The Peak

SFPIRG may face loss of student levy

By Sam Norris, Carolina Dubanik

A group of mostly conservative students are organizing a petition to revoke the Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group’s funding.

The petition, if signed by five per cent of undergrads at SFU (approximately 1,100 people), will ensure that the question, which challenges whether full-time students should continue to pay $3.00 a semester ($1.50 for part-time students) to SFPIRG, will be put to referendum during the upcoming Simon Fraser Student Society’s general election.

“We’re a group of students that’s concerned about democracy and transparency on campus,” said Sam Reynolds, one of the organizers of the group. He also organized a group of about 20 students who attended the February 11 SFPIRG annual general meeting en masse to voice their concerns in a spectacularly loud and abrasive manner.

The group had originally planned to put forward a motion to dissolve SFPIRG at the AGM, but found out shortly before the meeting that motions had to be put forward two weeks before to be considered.

Instead, the students decided to “show the PIRG that there is a large group of students on campus that are not happy with what they are doing,” stated Reynolds. Members of the group applauded aggressively, called out constant points of order which slowed down the meeting, and at one point forced one of the co-chairs to step down.

“It’s an AGM, people can show up with concerns . . . but what concerned us was the level of hostility,” explained SFPIRG administrative and resource coordinator Emily Aspinwall.

SFPIRG normally runs its meetings on consensus, explained board of directors member Sarah Atkinson.

At one point during the meeting, after a pro-SFPIRG speaker spoke before calling the question to a vote in contravention of Robert’s Rules, the chairperson, Emily Aspinwall suggested that the room “just pretend that didn’t happen.” The room exploded in opposition, and soon thereafter Aspinwall stepped aside as chairperson, leaving Victoria Chen in charge of controlling the meeting.

“[The crowd] knew Robert’s Rules pretty well, but the vast majority of the room didn’t know the ins and outs of Robert’s Rules . . . That’s not a very democratic forum, you have people able to participate and people not able to participate because they don’t even know what the rules are,” claimed Aspinwall.

By a majority vote, the meeting was suspended for an hour to allow two planned speakers, Clayton Thomas Muller and Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, to present on the Alberta tar sands. However, by the time the speakers had finished, so many people had left that the meeting no longer had quorum, and was immediately adjourned.

The anti-SFPIRG group, led by prominent campus conservative Jonathon Van Maren, went next door to the SFSS’s board of directors meeting to request that the funding question be put to referendum based on a board-majority vote (see article page 10). When the board refused, the organizers began the petition process to put the question on the ballot for the spring SFSS elections.

In the coming battle for student opinion, the anti-SFPIRG group’s most serious charge is that SFPIRG is a fundamentally undemocratic organization.

“They hide behind the rubric of social justice, and that lets them proceed in a very undemocratic fashion,” said Reynolds.

Of particular concern to the group was the way SFPIRG runs it’s board of director elections. Under the current system, if there are more candidates than positions, elections are to be run concurrent with the SFSS’s elections; otherwise, the candidates are acclaimed. However, director elections have not occurred in years.

Proposed by-law changes considered at the AGM would have moved director elections to the AGM, and ensured that people were voted in, whether or not they had quorum.

“Currently, elections only occur when there are more people interested than you have positions. That’s when you get into the position where there aren’t guaranteed annual elections, and that’s what we wanted to ensure [didn’t happen],” said Aspinwall.

The by-law amendments, which required 75 per cent of the vote to pass, were voted down by the anti-SFPIRG group.

“I think there’s a bit of irony in the fact that some people who claim to have concerns about us were a part of voting down bylaw amendments that would have made [elections] happen,” said Aspinwall.

Another proposed change would have created a nomination committee to decide who could run for positions on the SFPIRG board. The nomination committee would be selected by the current SFPIRG Board.

“I think the idea of having a committee to decide who’s eligible is undemocratic. Why not have everybody available [decide who can run], rather than a set number of people?” John Morrison III asked at the AGM.

“Most non-profit organizations appoint their members — the reason for doing so is [to ensure] that a random person [doesn’t] just walk into an organization, assume power . . . and change the direction of the organization,” Atkinson fired back.

If the petition drive moves forward, political ideology may become the defining factor on both sides — SFPIRG has a reputation of being a “left-wing organization,” while most of the organizers of the anti-SFPIRG side are considered conservatives, although they deny that the movement is ideologically motivated.

“There are two ideological groups: those that think that student groups in charge of those kinds of funds should be accountable to the student body and those who, apparently, don’t think so,” concluded Van Maren.