The University of Toronto Students’ Union has called into question the validity of the Governing Council meeting that approved tuition fee hikes for 2008-2009. UTSU also questions the accuracy and objectivity of minutes from that meeting.
After fee hike protesters shouted down governors at the April 10 meeting, the chair moved the council meetings behind closed doors. UTSU says the move makes the meeting and the motions approved, including the tuition fee schedule, out of order.
UTSU argues that GC Chair Jack Petch didn’t follow steps listed in the Policy on the Disruption of Meetings. UTSU president Sandy Hudson, who was there to protest, says that Petch never informed them of the policy and the penalties for breaching it, and did not ask them to leave.
Petch recalled it differently in a letter to GC members. Citing an obligation to protect the freedom of speech of council members, he said he moved the meeting, instead of attempting to eject protestors, because of safety concerns after police removed demonstrators from Simcoe Hall in late March.
Neither side has yet made reference to a caveat found near the end of the policy document stating, “It is recognized that in extraordinary circumstances it may be necessary for the University administration to take immediate action without the possibility of following the sequence of steps outlined.”
The minutes from the meeting make no mention of the policy and refer instead to the broad discretion of the chair granted by a bylaw that allows the chair to “exclude or cause to be removed from the meetings” any disruptive persons.
Hudson and other student leaders have requested a number of amendments to the meeting minutes. They include the removal of statements that say protestors would be diffi cult to remove, and addition of a clause that makes it clear allstudents were barred from the reconvened meeting.
“I don’t understand why a group of people think they can shut down a meeting and then complain after that they didn’t like the procedure for shutting it down,” Petch said in an interview this summer. Students did disrupt the meeting, Hudson admitted, but only out of “an act of desperation.” She argues the minutes use suggestive language: where students “alleged,” the chair “explained.”
Alex Kenjeev, a graduate student who sat on Governing Council last year, agreed that from the way the minutes read, it seems the chair followed the steps outlined in the procedure. He said it’s hard to remember whether the chair did ask protestors to leave, but that something had to be done.
“It was a real atmosphere of chaos. One of the student members was trying to speak, and nobody could hear what he was saying. […] The chairperson had to make a decision about how to restore order in the room.”
Bureaucracy has blocked UTSU’s attempts to get tapes of the April 10 meeting. After the GC secretariat was told the tapes were destroyed, they found out from Information Services that the tapes were there and open to the public. By the time UTSU made an appointment to listen to them, the rules had mysteriously changed. When The Varsity asked for them at Information Services, no one seemed to know what we were talking about.
As a governor, Rascanu could listen to the tapes, but he can’t make copies. He said the tapes confirmed the chair did not inform student representatives of the policy or its penalties, nor did he ask them to leave.
Hudson’s requested amendments to the minutes were ultimately denied. Minor changes made, said Hudson, were an attempt to avoid litigation. UTSU considered seeking an injunction on tuition fee collection because of the questioned legality of the April 10 meeting, but decided not to pursue legal action.
Council secretary Louis Charpentier said allegations of doctored minutes are completely false. “One would consider that offensive,” he said, adding the minutes are intended solely to provide a record of decisions and a general summary of the meeting. “They are never intended to be a verbatim transcript.”
Pressed on how he thinks this will look to students, Petch responded that he was put in a difficult position by people who didn’t want the meeting to continue. “Let’s look at the step before that: how did we end up in that position?” he asks. “If I’m a student, who do I want to have represent me?”
