Students at Simon Fraser University last Wednesday impeached seven executive members of their student government. One of the so-called “G7,” Simon Fraser Student Society president Shawn Hunsdale, has resigned in the wake of the impeachment scandal. But a fight has ignited over the vote’s legitimacy.
Hunsdale said he left to simplify the difficult situation faced by SFSS. The body has had their bank account frozen, and the board of directors circulated an internal memo whose instructions effectively bottleneck communications with SFSS to members of the G7.
Students for a Democratic University, the group behind the impeachment campaign, is readying for a legal challenge to the impeachment vote, which SFSS lawyer Don Crane said was held under improper circumstances.
The meeting that hosted the vote was planned at a Sept. 27 meeting that, according to Crane “was not convened in accordance with the [SFSS] bylaws, and was nothing more than an informal meeting of certain members of Forum, with no legal authority.”
Other members of the G7 complained about how the impeachment vote was held. SFSS External Relations Officer Margo Dunnet, impeached at the possibly-invalid meeting, had harsh words for the vote’s organizers.
“To me, the [meeting where the vote was held] was a demonstration that particular graduate students had done a very effective job of riling up students,” she said pointedly. SDU was founded mainly by graduate students who were at the university this summer when, in a highly controversial move, SFSS fired 26-year veteran Hattie Aitken.
Dunnet resented the G7 being given only three minutes to present their case before the impeachment vote. However, SDU organizer Titus Gregory defended the meeting’s overall format, noting that opponents of the impeachment campaign had tried to derail the meeting with stalling tactics and filibusters.
