Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘csu’

If only the student union at Concordia spent more time focusing on issues like this and less on petty squabbles about the Mideast . . .

More fun news from Concordia (where else?) as a CSU-appointed hearings panel ruled that it’s ok to draw a swastika on an Israeli flag:

A student panel at Concordia University has dismissed a harassment complaint against activist Laith Marouf for drawing swastikas on an Israeli flag during a March 12 protest at the downtown campus.

In a 2-1 decision, the board ruled that while “Marouf’s gesture was in very poor taste,” it was made during a tense confrontation and did not qualify as harassment under the university’s code of rights and responsibilities, or warrant expulsion or other sanctions.

Adam Spiro, the finance student and Hillel member who filed the complaint, said he’s disgusted by the decision.

“It sends a terrible message,” he said, noting his paternal grandparents are Holocaust survivors. “It says that in the heat of protest, there are no boundaries.

“It legitimizes the swastika as a symbol of political discourse, which it’s not. It’s the worst symbol of hatred, racism and the genocide of 6 million Jews.”

So what is this, complaint number 912 against Laith Marouf that he gets tossed out? He was banned from Concordia two years ago, along with his buddy Tom Keefer, for spraypainting anti-Israel vandalism and threatening a security guard. But the university lifted that ban, and he’s been merrily shit-disturbing and displaying his intense hatred ever since. Apparently anything goes as long as you wrap yourself in the Palestinian flag and make ridiculous excuses for your actions, like this one:

At a May 14 hearing, Marouf testified he drew “the inverted swastika, the Hindu circle of life, not the Nazi swastika” on the Israeli flag, as a lesson in symbolism. However, he conceded he realized some people might not make the distinction and would be deeply offended.

Maybe it’s just cause it’s Friday, but I can’t seem to stop laughing at that one.

The Link is reporting that the lawsuit that Hillel launched against the CSU has been dismissed:

In a judgement delivered last week, Quebec’s Superior Court handed down a decision suspending Hillel’s lawsuit against the Concordia Student Union until it exhausts its options within the University to resolve its conflict.

Judge François Bélanger’s judgement cited the interventions of the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation as evidence that this issue is more a political one than one of racism or anti-Semitism. The judge also noted that the majority of CSU executives are themselves of Jewish origin.

It’s worth noting that the article text says that the suit has been “suspended”, while the headline reads “dismissed”. (Update: The headline has now been changed to read “Court Suspends Hillel Suit”. Think someone’s reading my blog?) As best as I can ascertain, the door is open for re-filing if Hillel satisfies the court that it has exhausted its options within the university. However, this doesn’t make much sense, since the university administration has no legal standing to intervene between Hillel and the CSU even if it wanted to. So I’m not sure what “options” the judge was talking about. The judge seemed to direct Hillel to approach the Board of Governers of the university, but even he acknowledged that the BoG has no power over the CSU:

The judge ruled that Hillel could approach Concordia’s Board of Governors, who according to him have “superintending and reforming power over all decisions affecting activities held at Concordia University or connected with the University,” adding that the Board would appear to have the power to issue sanctions, if not against the Union, at least against those students who run it.

But, the ruling added, because of political conflicts at the heart of the Union, the court would not force Hillel members to submit themselves to the CSU’s Judicial Board for a ruling.

Well, that last bit shows at least some minuscule amount of understanding about the workings of Concordia politics.

In a press release, the CSU’s VP Communications and favourite “we’re not antisemitic cause we have Jews in our admin” poster boy, Aaron Maté, claimed victory for the CSU on this matter:

“I welcome the Judge’s ruling,” said Aaron Maté, a CSU Vice President and 5th year Jewish student. “It’s an important victory for all of those who have been scared and intimidated to remain silent on the Israel-Palestine issue out of fear of being labeled with the serious charge of anti-Semitism or “self-hating Jew”. I hope that all members of the Jewish community, particularly Hillel and the leadership of the Canadian Jewish Congress, will recognize the serious damage that they are doing to our people by exploiting and undermining the meaning of anti-Semitism to intimidate and silence those who have the courage to defend Palestinian human rights.”

Oh yeah, cause Mate seems real scared and oppressed to me. Right.

It looks like the CSU and their buddies turned what was a straightforward case of an unjustified attack on Hillel into a political issue about the Palestinians, as they always do. And this time it seems they got away with it.

With the new CSU due to take office in a few weeks, some might argue that the whole lawsuit was moot in the first place. But that would be ignoring the principle of the thing. Hillel deserves nothing less than full reinstatement of funding, a sincere apology, and punitive damages for years of harassment and abuse. Obviously, this ruling is a serious setback to justice.

Speaking of Concordia, the left’s favourite punching bag is of course Rector Frederick Lowy. He’s such an easy target for them because he’s openly Zionist – therefore he must be evil, of course (insert sarcasm here). See if you can trace this logic:

The Canadian Jewish News attributed some comments to Lowy, which alleged that the administration was going to ask the government to de-certify the CSU. This turned out to be erroneous but a coalition of “pro-Palestinian students and community activists” decided to take one of Lowy’s remarks out of context as an excuse to accuse him of their favourite charge: racism.

So by their logic, now all the students charged by the university in connection with the September 9th riots should have their charges lifted. Never mind that the sentences were handed down by a student panel, not by Lowy himself. Never mind that Lowy never actually said anything wrong – his words were twisted, that’s all. And never mind that the people charged in connection with the riot were actually guilty. Apparently, none of that matters:

Mouammar, a spokesperson for a coalition of pro-Palestinian students and community activists, is calling on the university to throw out internal complaints against students stemming from September’s protests against former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She said Arab students in the protest were punished more harshly than non-Arabs.

More unsubstantiated charges of racism. That’s their favourite tactic, it seems. When in doubt, find a Zionist to accuse of racism. It helps if he’s also a white male and a capitalist, preferably in a position of power. Never fails, right?

Here’s more about the CSU elections, from the Canadian Jewish News. The print edition also has an opinion piece by Simon Bensimon of Hillel Montreal.

Well, this is a bald threat if I’ve ever heard one: The SPHR and other activist groups are threatening a protest that will “make the September 9 protest look like nothing” in order to voice their displeasure with the election of Evolution to the CSU:

In an attempt to send a message to the both the administration and to already beleaguered students, activist groups are planning to stage a massive protest, one prominent student politician tells me. At issue is the policy of the new Executive to put activism second and academics first. The act of civil disobedience will apparently “make the September 9 protest look like nothing. They will take over the entire Hall Building.” What’s more, people will be flown in from outside of the country “to do the dirty work.”

My source, who has strong contacts with many student associations (including the SPHR), assures me that this protest will take place sometime in the early fall, and that it will “show that only CSU slates that support activism will be able to maintain order at Concordia.” “People should have voted for Clean Slate,” he says, “because they support activism. The message is that Concordia is about activism.”

This is the way these people operate. They hail democracy as long as it works in their favour. But if students democratically elect people they disagree with, they try to blackmail the students by threatening violence.

Absolutely disgusting. Not too surprising, though.

(Via Wordniness).

Update: Having posted this on the Link’s website, in a response by Adam Slater, he seems to suggest that this may not be true. Well, I can’t confirm or deny it one way or the other. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But, like I wrote in response to Mr. Slater, there’s only one way to find out: if there’s a riot in September, then I guess it’s true. Although I’m sure the SPHR cronies will maintain that “the Zionists started it”, like they did after September 9th.

And in an interesting twist: the Concordia administration has asked the Quebec government to de-certify the CSU:

[Lowy] said Concordia has approached the ministries of education and justice to strip the CSU of its certification because it has not acted in the interests of the undergraduates it represents.

[ . . . ]

Quebec, he said, is the only province that permits student governments to be certified like labour unions. This status allows the CSU a great deal of autonomy, he said. It obliges the university to collect dues from students and turn them over to the CSU to use as it wishes. Currently, the CSU has $1.3 million at its disposal.

With Evolution’s victory in the CSU electons last Friday, this point may be seemingly moot. After all, a moderate slate has been elected, that will likely protect the interests of students without imposing a radical agenda like the past four years’ CFS-backed executives. So why bother trying to de-certify?

Well, the simple answer is that this is just one election. A year of peace will be very nice at Concordia, but there’s nothing to stop the Left from gearing up and getting right back into power next year. I’m sure they’re already strategizing as we speak. A CSU with drastically-reduced power may reduce Evolution’s power this year – but it would also ensure that the system was a lot less prone to abuse in the future. So hey, sounds like a good idea to me!

Sure, the Left will cry foul as it always does, and accuse the administration of trying to strip students of their legitimate rights to representation. But I bet that, with the exception of the radicals, nobody would ever miss the CSU and its ridiculous amount of power. When a union does more harm than good for its members, then what exactly is the point?

Update – 04/20/03: These reports appear to be erroneous as Lowy now claims he did not, in fact, ask the government to de-certify the CSU:

“The administration has not asked the government to de-certify the union,” he said. “Two years ago, when we were having trouble with the union, we put in a request that the four ministries responsible for accreditation look at the CSU. We felt [the CSU] were going beyond their mandate. We never asked them to de-certify.” Lowy maintains that the Quebec government decided against investigating the CSU two years ago, and the administration has never asked again.

That’s really too bad. At the very least, the government ought to review the expansive amounts of power given to student unions to ensure that, ultimately, they are accountable to someone.

The final totals are in. Some uncounted tally sheets widened Evolution’s victory margin to nearly 1,300 votes. Here are the final counts for executive:

Evolution, Not Revolution: 2533

Clean Slate: 1241

Renaissance Concordia: 312

New Vision: 152

Free Thinker’s Parliament: 102

The counts for council, senate, and board of governers candidates are also up.

A few interesting notes:

• Hillel activist Naomi Sarna was elected to council with 60 more votes than her brother Noah, a co-president of Hillel, who was not.
• And speaking of Noahs who are Hillel presidents, Noah Joseph was elected to one of two Board of Governer seats with five more votes than Sobia Virk, who is famous for having refused to attend a BoG meeting last year as an objection to the fact that alcohol was being served.
• Laith Marouf, SPHR activist and general pain in Hillel’s side, had the second-to-least number of votes for Arts and Science council. However, his buddy Trish McIntosh, a pro-Palestinian activist who wears a keffiyah, had the most votes in the same race. Hmmm, I wonder if he’ll sue her for stealing his votes?
• CEO Stephen Herman claims that between 4,600 and 4,700 students voted, which is about 40-45% more than the previous record turnout. Way to go! There are no counts for spoiled ballots announced, but adding up all the votes for executive comes to a grand total of 4,340 votes, so we know that at least that many votes were cast.
• Also note that more people voted for Evolution than the entire number of people who voted in some past CSU elections.

One last thing: today being April Fool’s Day, reports that the election has been annulled are a prank. And not a particularly inspired prank at that. Just in case you were wondering – or panicking. To clarify, the election has not been annulled.

Speaking of SPHR, they appear to be moving ahead with their agenda, unfazed by their massive loss in the CSU elections. In what they’re calling the “Karameh Campaign”, they’re planning on issuing “demands” to Concordia’s administration.

Most of this seems pretty transparent. The constant use of “war criminal” is an attempt to slander Benjamin Netanyahu with a false allegation that they know they cannot prove. Their reference to the “criminalization of dissent” flies in the face of evidence that conclusively states that what they are engaging in is, in fact, the politicization of criminal activity. Their “demand” that charges and sanctions be removed from the rioters is nothing short of a joke (incidentally, if you have not yet signed the petition to bring these criminals to justice, please do so!)

The “inquiry into racism” was already called for by the CSU, which gives some insight into its true motives. However, with the old CSU out and the new CSU coming in, it will hopefully end up being more of an opportunity to raise discussion points, rather than a witch-hunt against the “Zionists” and the administration.

As for the third point, normally, students can use space to hold events, and a police presence wouldn’t be necessary if SPHR didn’t insist on turning these events into violent clashes.

Their “principles” are equally transparent: Their standard calls against the “criminalization of dissent” and the “discrimination against refugees”. Their reference to “civil disobedience” would be all very well and good, except for their stubborn conviction that smashing windows and beating up people in kippas consists of “civil” disobedience. And note their use of “in Palestine” – um, last I checked, Palestine isn’t a country.

Finally, perhaps most offensive is their attempt to re-define “anti-Semitism” as meaning “racism against both Arabs and Jews”. That is a racist attempt to twist two thousand years of history around and turn the Arabs into the innocent victims. There’s no such thing as a “semitic” race – that’s an invention of racists. Antisemitism means racism against Jews. Don’t like it? Write to the publishers of the dictionary. Nobody’s denying them the right to protect against other forms of racism, including anti-Arab racism. But their twisting of the term antisemitism enables them to claim to be against antisemitism, when in truth they’re perpetrating it.

SPHR is looking for groups to “endorse” these demands before presenting them to the university. Hah! If you’d like to let these jokers know what you truly think of them, you can send them an e-mail to express yourself.

Update: I’ve removed the actual text of their “demands” and “principles” from my site, because I realized it could be mis-construed that I was actually promoting the damned thing. Of course, as nothing is further from the truth, I took it down to avoid confusion, but I left the link up so that you can read it and see for yourself what they’re up to.

Here’s a real shocker (insert sarcasm): The International Solidary Movement is harbouring terrorists:

Israeli troops raided the West Bank offices of the International Solidarity Movement on Thursday and seized a wanted member of the militant Islamic Jihad group, the army said.

The army said the man was being sheltered in the Jenin offices of the Palestinian-backed peace group whose members often act as human shields, placing themselves between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians.

Apart from Rachel Corrie, who the ISM calls its “first official martyr” (I wonder what she would do with 72 virgins?), other members of the ISM include some familiar names from Concordia, including many past and present members of the CSU.