Dan Gilman, a student present at the BOA meeting, spoke to me after the meeting. We exchanged a few words regarding the vote itself and I was really interested in his opinion on the issue. For one, he was openly against the adhesion - even as Prospective members.
He expressed his frustration in regards to certain statements made during the debate. To him, the CFS is not a democratic organization, so a No vote is preventing the SFUO from involving itself in an undemocratic process.
I must say, many interventions today came back to democracy and no one from the "NO" side addressed Gilman's point. Maybe he should have asked a member of the "NO" side for speaking rights, just like Renaud-Philippe Garner and Virginie Corneau Ste-Hilaire did.
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2 comments:
I would like to know why Dan Gilman thinks the CFS is not a democratic organization. You should ask him that next time you see him.
As a member of the CFS, I've attended AGM's and I've never seen such an example of grassroots democracy working so well. Our parliamentary system, which purports to be democratic, is miles away from being so truly democratic.
The CFS is a member driven organization. The members propose policy, by-laws changes, organizational changes, and develop the CFS services in committee meetings, and once an agree-to policy, etc is developed, the changes are ratified (or struck down) in plenary by all members. How is that not democratic?
The referendum process for federating and de-federating is also democratic. And any referenda not recognized by the national executive probably didn't follow the proper process (and at one school, the student union deliberately sabotaged the process--I'm guessing they wanted to try to make the CFS look bad, but they only made themselves look like idiots... and that's because they don't have a large enough number of students at their school that want to de-federate; therefore, it is the student union that is undemocratic, by not accurately representing their members' interests).
And I HIGHLY doubt the CFS is going to sue you over the blog name...
At this point, the SFUO has all the power to make the process of joining CFS as democratic as they can conceive it to be. With two out of four representatives on the referendum oversight committee, the SFUO would get a "de facto" veto on the referendum rules. So would the CFS, but it would not be in the interest of the CFS to stale a referendum to join.
I think Wassim pointed out accurately (elsewhere) that decisions made by CFS are always, ultimately, made by the plenaries where representatives of each student union sit. Thus the democratic standards of the CFS depend only on those of the individual student unions. While no organization is perfect, I believe the SFUO has a relatively good track record on transparency and democracy which they should carry through as potential members of the CFS.
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