November 2, 2008 - The Rules

At first sight, "rules" are a major theme, if not the main theme, of the current SFUO crisis. Debate has been raging on, in this order:
- the rules governing elections and slates;
- the rules governing the Student Appeal Committee (SAC);
- the rules governing the Board of Administration (BOA).

The first debate, i.e. whether four candidates have broken the election rules or not, has been halted during the SAC "shitshow" of March 6. Following the refusal of the defendents to participate in the SAC hearing, two things happened: (1) the SAC published a decision to justify the pursuit of the current process, (2) 1/3 of the BOA directors filed a request for a special BOA meeting. The rationale for this double response, we presume, was to force a timely resolution of the debate over the SAC process, since the defendents would have to appeal the SAC decision and the Board would have the opportunity to overturn the SAC by a 2/3 vote.

In the days preceding the BOA meeting, one motion was brought forward by Dean Haldenby and subsequently replaced. Both motions had the essential effect of replacing the current four arbitrators of the SAC with people appointed by the BOA; in the case of the new motion, the appointees would be pre-selected by Dean, BOA Chair Federico Carvajal, and SAC chief arbitrator Caroline Poisson.

From a strategic point of view, it was obvious that both motions would effectively overturn the SAC decision - by dismissing the authors of the decision - with a 50%+1 majority, rather than the 2/3 majority needed to formally appeal a SAC decision. At the meeting, directors raised a number of objections on the constitutionality of the motion, including the fact that the new motion was brought after the deadline, and would require a 2/3 majority for this reason. All of these objections were dismissed by the Chair.

This is the background for the last and most controversial part of the meeting, when 12 directors decided to make their own strategic use of the Constitution, more precisely article 3.1.10.8.8, through which any vote can be voided by abstention of 1/3 of the directors present. Through this tactic, you can make any vote require a 2/3 majority. Then the Chair pulled out a legal opinion and decided to rule the vote in favour, disregarding the clause of the Constitution.

The funny thing is, in any other circumstances, the Chair's decision might have been much less controversial. After all, I doubt that the authors of the Constitution wanted 3.1.10.8.8 to be used to turn any simple majority vote in a 2/3 one. Federico's decision, taken in isolation, is quite logical.

However, in the spirit of Federico's call that we must interpret the Constitution in its entirety, I would encourage people to interpret this situation in its entirety. This might be what Amy Kishek considered when she said:

But my biggest issue was the fact that the three individuals who are named, out of four people named, as defendants in the case we were discussing at length and in detail, and deciding on specific actions to take on, decided it would be fitting to vote on how they would be tried- because that's justified! I think it's disgusting that they behaved that way...

So why would the defendents put themselves in such a conflict of interest? Why would the Executive and BOA appoint a member of the CFS-Ontario executive as Chairperson of the BOA just before a crucial vote on CFS prospective membership last summer?

I am not mentioning the Canadian Federation of Students innocently here. The present question is incredibly similar to the referendum we had in November. Students are asking why defendents are making up the rules for their own trial, just as they were asking, on November 2, why CFS representatives made the rules for the referendum on CFS membership.

I assume most of you would not be actively seeking to place yourself in conflicts of interest. At least, not in such an overt manner. Then, you wonder, how do these people justify their overt conflicts of interest?

Stay tuned to know more.