Even as a veteran of U of T politics, Jim Delaney was surprised by what he saw at a meeting near the end of January.

He expects high emotions at the Annual General Meeting (AGM), since it is the one time anyone can do just about anything they want to their student government. The money, bylaws, staffing and even election procedure of the Students’ Administrative Council are all up for grabs by whatever side musters the most votes.

But in his six years attending the meetings as U of T’s assistant director of student affairs, Delaney says he can’t “recall one this divisive in nature.”

Majority rules at the AGM, and each student who is present can cast a vote. However, prior to the meeting students can also vote by proxy, giving their vote to another student, who then can have his vote count for dozens, even hundreds of votes.

Such was the case with SAC president Alex Kerner, who, along with the two other members of the executive, gathered nearly 1,000 proxy votes, which effectively meant they could run the show. But in the weeks that followed, nearly 40 students, many of them women or racial minorities, said it wasn’t Kerner, but four others who were dominating the meeting.

Who exactly made the event so heated depends on who you talk to. Those who have come forward to SAC’s equity commissioner Liz Majic, along with a few female SAC directors, blame Andrew Lefoley, Christopher Deans, Paul Rusac and Forrest Pass, four veteran student politicians.

“It was about domination and competition, rather than the spirit of the AGM, which is a forum for students to really put issues on the table that are important to them,” said Majic.

The four spoke frequently, and sometimes quite loudly, at the meeting, and Majic accuses them of trying to stall the meeting so that it wouldn’t get to discuss the Canadian Federation of Students. The CFS is a national lobby group of which SAC became a trial membersh during the meeting. The four who were the subject of complaints to SAC spent a great deal of time debating procedural matters on motions prior to the CFS, which meant the matter was not addressed until late in the evening. Some say this was an attempt to delay the meeting until there were fewer than fifty people in the room, at which point the meeting would lose quorum—the legal minimum number of bodies present to carry on business. But those who brought up the procedural matters say they had a different concern.

The Proxies

“I am fully prepared to admit that the four of us used our knowledge of procedure to snarl the process. We did so deliberately, and I can see how people would be offended,” said Andrew Lefoley.

Lefoley says this was done to protest a SAC executive who were “abusing their knowledge of technical procedure in exactly the same way to dominate the meeting with proxies.”

Christopher Deans, a St. Mike’s rep who joined Lefoley in the procedural assault, was also concerned about the proxies, but says his goal was not to stall the meeting.

“I was by no means purposefully delaying. I was calling procedure,” said Deans, who said he meant no ill will to those who later complained. “I follow procedure and I believe that’s what I was there to do to serve my constituent. Procedural questions have to be raised sometimes.”

SAC commissioner Agata Durkalec was nonetheless unimpressed by the stalling, saying, “Instead of being able to actually argue the other side and trying to get students out and trying to educate students about what their opinions are on the issues, they just tried to have issues not even brought to the table.

“I don’t understand how that’s more democratic,” she said “I think that’s the exact opposite.”

But Paul Rusac, the third person who also raised numerous objections, said the sheer number of proxy votes collected by the SAC executive was the biggest threat to democracy.

“I don’t believe that 1,000 proxies held by three people is very democratic, so I simply used the procedure and the laws that we have to fight against that.”

He, Lefoley, Deans and Forrest Pass attempted with several different motions to get Kerner’s massive number of proxies disqualified, but they were shot down by the chair.

“The real travesty of democracy was that the outcome of the meeting was determined beforehand,” said Pass.

Politics

Others say the issue wasn’t procedure, but just plain politics. While it was a fluke seating arrangement, it was nonetheless noticeable that the objectors to the motion sat to the right of the chair, while Kerner and others in favour of the CFS sat on the left. CFS is widely considered e more left-wing of the two national student lobby groups. When the CFS matter finally made its way onto the agenda, the four, along with many others, got up and left, which almost meant quorum was lost.

“It appeared to me that they were drawn upon political lines,” Delaney said of the conflicts.

SAC vice president Lindsey Tabah concurred. “I think that the opposition was definitely about the issue being voted on, and not the legitimacy of proxy voting.”

But those who led the procedural challenges say the number was extreme.

“Proxies are legitimate,” said Lefoley. “If there is a friend of yours who really wants to be there but is working that night, they should be able to have their voice heard. But no one has 700 friends in that situation,” he said. Lefoley said the SAC executive also had an advantage because they were on the payroll and not in school and could devote more time to collecting proxies than regular students. But Tabah says the proxies play an important role.

“We felt it was a great way to spread information about the meeting, and campaign on issues we felt were very important.

“Most students don’t know about the AGM or the motions being addressed,” she said. “By collecting proxies, we get those students involved.”

Equity

But for some in the meeting, the issue wasn’t politics or procedure, but of fairness and respect. And they say respect was not being given to those new to the process, or those who could not act as loudly and aggressively as others at the meeting.

After the meeting, Mona Ahmed, SAC UT Mississauga director, spoke to a woman of colour who wanted to address a motion but couldn’t. “She felt she wasn’t dressed as they were [two were in suits] and she just felt intimidated by the environment,” she said.

“A lot of women were very concerned about the current state of student politics,” said Majic of the complaints.

Even some seasoned SAC veterans, like Durkalec, who got in one heated confrontation with Lefoley, were distressed.

“It made me want to leave SAC the next day,” she said, adding that the meeting will definitely prevent some people from wanting to get involved in student government in the future.

“It’s unfortunate that they feel that way,” said Deans. “I was questioning rules, I was questioning paper, really, and interpretation of paper, and not people specifically.”

Rusac added that the proxies oppressed everyone at the meeting, and the power politics of the four very assertive—and some say aggressive—men were “nothing like certain other people that showed up at the meeting with close to 1000 proxies, and with those proxies pretty much controlled the meeting.”

Majic, however, believes given the sheer number of complaints she received after the meeting, most from women and minorities, that the four white men in question need to seriously reevaluate their behaviour.

“They don’t want to own up to it, so they are creating this excuse…” she said. “They want to put everyone on the same playing field, but you can’t do that when there are groups that are already more disadvantaged than they were.”

Democracy

The meeting has left all involved with a bad taste in their mouth, and both sides of the debate are calling for big changes which they believe will ensure democracy at future meetings.

“Everybody was excluded from democracy that evening, and while I understand that people were offended, they need to understand that their voice wouldn’t have mattered if neither of the four of us had said a word,” said Lefoley.

“They completely disagreed with the motions, especially concerning CFS, and they saw criticism of the proxy votes as a way of preventing the motion from going through,” Tabah responded, adding that those opposed to CFS were simply bitter because they could only gather a few hundred proxies.

That said, both she and Kerner are willing to look at changes to proxy rules, and Kerner is interested in the idea of a cap, including a cap on the number any one person can hold. Majic doesn’t agree that all the students at the AGM were excluded from democracy because of the proxies. “I think their voices would have mattered if those guys would have been quiet, because we would have been able to discuss the motions that were really important…I think [the four men] were being very undemocratic.”

Majic believes the structure of SAC needs changing. “What they did is a reflection of what happens in politics to groups that are less visible and more disadvantaged.”

Lefoley, Rusac and Deans say they upheld the standards of democracy, which Lefoley says means “one person, one vote.”

But Majic says sex, race and class power dynamics complicate that definition. “The thing about that meeting is that women, visible minorities, we already have the cards stacked way against us.”

Lefoley denies that he was being aggressive, only admitting that he was using “expressive” body language.

“I have absolute confidence in the ability of people to confront words with words regardless of their gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc.” he said. But Majic remains unconvinced.

“This whole structure of the AGM and the forum and how it took place has just made it very clear that the structures that govern us work to oppress certain groups. I think that was the most obvious thing at this AGM—is that groups do not have equal footing in environments like this at all,” she said.

With files from Larissa Ruderman
Photograph by Simon Turnbull