Approval of budget

The GC voted almost unanimously to approve the budget presented at the previous meeting by VP Finance Eileen Bui. The budget had been revised following the recent passing of two fees in an online referendum: an increase in the base fee, and the introduction of a student space improvement fee.

The majority of the SUS funds are to be distributed to departmental associations, while the income from the fee increase will be set aside in a separate fund for later use.

Notably, the budget set aside funds for a laptop lending program for students. The program will allow students to borrow laptops from SUS should theirs break. “The laptops will be available for students to use around the end of midterms and exams, because that’s usually when laptops tend to break,” said VP Internal Shaun Lampen. Three units have been purchased for the initial implementation of the program, with the option to purchase more if necessary.

Support for ECOLE project

The second motion, put forth by Representative to the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Zacheriah Houston, was in support of ECOLE, a living and community space focused on sustainability on campus. The motion would grant ECOLE room-booking privileges with SUS, similar to other independent student organizations under SSMU.

“ECOLE […] is a great new student space. We have programming, we have skill-sharing workshops, we have film screenings. […] All in all, about 100 to 200 people walk through the space every week and it’s a really exciting project to be a part of.”

“ECOLE already gives us room-booking privileges and they book rooms with some of the student societies on campus, so I just wanted to formalize that process,” said Houston.

The motion also included a clause recognizing the importance of ECOLE, and asked that ECOLE be promoted regularly through the SUS listserv. SSMU Council will vote on a similar motion at its next meeting.

VP External Emily Boytinck, who is also a facilitator at ECOLE, spoke in favour of the motion. “ECOLE […] is a great new student space. We have programming, we have skill-sharing workshops, we have film screenings. […] All in all, about 100 to 200 people walk through the space every week and it’s a really exciting project to be a part of.”

Boytinck did not put forth the motion, nor did she vote on it, to avoid a conflict of interest.

After a very brief debate, the motion passed unanimously.

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Speakers included Arash Aslani, a political refugee from Iran to Canada and a former detainee at the Laval Immigration Detention Centre, and Robyn Maynard, a writer, activist, and outreach worker in Montreal currently working with the sex workers’ rights organization Stella.

The panel opened with video of a protest staged outside the Laval Immigration Detention Centre in August 2013, organized by Solidarity Across Borders. During the demonstration, the outer wall of the centre was torn down to protest the punishment of prisoners by prison security. “Tearing down that wall is symbolic and the first step to tearing down all walls of all prisons everywhere,” said organizer Jaggi Singh.

“There’s a tendency in academia to speak from an ivory tower. It’s important to get perspectives from those already marginalized, since legislation tends to affect them the most.”

Aslani, the first speaker, described how he had been a political prisoner in Iran. After fleeing his home country, he was alternately homeless and held in immigration detention centres throughout Europe before arriving in Canada in a shipping container.

Here, he was held for ten months in the Laval Immigration Detention Centre and eventually released under very strict conditions after staging a hunger strike. While he was not subject to much of the physical brutality he had experienced in Iran, he described his experience in Laval as psychological torture, which he considers more harmful.

“There, my name was not Arash, it was 205-Delta,” he said. “Physical torture makes you angry, it makes you hate your torturer, but it keeps the fire and hope alive inside you. Psychological torture makes you like a lamb, you just do what you’re told and you lose the sense of yourself.”

Maynard followed with a presentation on carceral feminism – feminism that sees prosecution and imprisonment as a solution to violence against women – and the failure of sex work prohibition in its goal to protect sex workers. Maynard said that measures to abolish sex work by prosecuting buyers and pimps – such as those in the federal Bill C-36, which went into effect on December 6 – actually make sex workers less safe and less able to ensure a healthy working environment.

“To write this bill, the Harper government worked with women’s groups who seek to abolish sex work because they think it’s inherently degrading or violent, and many of us were at the hearings for the bill advocating on behalf of sex workers, where we were treated really poorly,” said Maynard.

“[Lawmakers] look at the harms within prostitution, for example the high rates of violence, and instead of actually understanding that it’s the criminal laws that create people’s vulnerabilities to violence.”

“The preamble to the bill is couched in all this feminist language, talking about the ‘commodification of women’s bodies,’ but it’s actually really dangerous for women actually out there working,” she explained.

Maynard also mentioned the marked uptick her organization had seen in police violence against sex workers in Montreal since the bill was put into effect.

Later, she described the take-home message of her talk to The Daily. “I wanted people to understand the dangers that can come from using law enforcement and police and the state as a solution to ‘the problem with prostitution,’ which I don’t necessarily see that way,” said Maynard.

“[Lawmakers] look at the harms within prostitution, for example the high rates of violence, and instead of actually understanding that it’s the criminal laws that create people’s vulnerabilities to violence, they push to have more laws to control those of all genders in the sex trade, as opposed to increasing their autonomy and therefore their protection,” she added.

The organizers, as well as the attendees, saw the panel as a success. “I found it really interesting,” said Aishwarya Singh, a McGill student present at the event.

“These were people speaking from lived experience,” Singh continued. “There’s a tendency in academia to speak from an ivory tower. It’s important to get perspectives from those already marginalized, since legislation tends to affect them the most.”

The Month Against Prisons continues until February 8.

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