommodating of austerity measures. McGill has been making cuts of its own, after undergoing $45 million in cuts from the provincial government over the last four years. The results of these cuts have been felt by workers at McGill, as the administration has set up a hiring freeze, decreasing the number of jobs available, and increasing the workloads of many employees. To combat the administration’s decrease in the number of full-time jobs at McGill, as well as the fact that many positions with benefits have been replaced with lower-paid, part-time jobs that do not receive benefits, AMURE recently voted to start a fund for counselling services for its members.

In response to the austerity measures taken by both McGill and the Quebec government SSMU and the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) have taken stances against the government’s measures and asked McGill to oppose these huge cuts. At the SSMU Fall 2014 GA, students voted to add advocating against austerity to the portfolio of the VP External, and SSMU has since hosted an anti-austerity activities night to show students just how wide-reaching the damaging effects of austerity can be.

—Jill Bachelder

Sustainability at McGill

Many important initiatives that began in previous years were continued and strengthened over the course of this one. Divest McGill helped organize a bus to take McGill and Concordia students to the People’s Climate March in New York City, where over 400,000 people marched in the streets of Manhattan to protest the United Nations Climate Summit and raise awareness about global warming. Divest also submitted a new petition for McGill to divest from fossil fuel companies to the Board of Governors (BoG), making a comeback two years after its first petition was presented to, and rejected by, the BoG. In addition, over 100 faculty members signed on to an open letter submitted to the BoG in support of divestment.

SSMU also continued its efforts to promote sustainability on campus, starting a composting program in the Shatner building, and joining Étudiant(e)s contre les oléoducs (ÉCO), after the a motion passed at the Fall 2014 GA that mandated SSMU to stand alongside groups combatting climate change.

Finally, the McGill Office of Sustainability launched its Vision 2020 program, an initiative aiming to create a more sustainable McGill by the year 2020.

—Jill Bachelder

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The screenshots document an 18-member Facebook conversation that occurred on March 26, 2014, in which participants discussed a potential SSMU Judicial Board (J-Board) petition to invalidate the short-lived 2014-15 presidency of Tariq Khan. This year’s newly elected SSMU President Kareem Ibrahim and VP Internal Lola Baraldi were participants in the conversation.

Incoming VP Finance Zacheriah Houston, also a participant in the Facebook thread, explained that the group was meant to “allow for collaboration on the compilation of evidence [of Khan’s campaign bylaw infractions] and potential preparation of a J-Board petition.”

During the week following this discussion, on April 1, 2014, Khan’s SSMU presidential results were invalidated on the basis of SSMU bylaw infractions committed during his electoral campaign.

The Facebook thread includes the discussion of plans to possibly record a then-upcoming meeting between Ibrahim and Khan, an act legal under Quebec law. However, in said thread, Ibrahim also considers hacking into Khan’s Facebook account during the meeting, which would be illegal under the Criminal Code of Canada. According to Khan, he had asked Ibrahim to meet with him to establish a working relationship for the upcoming year.

“I am completely fine with this issue resurfacing and addressing concerns because I stand by my actions, but I am against the way in which it is being conducted, as a smear campaign with private and out-of-context screenshots.”

Khan told The Daily that his Facebook account was hacked on March 27, 2014, and that he filed a police report at the time in response to this invasion of privacy.

Last Wednesday, the day of the Reddit leaks, Khan made a public statement on Facebook claiming that, after reading the image posted during Ibrahim’s Reddit “Ask me Anything” thread, he could not deny the parallels between the contents of the conversation and the fact that his account had been hacked the year before.

He will be not be suing Ibrahim, as he claimed he would in a post following the release of the screenshots, nor will he be pressing charges against any of the parties involved in the Facebook chat – though he will be updating the police report he originally filed with the newly released evidence.

Ibrahim told The Daily that the comments he made in the leaked Facebook conversation had not been appropriate. “They definitely were very poor comments on my part,” he said.

“Nonetheless, I don’t feel there’s grounds to assume that I went forward with any of those suggestions or would have acted on them.”

Houston added that the revealing of messages solely from Ibrahim and Baraldi was indicative of a direct attempt to specifically target them in an effort to sway the opinion of voters during the SSMU elections period.

“Of nearly [18] names, all were redacted except for Lola’s and Kareem’s, and only select messages [from the Facebook thread] were posted and taken grossly out of context,” he told The Daily in an email.

In an email to The Daily, Baraldi similarly questioned the timing at which these Facebook messages were revealed on Reddit, calling the post “quite clearly calculated.”

“I am completely fine with this issue resurfacing and addressing concerns because I stand by my actions, but I am against the way in which it is being conducted, as a smear campaign with private and out-of-context screenshots,” Baraldi added.

Ibrahim told The Daily that he suspected that his rival candidate, Alexei Simakov, was involved in the scandal, saying he met with Simakov hours before Khan released his allegations, and their conversation led him to believe that Simakov knew of Khan’s impending post.

However, Simakov denied having had any pre-existing knowledge of the Facebook post of Khan’s message, arguing that, had he been aware of this information prior to the Facebook post, he “would’ve obviously leaked it beforehand.”

“Tariq reached out to me with advice, but I declined. He was politically toxic.”

While speaking to The Daily, Khan said, “I know Kareem more than Alexei Simakov. I’ve rarely met with Alexei Simakov – two or three times.”

Simakov did mention that Khan had attempted to associate with his campaign. “Tariq reached out to me with advice, but I declined. He was politically toxic,” Simakov said.

“I don’t want to undermine the importance of bringing issues to light, I think that’s very important, and I think some people did that during the campaign,” Ibrahim explained.

He continued, “People brought up issues such as ‘Farnangate,’ people brought up ‘Blurred Lines.’ These are important to students and I was more than happy to address those. But this effort in the last two days of campaigning, to bring up issues and to blow them out of proportion without me having [hacked Khan’s account] is completely unwarranted.”

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Simakov’s petition claims that the decision to rehire Ben Fung, who was Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) last year and was rehired this year for the same position, was made without the participation of the Nominating Committee and without a ratification by SSMU Council, as is required by article 2.4 of SSMU’s bylaws. It extends this reasoning to the hiring of all members of the Elections SSMU staff for the 2014-15 year who were also not selected by the Nominating Committee.

The petition therefore requests that all elections carried out under the supervision of Fung, such as the First Year Council (FYC) elections and the Fall 2014 referendum on the University Centre Building Fee question, be declared invalid.

According to Simakov, he filed the petition on September 22, the first day of the Fall 2014 referendum campaign period, and requested an interim order for the Fall 2014 referendum to be postponed. Simakov said that he received no response from the J-Board until after the referendum period had passed.

Simakov noted that himself and U3 Arts student McKenzie Kibler, to whom Simakov referred as his “advisor,” were not seeking personal gain from the petition.

“The petition is not for us. We have nothing to gain, we have no stakes in this,” Simakov told The Daily. “We’re doing this on behalf of the entire student body who have been frustrated, and because of SSMU have become apathetic.”

The petition relies on “all the record of Council documents uploaded on SSMU website [sic]” to determine that “there is an absence of [a] Nominating Committee.”

According to the petition, “the contract of Mr. Ben Fung in the capacity of CEO expired on 30th May 2014, and [he] was automatically rehired by President of SSMU, against article 2.4 of SSMU by-laws.”

SSMU President Courtney Ayukawa, however, stated in an email to The Daily that Fung was, in fact, rehired as CEO for the 2014-15 academic year through the previous SSMU executive’s decision to renew his contract.

“The decision was made before the current, 2014-15 SSMU executives’ terms had even started,” Ayukawa stated. “Based upon a plain reading of the bylaws, the 2013-14 Executive Committee’s decision to renew Ben Fung’s contract did not require a meeting of a Nominating Committee, given that the contract was a renewal, not a new hire.”

“I have searched through old documents relating to SSMU hiring process and cannot find evidence of the selection process outlined in By-Law Book I (which is Nominating Committee selecting the CEO and bringing that recommendation to Legislative Council) being followed for at least the past five years,” she added.

2013-14 VP External Samuel Harris seconded Ayukawa’s statement in an email to The Daily.

“The approval or disapproval of the hiring of an employee (or rehiring) is made at the Executive Committee,” Harris said.

“Student staff positions are under the responsibility of different executive portfolios. Responsibilities can include evaluating candidates (either incumbents or interviewees) to recommend for approval at the Executive Committee,” he added.

In an email to The Daily, 2013-14 VP University Affairs Joey Shea said that “SSMU employees are hired by the execs responsible for their portfolio. The CEO is under the president’s portfolio,” and was unable to comment further.

2013-14 SSMU President Katie Larson did not respond to an email from The Daily asking to confirm this statement.

Fung emphasized in an email to The Daily that he and the Elections SSMU staff had taken no part in their rehiring.

“We weren’t involved in the renewal of our contract in any way other than sending a re-application to SSMU HR [Human Relations] just like any student applying to the job would have,” he stated.

In an interview with The Daily, Simakov highlighted that the petition is not a personal attack directed toward Fung.

“There are people who are responsible for where he is now and this has nothing to do with him necessarily. I won’t comment on his performance in the position. What I will comment [on] though is that it’s particularly egregious that the [hiring for the] position of CEO was done illegally, given how contentious and how controversial his position was in the last election,” he said.

Kibler expressed what he hopes he and Simakov will achieve, in the event that Simakov wins his case at a J-Board hearing.

“What we hope this shows is that when the next elections to SSMU Council happen next spring, that those undertaking positions for SSMU and who are elected to SSMU positions understand clearly these positions and responsibilities associated with them and will not take them lightly and will understand that students at McGill are willing and able and have been successful in [holding them] accountable,” he stated.

J-Board’s Chief Justice Muna Tojiboeva stated that she will only be able to confirm the date of the hearing once the J-Board receives the respondents’ positions on October 29, as both parties could agree to mediation instead of a hearing. However, Simakov stated that a hearing was scheduled for November 3.

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The student working group responsible for the policy’s drafting includes representatives from the Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS), the Union for Gender Empowerment (UGE), the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill, and the office of Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan. The Feminist Collective of McGill Law and McGill Women and the Criminal Law are also participating as consultants.

“The reason that we wanted to work on a sexual assault policy was so that McGill would have a way to respond to [sexual assault] cases, such as the one [involving three McGill Redmen football players] that happened last year, in a responsible way. But it’s also to institutionalize a way to work against issues of rape culture and sexual assault on campus, so to recognize this as a broader issue,” explained Kai O’Doherty, a former member of the UGE and current board member of QPIRG, in an interview with The Daily.

SACOMSS External Coordinator Jean Murray noted to The Daily that, although the University’s initial response to the case involving the three McGill Redmen football players charged with sexual assault in July 2012 highlighted the need for a sexual assault policy, the need itself is not new.

“I would say it was more in direct response [to the fact] that McGill doesn’t have a policy than to the case. The case just sort of brought it to greater attention that McGill doesn’t have a policy,” said Murray.

The current draft of the policy roughly follows the structure of the proposal that was created and endorsed by the same student groups in February. The policy is meant to be pro-survivor and to have a proactive, as opposed to reactive, approach to sexual assault on campus through the institutionalization of awareness campaigns and education on sexual assault and consent.

According to SACOMSS External Coordinator Frances Maychak, the draft also requires the institutionalization of a sexual assault response coordinator position. The individual would be “responsible for coordinating awareness campaigns (such as the upcoming consent campaign) and acting more broadly as a resource for survivors on campus.”

“Essentially Bianca [Tétrault, Liaison Officer (Harm Reduction)] is currently in this position, although the details of the position are still being figured out and negotiated,” said Maychak in an email to The Daily.

Though the drafting of the policy is student-driven, there has been consultation with Tétrault and Dean of Students André Costopoulos, both of whom met with members from the student groups involved with the policy at the end of this summer.

“We’ve had a couple of meetings since then and Bianca and I have both given our ideas on [the draft]. The student groups have taken them back for a second round of drafting based on our feedback, and we’re very soon going to have the meeting to go through this second draft and give our feedback,” said Costopoulos in an interview with The Daily.

Murray explained that, in response to Costopoulos and Tétrault’s suggestions, changes to the draft have been made regarding the University’s ability to apply certain aspects of the policy.

“It’s often things that [Costopoulos and Tétrault will] say the University doesn’t have jurisdiction over, or the University can’t actually implement this thing that we want, and that the University doesn’t yet have the power to put a policy about that,” said Murray.

In addition to consulting with Costopoulos and Tétrault, the student working group will also be seeking input from the McGill community on the policy. It will take the policy to Senate by the end of the academic year, as a first step toward its implementation.

Costopoulos said that it might take a while before the policy is officially in effect.

“Things like new policies in a university take time to put together,” he said. “There’s a good reason for that; you have to get them right. They’re important documents, policies, especially if they affect a whole community, like a sexual assault policy. So you want to take the time to do it right.”

Despite the McGill administration’s efforts to help the working group to bring the policy forward, Stewart-Kanigan highlighted in an interview with The Daily that the group “want[s] to make sure that [the policy is] on [its] own terms and reflects the original spirit that was created and endorsed by the working group.”

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“When I decided to run for AUS, I was planning on doing the whole year-term,” stated Alfaro in an email to The Daily. “Being away for the Winter 2015 semester only occurred as a tangible possibility toward the end of August. At that time, I had a discussion with the AUS President in order to notify her about this possibility and to ensure that I would have enough time to make a decision on whether I would stay at McGill and complete my year or whether I would leave earlier. The rest of the AUS executive became aware of my situation at the beginning of the semester.”

Alfaro’s decision to leave AUS marks the second resignation that AUS has faced this year, following the August resignation of VP Finance Kateryn Kim, who left her position for personal and family reasons.

Despite the two resignations, Liu believes that she has handled them well, in comparison to resignations from previous years.

“I have acted very swiftly in order to deal with them to have someone in place and to make sure that someone is always running. Because I try to keep an operational mandate intact, so our operations in the AUS [Executive] have been very, very preserved, very intact throughout all of these processes, especially to, I think previous resignations,” Liu told The Daily.

“In terms of the exec team as a whole, I think everyone is adjusting into it in their own way,” she added.

The VP Internal’s replacement process will be discussed and decided upon at the next AUS Council meeting on October 1. According to Liu, a motion to hold by-elections will be put forward at this meeting.

“If that motion passes, we will hold a by-election, with the dates to be determined at Council. They’ve [actually] already been drafted, but Council will approve of the dates,” she said.

Alfaro will remain in the position of VP Internal until a new person has been elected.

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Acknowledgment of occupied and colonized land

Arts Senators Jacob Greenspon and Kareem Ibrahim presented the Traditional Territory Acknowledgment Motion and explained the importance of explicitly recognizing the occupation of traditional Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory, where McGill is located, at the beginning of all sessions of Council as well as on the AUS website.

“McGill is on colonized land, and we just want to give recognition to the fact that the many people [and] populations of where we live experience oppression due to the past histories of the founding people in Canada, and essentially McGill,” stated Ibrahim. “It is basically a gesture that just goes to show that we are a cognizant group of students and that we care about the impacts of our ancestors and, I guess, McGill.”

During the debate period, AUS President Ava Liu expressed concern over the repetitiveness of stating the traditional territory acknowledgment at every Council meeting. “We do not currently either sing the national anthem nor have any other form of political or nationalistic affiliation, so adding it in politicizes something that may not necessarily already be in existence,” added Liu.

AUS VP Social Kyle Rouhani countered Liu’s statement and emphasized that this acknowledgment would serve as a reminder of the colonial occupation of Indigenous land at McGill. “I think that the point of having it at the beginning of every Legislative Council [meeting] is not necessarily that it’s preaching to the choir, but that it’s just constant reminder of the fact that we are all on occupied, colonized land.”

Ibrahim expressed hope that the motion’s success will set a precedent for other student associations as well as McGill’s administrative bodies, such as Senate.

“We hope that passing this motion will have a domino effect on our fellow student associations so that we can work in unison to help impact these important changes to make our community more inclusive,” Ibrahim told The Daily in an email. “And it doesn’t stop there – hopefully once we have student support, we can bring these ideas to bodies like Senate, which would be a huge step forward for McGill.”

Meeting room name change, amendment to FEARC bylaws

Greenspon and Caribbean and Latin American Studies & Hispanic Studies Association Representative Vincent Simboli also brought forth a motion to rename the Champagne and Jack Daniels rooms of the Arts Lounge, used for AUS committee meetings and by the AUS Essay Centre.

Simboli felt that the current names for these rooms promote a drinking culture, which conflict with AUS’ principles of safe space.

“It’s a drinking culture that not everyone participates in and that not everybody can identify with. So I don’t think it’s a responsible thing to have those names.”

The motion passed by a wide majority. AUS’ next listserv email will include a nomination callout for new room names.

The motion to amend FEARC bylaws, which was proposed by VP Internal Leila Alfaro, was the only motion that did not pass at Council. This motion sought to ensure that one executive of FEARC would be a student coming from CEGEP and that another executive would be an international student. Both executives would have been responsible for organizing academic and social events for the first-year students that they respectively represented.

Alfaro told The Daily in an email that she had anticipated resistance from the AUS councillors in passing this motion.

“Because I understand and even expected this, I do not think it’s a big deal that the motion did not pass. In a way, it was meant more as an experiment,” Alfaro added.

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“It’s impossible to find a decent, cheap place to eat on campus,” Vita, a U2 Arts student, told The Daily. “I feel like they’re trying to go for fancy looks and a nice atmosphere rather than trying to [address] students’ needs. I really feel like it’s meant to be more for McGill’s image, rather than what students need.”

In an email to The Daily, Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) president Ava Liu echoed Vita’s concerns over the accessibility of food on campus, and also raised questions about students’ participation in the decision to replace the small food court in Redpath Library, particularly the Tim Hortons, with a Première Moisson.

“Taking into account the Redpath [cafeteria’s] importance of location and the emphasis that students place on financial accessibility, I am curious about the consultation that went into bringing in this considerably more expensive option. I think this is a valid concern that many Arts students currently have,” said Liu.

Senior Director of McGill’s Student Housing and Hospitality Services (SHHS) Mathieu Laperle told The Daily in an interview that the change in food outlets in Redpath Library did take student voices into account.

“It was consultation with the Dean [of Libraries] and some students and the annual survey that we do. We were able to get information and it was needed to do some renovation [in the cafeteria] because it was outdated.”

John, a U3 Science student, was pleased with the variety of food offered in the Bronfman building.

“I really, really enjoyed Sinfully Asian. […] But considering that there is a Japanese option, and I really do like Mexican food, and there’s literally no options for Mexican food around Montreal in general, I really think it’s all in all a gain.”

“I personally quite like Quesada, especially taking into consideration the buzz on campus last year around bringing in Mexican cuisine to the Bronfman building. I think this choice tapped into general student input,” added Liu.

Student survey considered in replacement of Sinfully Asian

In fact, students’ opinions of Sinfully Asian were gathered in a widespread survey conducted by the Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) last fall. It received 1,401 responses, most of which indicated a preference for healthier food, and preferably a Mexican food option as well.

“We knew the lease was ending back in May and basically we worked with SHHS to get feedback on Sinfully Asian and inform the bidding process for the summer,” MUS President Sean Finnell told The Daily.

As Aramark Canada approached the end of its contract as the food services provider of the university, SHHS sought a new food provider through a competitive tender process, wherein the company that has the most attractive offer is allotted the contract.

On March 27, the Board of Governors’ executive committee approved SHHS’s request to proceed with the competitive tender process and authorized Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens to sign the contract with the successful bidder of the competitive tender process.

The winning bidder in the provision of food services was Compass Group and one of its sectors, the Bon Appétit management company.

Executive chef of SHHS Oliver De Volpi told The Daily that Compass and Bon Appétit will put a high priority on making foods, such as soup stwock, from scratch.

SHHS Marketing and Nutrition Counselor Monique Lauzon did not respond to The Daily’s requests for comment.

Other food locations to be opening soon include E-Café in the McConnell Engineering Building and Vinh’s Too in the Strathcona Music Building.

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Bolling’s sexist remark was one of the few outwardly offensive comments in the media about Davis since she pitched the shutout. However, once you dig a little deeper into the headlines and articles on Davis, you will notice that most coverage of her has been as discriminatory, if not more so, than Bolling’s comment.

Largely white male journalists and sports commentators, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and other sports programs and publications have deemed Davis ‘media-worthy’ in recent weeks; this is more in part to her gender and her race. Instead of recognizing her impressive 70 miles-per-hour pitch and her shutout achievement on their own terms, the media have repeatedly emphasized the fact that she is a woman who has ‘outdone herself’ in a male-dominated professional sport, and that she is an African-American from inner-city Philadelphia who has escaped poverty through her athleticism.

Fox News Insider, the Australian, the New York Times (to name a few publications) are also riddled with gendered expressions that are unrelated to Davis’ athletic accomplishments.

It should come as no surprise that Davis or any other female athlete is athletically talented, and stating otherwise and acting shocked at her athletic abilities upholds the popular yet erroneous assumption that women are not as athletically capable as men. Calling Davis the best female pitcher implies that there is a better a male pitcher. In reality, Davis is the most dominant pitcher in the league.

Additionally, their surprise at her talent reveals that if it were not for Davis’ participation in a team and a league exclusively for men, she would have gone unnoticed. This is not an isolated incident; the has happened to many other professional female athletes. Take Billie Jean King, for example, the female tennis player who made headlines when she won Wimbledon in 1973 upon defeating her male opponent, Bobby Riggs, in a tennis match dubbed “Battles of the Sexes.” Or notice how Manon Rhéaume captured the attention of sports commentators only once she entered the male-dominated National Hockey League (NHL) in 1992 as the Tampa Bay Lightning’s goaltender. Davis, King, and Rhéaume commanded the media’s attention because they played against men in a mens league rather than against women. Their athletic abilities were evaluated in comparison to those of men, rather than on their own merits.

McGill Martlets hockey player and Canadian Interuniversity Sport player of the year for women’s hockey in 2013-2014, Katia Clement-Heydra, expressed concern over the amount of attention given to men’s sports in the media in general: “In the mainstream media, you hear about tennis players [and] you hear about golf players that get a lot of attention. […] It’s all about men’s sports, right? Just look at the morning news on Sportsnet. It’s [men’s] baseball, NHL, and there’s the [men’s] tennis, and that’s about it.”

“And I think that stems from past history. You know, males have always dominated the sporting world. […] We have to build a name for ourselves, and we have to kind of prove that we deserve the same attention, the same audience,” added her teammate Adrienne Crampton.

The media has not only chosen to identify Davis by her gender but also by her race. By identifying her as such, these media outlets are perpetuating the commonly held racial stereotype of the black American athlete who has escaped poverty through their individual athletic achievements, despite racism. According to this stereotype, lower-class African-Americans who cannot succeed economically and socially remain poor of their own doing. This thinking places the fault of one’s social and economic situation on the individual, instead of on systemic racism.

The media has shown a complete lack of respect to Davis and has done the same in the past with other female athletes, especially female athletes of colour. By doing this, sports coverage also downplays their athletic abilities. No matter how talented an athlete they are, they will be met with sexist and racist sports coverage. These athletes deserve the same attention and dignity given to white male athletes, and it seems that this will only happen once sports networks and newspapers begin to hire more people of colour and women as commentators, anchors, and journalists. As it currently stands, white men make up a large portion of the mainstream media, and so the coverage is tailored to what they deem to be ‘legitimate’ sports. Unfortunately, female athletes are seen as less legitimate.

A recent study entitled Gender in Televised Sports: News and Highlights Shows, 1989-2009 revealed that in 2009, coverage of women’s sports by three Los Angeles affiliate sports networks comprised only 1.6 per cent of all sports coverage. However, even when female athletes and female athletes of colour are included in that 1.6 per cent margin, the emphasis is usually placed on their appearance rather than on their athletic prowess, which tends to downplay their athletic achievements.

Female athletes of colour have also come under the scrutiny of sports commentators for failing to meet white Eurocentric beauty standards, though this was not largly the case for Davis, particularly. For example, Gabby Douglas, a young two-time Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics, was criticized for her allegedly “unkempt” hair during the 2012 Olympics, overshadowing her gold medal awards. Sports journalists have also detracted from tennis players Serena Williams and Taylor Townsend’s athletic abilities by obsessively scrutinizing their weight.

Even though Davis was not subject to racist criticism of her appearance in the media, it should not go unnoticed that some white sports journalists have been racist against Davis in other ways. They have consistently praised her as “the urban African-American girl from inner-city Philadelphia” who has achieved suddenly greatness. Davis did not ‘suddenly’ achieve greatness, her 70 miles-per-hour pitch did not appear out of thin air; she worked for it. In contrast, whenever a man achieves athletic prowess, his ‘work ethic’ is usually a main talking point.

Coverage on Davis is the most recent incident in a long history of institutionalized sexism and racism within the world of sports media. The failure to recognize female athletes’ ability rather than their gender or race is still a problem that must be addressed. Every athlete worked hard to get to where they are; to take that hard work and tokenize it is a disservice to all athletes. The sooner we recognize athletes for their achievements, the sooner sports will become more inclusive.

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Before the invalidation, Elections SSMU had publicly censured Khan once during his presidential campaign for having “explicitly asked a non-campaign committee member to send unsolicited text messages to members of the public.” The public censure was announced on March 21, the last day of the campaign period and also the day of Khan’s election as SSMU president by a margin of only 78 votes.

The bylaw infractions that caused his invalidation, Elections SSMU claimed, included the participation of “individuals external to SSMU in his campaign,” the sending of “unsolicited messages regarding his campaign,” “inconsistencies with campaign expenditures,” as well as the “impingement of the spirit of a fair campaign and of the voting process.”
Khan’s invalidation led to the retraction of a then-ongoing SSMU Judicial Board case against Elections SSMU alleging improper handling of Khan’s campaign team’s bylaw infractions, the details of which were leaked to The Daily in early April.

Following his invalidation, Khan appealed to the Judicial Board. However, the Judicial Board unanimously upheld the invalidation on April 29, and the decision was ratified by SSMU’s Board of Directors on April 30.

A month later, Khan informed The Daily of his decision to file a case to the Superior Court of Quebec against Elections SSMU to contest the invalidation of his presidential election. He charged Elections SSMU with violating his basic human rights throughout the process of his invalidation, such as his right to a presumption of innocence and his right to cross-examine witnesses.

On May 29, Khan filed a request to the Court for a preliminary injunction to reinstate him as SSMU president until the case was heard in its entirety. The Superior Court dismissed the application in a decision rendered on June 3 on the basis that a provisional injunction would cause undue inconvenience and inflict additional costs on SSMU.

The full hearing of Khan’s case will be taking place this fall.

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Floor fellows join AMUSE

On May 6, the McGill floor fellows’ union drive came to an end when their request to unionize under the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) was accepted by Quebec’s Commission des relations du travail.

On August 29, the floor fellows held their first annual general meeting and elected Christina Clemente as VP Floor Fellows. The unit is entering into collective bargaining this fall.

Quebec student organizers host international convention

In June, student organizers who were active in the 2011-12 Quebec student strike hosted a four-day international convention during which they shared lessons and experiences with like-minded attendees from across North America. Members of the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), a student union federation, led a variety of workshops and discussed their organizations direct democratic decision-making process. Organizers of the convention also dedicated a significant amount of time to workshops on feminist and anti-racist practices, highlighting the challenges students face as they attempt to build an inclusive movement. The convention allowed participants to make connections with other activists and build international solidarity, though some attendees found many workshops too theoretical and hard to apply.

Montrealers remember victims of police shootings

August 9 marked the sixth anniversary of the shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Fredy Villanueva by a Montreal police officer, who has yet to face serious consequences for his actions. Montreal North community members held a candlelight vigil at the site where Villanueva was shot to commemorate his life and demand justice. On the same day, a few hours before the vigil, another unarmed 18-year-old, Michael Brown, was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, leading to an uprising in the Ferguson community. A week later, nearly 100 Montrealers gathered for a vigil in solidarity with the Ferguson protests to speak out against police violence and its intersection with institutionalized racism.

Three-story condo to replace razed Parc Oxygène

On July 7, the construction of a three-story condo began on a razed laneway garden that was known as Parc Oxygène in the Milton-Parc community. The neighbourhood’s beloved green space was destroyed on June 26, a few days after the Superior Court refused a safeguard order to the Milton Park Community (CMP) housing cooperative network that would have stopped a condo developer from bulldozing the garden. The board of the CMP has chosen not to appeal the decision for the time being.

Dance demo protests sex work legislation

On June 14, about 75 people staged a dance-a-thon at Place de la Paix. The demonstration was part of a national day of action during which sex workers and their allies protested the content of the proposed Bill C-36, which criminalizes sex work more severely than ever before in Canada. Bill C-36 is the Conservative government’s response to the Supreme Court’s December ruling on Canada v. Bedford, in which the court unanimously struck down three central provisions of Canadian sex work legislation and left the government one year to draft a new law. 

Sophie Leblanc takes Chief Investment Officer position

McGill has hired Sophie Leblanc as its new Chief Investment Officer to oversee the endowment fund and pension plan. Leblanc will take advice on the ethical side of McGill’s investments from the Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR), whose terms of reference were recently updated to expand the definition of social injury, which now includes ìgrave environmental damage.î In light of these developments, it remains to be seen whether Leblanc will be more receptive than her predecessor John Limeburner to Divest McGill’s demand that McGill divest from the fossil fuel industry.

Montrealers with disabilities demand accessible transit system

On July 25, Accessibilize Montreal organized a protest outside the Place-des-Arts metro station to speak out against the inaccessibility of Montreal’s public transportation system for people with disabilities. Accessibilize called on the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) to install more elevators in metro stations and install more ramps on buses, as currently only seven out of 68 metro stations have elevator access – of which only four are on the island – and not all STM buses have ramps installed.

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“It’s like losing one of your lungs. It was a green space. It was living, breathing. [It] was alive,” Norman Nawrocki, a resident of the Milton-Parc community, told The Daily. “And the park was one of the rare places you could go to actually breathe fresher, cleaner, cooler air, and relax. So, we’ve lost a big thing, a big important park of our immediate community.”

Before being transformed into a green space in the 1990s, the 210-square-metre piece of land, stretching from Hutchison to Parc, was a small alleyway that taxi drivers and motorists used as a shortcut. Residents became concerned for the safety of their children playing in this alleyway. They eventually invested their own time and money into creating and maintaining a garden in the space, even after the privately-owned land had been sold to a condo developer in 2011.

Residents had since been tending to the garden until recently, on June 26, when the new owner sent bulldozers to destroy it and began a condo project on the land. The owner applied for a building permit in February 2013, which the City had planned to issue in June 2014. In addition, the Plateau Mont-Royal borough council approved the three-story condo project last February.

“[The City] favours developers. That was a political decision. It could’ve decided not to give a permit, to take a stand.”

– Norman Nawrocki, resident

In response, the CMP went to the Superior Court to seek a safeguard order that would prevent the City from issuing the construction permit. The CMP claimed long-standing servitude on the land, which protects the cooperative’s right of way to the space.

However, in his June 23 decision, Dugré rejected the CMP’s request for an injunction, concluding that the condo developer “clearly has the right to cut down and take off trees [on the land],” and that the CMP shouldn’t have waited until the City issued the building permit to invoke its servitude on the land in order to prevent development.

“The City knew we had a servitude, and it knew we had a park. It still gave the developer a permit, all the time saying, […] ‘We’d love to support you, but we can’t. We can’t be seen as taking sides,'” Nawrocki said to The Daily.

“[The City] gave him his permit and took a side. […It] favours developers. That was a political decision. It could’ve decided not to give a permit, to take a stand beside local residents and say, ‘Stop here, no more condos.’ This is just another greedy condo project. It’s not about the future. It’s not about hope, not about health, not about keeping the city green.”

The City could have preserved Parc Oxygène by buying off the property, but Alex Norris, the city councillor for the Jeanne-Mance district in Plateau-Mont-Royal, told The Daily that financial considerations prevented it from doing so.

Norris specifically pointed to the Coderre administration, budgetary cuts, and the cost of the lot as barriers to the park’s preservation.

“Obviously, our first choice has always been to keep that space green,” he said. “[But] we determined that we didn’t have the means. We couldn’t justify shelling out half a million dollars to [purchase it].”

However, Christine Gosselin, borough councillor for the Jeanne-Mance district, added that the money needed to purchase the green space could be used more efficiently in other areas.

“With that budget, we could green twenty alleyways,” she told The Daily in French. “We can green three alleyways per year, so we would not have been able to green alleyways for five years.”

At a monthly borough council meeting this Monday, Gosselin proposed to begin greening a nearby alleyway between Prince-Arthur and des Pins as compensation for having lost Parc Oxygène.

“It is 800 square metres. […] It is almost five times the size [of Parc Oxygène], in exchange for the lost green space, if the community desires,” Gosselin said.

Nawrocki, however, was not satisfied with Gosselin’s proposal. “Go ahead! Green it. I mean, you want me to get excited on that? It’s never going to replace Parc Oxygène,” he said.

CMP president Alanna Dow told The Daily that, for the time being, the board of the CMP has chosen not to appeal the decision.

“We could have appealed the fact that the judge didn’t allow the safeguard order. But we’re saying that at this point, we’re not appealing,” said Dow. “We have to pay the court cost for [each lawyer], […] because otherwise, if we try to negotiate not paying court fees, that is essentially a settlement in which [the City and the developer] will absolutely insist that we renounce all [our] rights.”

“The park represented hope for the future,” added Nawrocki. “To fight off developers for 25 years, and [to] maintain a park totally through voluntary labour for 25 years, that was a sign of hope…that yes, we can fight. We’ve lost this particular battle for the moment, it seems.”

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The City of Montreal and the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) have failed to pay $33,000 in damages incurred by racial profiling ordered by the Quebec Human Rights Commission in May to Farid Charles. Charles, a black former high school teacher, is prepared to bring his case to Quebec’s Human Rights Tribunal if the city and the SPVM continue to delay his compensation, which was due June 13.

At 12:30 a.m. on April 9, 2010, Charles was waiting in the passenger seat of a friend’s car in front of a Caribbean restaurant at a shopping plaza in LaSalle. There, officer Christopher Brault approached Charles, opened the passenger-side door, and asked for the car’s license and registration.

According to Charles, Brault insisted that Charles also show him a piece of identification, without justifying the request. After Charles asked why Brault wanted to see his identification, Brault yanked Charles out of the car, punched Charles, and pushed him to the ground. Charles was handcuffed, searched by Brault and his colleague officer Mathieu Bacon-Boucher, detained in the police car for 40 minutes, and subsequently fined $144 for “wandering without a cause,” according to Charles.

“He took away my freedom. He made me feel like a caged animal. He made me feel like a second-tier citizen. And I’ve never been bullied or bamboozled like that before […],” Charles told The Daily. “I felt like I was a slave. It was done because of my race.”

Police ethics complaint

With the help of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), Charles filed a complaint to the Comité de déontologie policère – Quebec’s police ethics committee – for “racial profiling, use of excessive force, abuse of authority, and bringing a charge without grounds,” according to a report published by the CRARR. CRARR also filed a civil rights complaint against Brault and Boucher-Bacon and their employer, the City of Montreal, to Quebec’s Human Rights Commission on Charles’ behalf.

In its first decision on February 7, 2013, the Comité concluded that Brault’s interrogation of Charles was illegal, because Brault had not provided any justification for asking Charles for a piece of identification. Since Brault and Boucher-Bacon had no valid motives for detaining Charles, the Comité also deemed that the two officers’ detainment of Charles was illegal.

However, the Comité refused to characterize Brault and Boucher-Bacon’s actions as having been motivated by stereotypes of Charles’ race, and ruled that the crimes committed against Charles were not instances of racial profiling. The decision states that “officer Brault’s decision to step into the vehicle by opening the door on the passenger’s side occurred when Brault had yet not clearly seen Charles [and identified his race].”.

Charles responded to the decision with indignation.

“It wasn’t racial profiling? So, what was it?” he told The Daily. “What triggered this whole thing? It’s just because he saw a car in front of a restaurant? He said it was because it was [dark and] suspicious. The lights were on around the plaza […]. You can’t hide in the plaza.”

The Comité declined to comment, stating that it does not give interviews to the media.

On May 28, 2013, the Comité rendered a second decision on the case, sanctioning Brault and Boucher-Bacon for their behaviour. It ruled that that they be suspended without pay ten days each, for unlawful arrest, unlawful use of force, and knowingly laying a charge without justification.

Fo Niemi, CRARR’s executive director, explained to The Daily that although the Comité’s decision to suspend Brault and Boucher-Bacon cannot compensate Charles in any way, it could damage their reputation as policemen.

“That process does not give the victim one single penny, but it does have an impact on their career, promotion, or pay […]. But 99.9 per cent of the cases, the moment a police gets suspended, he [or she] appeals [it to the Court of Quebec].”

In fact, in June 2013, Brault and Boucher-Bacon appealed the disciplinary sanction to the Court of Quebec, delaying the suspension.

The SPVM declined to comment on the case, as judicial proceedings are still ongoing.

Charles had also brought a civil rights complaint against Brault and Boucher-Bacon and their employer, the city of Montreal, to Quebec’s Human Rights Commission. The Commission, however, found that Charles had been a victim of racial profiling and recommended that the City of Montreal and the SPVM pay him a total of $33,000 by June 13, 2014, which they have not done.

Second racial profiling case at Quebec Human Rights Tribunal

To enforce the Commission’s decision to compensate Charles, Charles will have to apply to the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal. If he does so, Charles would be the second person in the history of the Human Rights Tribunal to bring a racial profiling case to the Tribunal.

Niemi noted that it is rare for victims of racial profiling to win the cases they file with the Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Tribunal.

“First of all, the Human Rights Commission lacks resources. […] It could take up to a year before you can have the investigation begin. And secondly, when the incident happens, [the victims…] don’t have witnesses, or they can have witnesses and after a year, witnesses can disappear,” Niemi said. “I would surmise that the majority of cases we have against police have been rejected or dismissed because of lack of witnesses and of people abandoning [their cases].”

Charles expressed his frustration with the SPVM’s ongoing profiling of racialized minorities in Montreal.

“If the city allows this to continuously happen, people are just going to lose faith, and people are losing faith in the system that is designed to protect us.”

Montreal mayor Denis Coderre could not be contacted to address the city’s lack of compensation to Charles before press time.

A history of SPVM racial profiling

After a policeman had shot and killed 18-year-old Fredy Villanueva in 2008, the police  commissioned SPVM criminologist Mathieu Charest to publish a report on organized crime and street gangs in Montreal. According to the report, the frequency of SPVM profiling of racialized minorities increased by 60 per cent in the city of Montreal, 125 per cent in Montreal North, and 91 per cent in Saint-Michel from 2001 to 2007.

The SPVM has justified such police action in these areas against members of the black community by referring to the rate of ‘criminality’ in these districts with the greatest concentration of racialized groups in Montreal.

However, based on police data in Charest’s report, crimes perpetrated by black people represented 10 to 20 per cent of all crimes – yet black people represented 40 per cent of people who were stopped and questioned for trivial reasons by the SPVM, such as “routine inquiry and person of interest,” between 2006 and 2007. White people only represented 5 to 6 per cent.

Based on evidence in Charest’s report, the Human Rights Commission concluded in its consultative report on racial profiling and its consequences throughout Quebec in 2011 that  “significant over-representation of blacks among those stopped and questioned in Montreal in recent years confirms the perception that racial profiling is being applied to them.”

In January 2012, the City of Montreal launched a new plan to fight racial profiling by the SPVM. However, in the Commission’s follow-up report in 2012, most spokespersons from various racialized communities noted that “despite the attention focused on the problem of racial profiling […] the intercultural training programs that are available to police departments, […] saw no improvement.”

The spokespersons stated that racialized youth continued to be accused of “loitering” and “causing problems” and that the media emphasized that racialized youths involved in thefts were either “black” or “Muslim.”

“We observe that half of the black [people] that have been interrogated [by the SPVM]  are not linked in any way to a gang [and] have no criminal record […],” explains Charest in his report. “We must therefore seriously question the vast majority of these ID checks, which have veritably implicated individuals that have little to do with the criminal environment that […the SPVM has] proposed to combat.”

In an earlier version of the story, The Daily referred to the author of the report as Charles in the final paragraph. In fact, the author is Charest. The Daily regrets the error.

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Khan had filed a request on May 29 asking that the Court suspend Elections SSMU’s invalidation of his election as SSMU president, and the SSMU Judicial Board’s subsequent decision to uphold that invalidation. This would have allowed him to assume the office of SSMU president until the full hearing for a permanent injunction, expected to occur in July.

At a hearing before the court held on May 30, Justice Mark G. Peacock sided with SSMU, emphasizing that the argument presented in an affidavit from SSMU General Manager Pauline Gervais was crucial to the decision. In the affidavit, Gervais argued that provisionally reinstating Khan as president would cause “serious inconvenience and additional costs” to SSMU, as “the President-elect Courtney Ayukawa has been undergoing […necessary] training [for her position as SSMU president] since May 1” and “ongoing projects and other executive members’ activities would have to be suspended or slowed down to accommodate the new training of Mr. Khan.”

Khan’s lawyer, François Longpré, argued that a rejection of Khan’s claim to occupy the president’s office on a provisional basis would “irreparably harm” his opportunity to sit as SSMU president, since Khan will complete his undergraduate studies within the current term of office.

Though the Court agreed that “the loss of this opportunity could not be compensated monetarily,” Peacock stated in the judgement that “the court finds it important to also consider the interests of the 23,000+ members of the Students’ Society who […] are entitled to have the Students’ Society meet its obligations to the membership, as the Constitution requires, for Service, Representation and Leadership.”

Peacock determined that, since it is mandatory for McGill students to pay the SSMU membership fee, SSMU is required to “function normally” and make available the services that its Constitution mandates it to offer to all students, and that this functionality would be disrupted if the president is not properly trained.

Khan expressed his disappointment with Gervais’ statements. “[Isn’t it] the job of the administrative staff to be impartial and neutral? […] It is their job. […] They should be doing their jobs, regardless of the political situation,” he told The Daily.

When contacted by The Daily, Gervais said that SSMU was not able to comment before a final decision is made.

Khan confirmed to The Daily that his lawyer and SSMU’s lawyer are currently coordinating the schedule of the full hearing, and reiterated his commitment to the case.

“Regardless of the situation, […] I stood up for something for which I have been wronged, been falsely removed from the office, falsely disqualified, for which I will fight,” Khan stated. “I can’t let those 1785 ballots go down the drain. There’s a very bad precedent that has been set.”

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On May 27, Tariq Khan announced his decision to file a case with the Superior Court of Quebec against the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) regarding Election SSMU’s decision in April to invalidate the results of the SSMU presidential election. Khan told The Daily that he plans to file his case within the week, in which he will charge Elections SSMU with committing several violations of his rights under the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, including the right to a presumption of innocence and the right to cross-examine witnesses.

Alleged violations

On March 21, the last day of the campaign period, Khan was publicly censured by Elections SSMU for asking an individual who was not on his campaign committee to send unsolicited text messages. The results of the election were announced the same night, giving Khan the victory by a margin of 78 votes.

In an interview with The Daily, Khan denied having done this, adding that he was not informed of the allegation before the public censure and was not given the opportunity to defend himself.

On April 1, Elections SSMU invalidated the results of the election based on further evidence that was investigated after the results had been announced. An email announcing the invalidation was sent out to the student body by Elections SSMU and noted four infractions: the involvement of individuals external to SSMU in the campaign, the sending of unsolicited messages, inconsistencies with campaign expenditures, and impingement of the spirit of a fair campaign and of the voting process.

Elections SSMU did not publicly disclose the details of the specific violations that led to the invalidation, but Khan stated that he was provided with a detailed 27-page document containing this information on the day of the invalidation. The details of a Judicial Board case against Elections SSMU, which was later dropped, were leaked to The Daily in early April.

“I do not see the testimonies. I do not know who those people [making them] are. I cannot cross-examine them. I cannot question them. […] I am not given a fair chance to defend myself.”

Khan filed an appeal with the SSMU Judicial Board, but the invalidation was unanimously upheld on April 29, and ratified by the SSMU Board of Directors on April 30.

Khan elaborated on some of the allegations contained in the document from Elections SSMU in an interview with The Daily.

The most significant violation detailed by the document, Khan explained, was the impingement of the spirit of a fair campaign. Khan told The Daily that the alleged violation occurred in February, before presidential candidates had been nominated and before the start of the campaign period, during a meeting between Shyam Patel – a non-SSMU member who allegedly later engaged in campaigning on Tariq’s behalf – incoming President Courtney Ayukawa, incoming VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan, past Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) VP Finance Saad Qazi, and outgoing Clubs Representative Zachary Rosentzveig.

Allegedly, at the meeting, Patel intimidated the other attendees by telling them that he “would be campaigning really hard for Tariq [Khan],” which gave them “this feeling that Courtney [Ayukawa] should not run and that Tariq [Khan] should run,” Khan explained.

Khan denied these allegations, claiming to have left the meeting before witnessing the exchange described.

Qazi told The Daily that no intimidation had taken place at the meeting. “I think it’s ridiculous saying that Shyam [Patel] intimidated the other attendees,” he wrote in an email to The Daily. “The meeting was run on a consensus basis and I don’t remember Shyam stating that he would support one candidate over the other at any point. He presented himself as more of a resource, based on his past student politics experience, for everyone there.”

Khan also denied that Patel ended up working on his campaign.

“Not even a single Facebook status was posted by Shyam Patel,” Khan told The Daily. “He was not seen anywhere flyering for me or making classroom announcements.”

Ayukawa and Stewart-Kanigan declined to comment. Rosentzveig did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

As for the alleged inconsistent campaign expenditures, Khan claimed that they revolved around the fact that a planned expenditure of under $5 for chalk, advertised on Khan’s website, was not present in the expense report submitted to Elections SSMU. Khan attributed this to the fact that he ended up not buying any chalk.

Invalidation process

Khan’s motivation to take SSMU to the Superior Court stems from his claim that he was not afforded the chance to defend himself when presented with the allegations against him.

In an interview with The Daily, Khan claimed that the invalidation process was unfair because of its expedited nature, saying that nowhere in the reports provided by Elections SSMU was he shown the full evidence submitted against him that had lead to his disqualification.

“I do not see the testimonies. I do not know who those people [making them] are. I cannot cross-examine them. I cannot question them. […] I am not given a fair chance to defend myself. Well, you’re talking about invalidating an entire election.”

At a question-and-answer period held on April 2 by Elections SSMU Chief Electoral Officer Ben Fung and Deputy Electoral Officer David Koots, Fung stated that Khan received a 13-page report after the invalidation, explaining Elections SSMU’s detailed rationale for its decision.

“Prior to the final decision to invalidate, we interviewed Mr. Khan three times and received a written testimony from him regarding the purported violations and issues raised. It was only after we determined that we had adequate evidence and information that we made a decision,” Fung explained in an email to The Daily.

“I asked for the evidence, I asked for the context, I asked for who are these people and what they were saying, and I was refused all of this information.”

Khan confirmed that these three meetings took place between March 28 and April 1.

Khan received a call on March 28 at approximately 4:40 p.m. from Fung, who urged him to arrive at his office within twenty minutes, allegedly to discuss issues related to the SSMU budget. When Khan arrived, Fung proceeded to instead question him about his campaign, Khan told The Daily.

“I was bombarded with allegations, repeatedly asked by Elections SSMU. […] I wasn’t in the best state of mind to answer [Fung’s …] questions and I was told that it is in [… my] best interest to answer the questions. And I asked for the evidence, I asked for the context, I asked for who are these people and what they were saying, and I was refused all of this information. Leaves me with no option to defend myself.”

Khan then met with Fung a second time, on March 29, to receive clarifications on the allegations presented to him during their first meeting.

Finally, he was called into a third meeting with Fung on March 31, during which Khan asked for written questions related to the violations he had supposedly committed. According to Khan, he was given four hours to respond to the written questions, and was told by Fung shortly after that his election had been invalidated.

According to Fung, communication with both the source and the subject of a complaint is part of the process of dealing with bylaw infractions. “Once we’ve followed up [with the source of the information on the potential bylaw infractions], we will also follow up with the subject of the complaint and obtain his/her point of view to ensure that we have a whole understanding of the situation before coming to a decision,” he wrote in an email to The Daily.

“Our decision-making process includes a thorough deliberation process between the staff of Elections SSMU, a consultation of the bylaws and Constitution, discussions with SSMU’s legal counsel when required, and research into past infractions and precedent,” Fung continued.

Khan claimed that Fung should have updated and clarified the regulations and bylaws on Elections SSMU’s website, and expressed disappointment with the fact that the lack of clarity in the bylaws was only noticed after the election.

“While I’m paying the price for all these bylaw infractions, the [Chief Electoral Officer] gets rehired for next year, […] and now he’s gonna do his research – oh, how we can improve the system,” said Khan. “I have been a scapegoat, and 22,000 students look at me like, this is the guy who did something really bad to the system, doing illegal campaigning.”

Sandhya Sabapathy, the runner-up for VP Clubs and Services who also received a public censure, shared some of Khan’s sentiments about the process.

“[I was given] 10-15 minutes […] I had no time at all. A mass email was sent out to the entire student electorate before I could even get all of my campaign team together,” Sabapathy wrote in an email to The Daily. “It destroyed all the work everyone had put in the campaign and as far as a democratic process goes, I was completely blind-sided, I had no idea what was going on and I wasn’t given any chance to explain myself.”

Khan also alleged that President Katie Larson refused to sign his nomination papers. According to Khan, Fung allowed him to move forward without the signature after Khan pointed out to him that the process is not actually part of the bylaws.

However, Fung challenged this take on events in an email to The Daily, explaining that candidates are required to meet with the incumbent in order to better understand the positions they are running for, and that Khan had scheduling issues with Larson.

Fung added, “At no point did Elections SSMU state that Mr. Khan could not run because he hadn’t obtained Ms. Larson’s signature, nor did Mr. Khan ever ‘fight’ the decision. Mr. Khan made his request on the day the nominations were due and accepted and we invited him to have his meeting with Ms. Larson after the deadline.”

—With files from Igor Sadikov.

In an earlier version of the story, The Daily stated that Claire Stewart-Kanigan was the incoming VP External; in fact, she is the incoming VP University Affairs. The Daily regrets the error.

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As part of its ongoing fight for access to information (ATI) requests from McGill concerning the University’s military research, Demilitarize McGill, a campus group that aims to end military research at McGill, has recently released selections from its ATI requests to the University. The group aims to make all such documents public in the upcoming weeks.

The disclosure of the documents is the result of a settlement in January between the University and a group of respondents. The settlement, which gave McGill until late February to begin to disclose the long-standing ATI requests, also ruled that the University could not deem requests systemic or abusive in nature.

Despite the disclosure of the documents, the actual information remains heavily, if not completely, redacted. “For […] my request of the documents [that I received from McGill], there was quite a bit of redaction, quite a bit of black marker. Dozens of pages were blacked out,” Isaac Stethem, a member of Demilitarize McGill, told The Daily.

Stethem noted, “In a couple of cases, the University wrote to us that third parties had essentially vetoed the release of any documents, so we didn’t even get black documents, we just have mysterious research agreements – we don’t necessarily know what […] they’re for.”

In a press conference held on March 7 for campus media, Line Thibault, McGill’s General Counsel, told The Daily that one of the reasons behind documents being heavily redacted could be “because the third parties told us, ‘We don’t want you to [release the information].’”

According to An Act Respecting Access to Documents Held by Public Bodies and the Protection of Personal Information, the University is required to consult third parties whose information may be disclosed in an ATI before releasing the request. If the third party rejects such disclosure, the University cannot reveal the information in question.

“But the students could decide to go to the [Commission d’accès à l’information] and say, ‘This is incorrect. The third parties are applying the exceptions too broadly,’” stated Thibault. “And the Commission will try to [do] a mediation, and then [if] that’s not successful, we will call a hearing […] and then the Commission will decide whether or not the documents [should be] disclosed.”

When asked whether they would appeal to the Commission, Stethem said, “It’s a possibility […] It’s something we’re trying to figure out.”

Although most of the information provided in the documents received by Demilitarize McGill was redacted, Stethem described one of his received ATIs, which included the unredacted name of a company with which the University is currently conducting military research.

“I received one in terms of military research between McGill at the [Computational Fluid Dynamics Lab] and Lockheed Martin, one of the largest military manufacturers and suppliers in the U.S. […] What the research is [however] is still not known.”

“When all of them are redacted, it mainly just goes to show the efforts that the University has taken to hide this information.”

The disclosure of Lockheed Martin’s involvement with McGill research also comes on the heels of documents released in recent weeks, not connected with the settlement, which detailed contracts between researchers at McGill and the Canadian military for research into drone software. This information led to a blockade last week of the Aerospace Mechatronics Laboratory by Demilitarize McGill.

Kevin Paul, a member of Demilitarize McGill, spoke to the lack of openness on the part of the University, upon also having obtained heavily redacted military research documents following a request to the University.

“When all of them are redacted, it mainly just goes to show the efforts that the University has taken to hide this information,” Paul added. “The result of the way that they’re handling ATIs is that there’s no possibility of an open dialogue, an open debate, on the issues regarding military research on campus.”

Demilitarize McGill intends to release a summary, as well as an analysis of all documents requested through the ATI process that it has received thus far, in the next few weeks on its website.

An earlier version of this article stated that Lockheed Martin and the Aerospace Mechatronic Laboratory were involved in research; in fact, Lockheed Martin is involved with the Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. The Daily regrets the error.

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