In a surprise motion last Friday, the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union narrowly voted to censure its president, Rob Wulkan. The vote was seven for and seven against, with Zuhair Syed, chair of the board of directors, breaking the tie. Two members (including Wulkan himself) abstained from voting.
According to Jemy Joseph, VP academics, life sciences director Suleiman Furmli requested a discussion of halal food on campus and, immediately after, raised the censure motion. “Everyone was surprised—no one anticipated it,” she said. Documents obtained by
The Varsity show that Furmli brought seven charges against Wulkan. Subjects of complaints included his comments to media in regards to the halal menu at Bluff’s, a UTSC campus restaurant. Controversy over the menu has been picked up by media outlets such as the Toronto Star and the National Post.
The censure motion also accused Wulkan of delivering “a falsified fact to the media” with respect to surveys about halal menu implementation.
Joseph disagreed. “The president is the official spokesperson of the organization and he has a right to speak on behalf of the organization,” she told The Varsity.
In a phone interview, Wulkan called the latter point a misunderstanding and maintained that Bluff’s had conducted said survey a year and a half to two years ago.
The document also said that Wulkan harassed VP students and equity, Ahmad Jaballah, but no proof was presented at the board meeting. Jaballah could not be reached at press time, and Syed declined to comment.
The SCSU resolved to recognize that Wulkan “has much room of [sic] improvement” and demanded he write a formal letter of apology to be printed “in a continuing UTSC Student Publication [sic].”
“All that’s within my power is to write a letter to the media,” Wulkan said. “You can’t force the free media to print something they don’t want to print.”
The three-hour board meeting adjourned without going through most of the reports planned because the censure vote took so long, said former SCSU president Lendyl D’Souza, who was critical of the motion. “I felt that the motion had not been prepared well,” he said.
“I think that it was a rush, there were spelling and grammatical errors throughout, it seems that if anything was up to censure, it should have been prepared well. There was not any proof, there was just he-said-she-said, that type of deal.”
Multiple sources confirmed that the vote was not carried out by secret ballot, as mandated by SCSU bylaws. No one protested at the time.
“The chair should be well aware of how policies and bylaws are stated. They treated their bylaws like toilet paper,” said D’Souza. “I think the entire motion should be thrown out.”
