UPDATE: AMS President, VP External under fire
Executives asked to resign, failed to consult rest of executive and Council on UN complaint
Friday, November 27th, 2009
BREAKING: Saturday, November 28, 11:45am—AMS President Blake Frederick and VP External Tim Chu have refused to attend the emergency AMS Council meeting today at 5pm. In an open letter to Council, the two executives say that they have “prior commitments,” and that “this point was made clear to Councillors when they initially decided to call the meeting for Saturday.” Frederick and Chu request that Council withhold discussion of disciplinary action until facts and motives are explained.
“We believe that students should be extremely concerned that some members of Council have indicated they will attempt to illegally impeach Executive members who are democratically elected by the UBC student body,” the letter reads. Chu and Frederick assert that if people are calling for their resignation, then they should be asking for the resignation of VP Finance Tom Dvorak and VP Academic Johannes Rebane.
The Ubyssey would like to note that they have an on-the-record comment from Frederick saying that he looks forward to having a civil discussion at today’s meeting.
Two Facebook groups have been started that address both sides. The group “We oppose the AMS impeachment of Blake Frederick and Tim Chu” has 44 members, and “First UBC Expeditionary Force” has 80 members.
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Friday, November 27, 12:30pm—An emergency AMS Council meeting has been called to ask President Blake Frederick and VP External Tim Chu to resign due to their failure to consult AMS Council and the rest of the executive on their submission of a complaint to the United Nations.
The complaint to the UN claims that the provincial and federal governments are violating Article 13 (c) of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, which states that “Higher education shall be made accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education.” Chu and Frederick claim that the governments are not upholding their obligations under the Covenant—which Canada signed in 1976—because the tuition freeze was lifted in 2002 and that tuition fees have continued to increase since then.
The product was the brainchild of Chu and Frederick, but AMS Policy Analyst Adrienne Smith and Communications Manager Kelli Seepaul assisted as well. Former AMS VP Administration Tristan Markle was named as a complainant. They solicited the legal advice of Pivot Legal Society, a “non-profit legal advocacy organization located in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side,” according to their website. Frederick told The Ubyssey that he is not sure when they expect to hear a response from the UN.
A press conference was held on Thursday morning to announce the issuing of the complaint. When asked why The Ubyssey was not informed of the press conference, Frederick said that Pivot sent notification out to their media contact list, and that AMS communications were just asked to issue a press release. The AMS Communications Planning group, who are responsible for overseeing all communications, was not informed about this at all.
Frederick described his reasoning for issuing the complaint.
“The desperate need and responsibility of the AMS to advocate in all means possible for increased governments funding and financial assistance for students. We’ve reached the point where we have seen costs for education escalating out of control, and it seems like, as students, there’s not much we can do about it,” he said.
“So the intent of filing a complaint is to send a clear signal to government that what they have been doing is in breach of the International Covenant they have signed.”
$3000 has been spent so far for an initial retainer for Pivot, but that they have yet to receive a final invoice. The money was taken out of the AMS Council’s legal fund, which has a line amount of $25,000 according to the current budget. According to AMS Code, two signatories—either a vice-president executive, the director of finance, the director of administration or the secretary of the Student Administrative Commission—need to approve expenditures. Rebane and Dvorak signed off as signatories.
“It was a document that was signed by two other execs before me, and in haste of signing 90 documents in the first week of classes, I was going completely on the trust of fellow executives’ signatures and did not read into the details of the contract,” said Dvorak. ”I messed up. Did I put the payment through, did I initiate the transaction, no.”
AMS executives VP Finance Tom Dvorak and VP Academic Johannes Rebane expressed their confusion and concern at not being informed about the complaint beforehand at Thursday’s Executive Committee meeting.
Frederick said that “we’ve given several updates to the Executive Committee with regards to the fact that we’re working on it,” and that there was not discussion from anyone that it needed to go to Council. Chu admitted that it was not brought to Council because “there are certain people at AMS Council” who wouldn’t approve of filing the complaint.
According to UBC Insiders, there has been two mentions of the complaint in Executive Committee meeting minutes. The first is from March 13, 2009: “The AMS will pursue a legal battle with the province on the basis that the recent education funding cuts are against the UN charter”; the second is from April 16, 2009: “UN complaint with Pivot; may wait until Adrienne gets back.” Blake signed the complaint on November 18.
However, Rebane and Dvorak said at the meeting that they have had a few discussions earlier in the year about openness, but that he perceived it as an ongoing investigation and that if any action was going to be taken, it would go to Executive Committee or Council.
Rebane found out about the complaint at another meeting he attended that day. “I’m getting used to that sort of stuff right now,” he told Frederick at the meeting, “but it’s tough proper that I have to be finding out about this sort of stuff that makes the Georgia Straight after it goes to the Georgia Straight.”
This speaks to a larger problem of executives failing to communicate. In a controversial quarterly report by Dvorak, he said that the AMS Executive has not met regularly for two months. On November 18, AMS Council passed a motion forcing the executive to meet at least twice a month.
The emergency meeting will be held on Saturday, November 28 at 5pm. A petition was signed by thirteen councilors, even though only ten were needed to approve the meeting. Three motions will be put on the table: one that retracts the UN complaint and agrees to stop funding the cause, clarifying that it was not the will of the AMS to do so; one that asks Frederick to resign; and one that asks Chu to resign.
Only less than a month ago, AMS Council put forward a motion to censure Frederick for issuing a press release criticizing the university about the underground bus loop. The motion failed but it was an indication that councilors are losing faith in their president.
“[This is] incredibly embarrassing to the AMS and to UBC students as a whole, and corrective action needs to be taken as soon as possible,” said Arts Councilor Matthew Naylor. “[Chu and Frederick] have deceived Council in bringing this forward, they have deliberately hidden this project from us.”
If Chu and Frederick refuse to resign, something that Naylor says is very likely, then AMS Council will issue a notice of impeachment at Saturday’s meeting. A hearing will commence a minimum of seven days after the document is signed by 12 signatories. Two thirds of councilors must vote in favour of impeachment.
Frederick wants to have a civil discussion at Council tomorrow, adding that he “looks forward to it.”
The Ubyssey is hosting a live blog event on this issue starting Saturday, November 28 at 4:30. Check it out here.
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18 comments
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Kellan Nov 27
SWEEET. I missed some awesome politicking this year. I am sad that I wasn’t there to see all of it go down. Keep on trucking Ubyssey!
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OT Nov 27
“Chu admitted that it was not brought to Council because “there are certain people at AMS Council” who wouldn’t approve of filing the complaint.”
This pretty much sums it up I guess. “We won’t inform the people who will try and stop us”. Real democratic.
Don’t worry Frederick, I also “look forward to it”. You getting canned that is.
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m Nov 27
Since when did Matt Naylor become the dictator of council? Wasn’t that guy an executive like 5 years ago? He’s just mad because he could never get elected into a real position again. He should move on. Isn’t there a nice Liberal out there who will let Matt shine their shoes for them or something?
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Hilarion Nov 28
It is quite amusing that Naylor is somehow always cited as an ‘expert’, and given a voice (always attacking Frederick fiercely), and we barely hear from the ‘other side’, that is the non-Naylorites. Ubyssey should host a Liberal cocktail bash after Naylor kicks Frederick out and hurts another student to make sure we do nothing about tuition. Next AMS government will be very right wing, so we can start charging students as much as we can and doing good business with the Liberals. I think we should just commercialize everything and get to business. Let’s stop nagging that tuition is a barrier to poor people, let ‘em work hard while we earn ours in their backs and say we are doing ‘human rights’ ‘from here’
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Nayla Nov 28
Where’s Toope, our own very own human rights expert when we need him? Will he show up to speak up on behalf of Frederick’s intent, and make ammends? Will Bijan prove to be a master in ‘conflict resolution’ or will he make sure the deepest amount of damage is done to Frederick on account of trying to make the government do what it has signed on to doing but failed to. Poor council, sombody was doing their work while they grandstanded from behind their laptops on facebook, blogs, twitter, and video-games, eating obscene amounts of cheese (Naylah), and pretending to be effective and to “speak for students with disabilities” without having ever had a disability themselves… we should impeach a council that infringed upon the human rights of marginalized people by not giving a NON-VOTING seat to them! They left screaming “shame on you” with tears in their eyes. And this decision was based on another rabid “Naylor” ‘argument’… If anyone has to be impeached, it is Naylor for making us look like oppressors, not Frederick who holds power accountable for screwing people over.
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Clarke Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 1:33 am
So it is the disabled students’ HUMAN RIGHT to have a seat on the AMS Council? Please. That is an insult the millions upon millions of people in this world who are actually having their human rights infringed upon.
Can you think of a county in the world that does more for disabled people than Canada? To me, they shouldn’t have a seat not because their needs are unimportant or to be ignored, but because once extra seats on council are given out then where does it stop? Maybe students from Manitoba should have a seat? Or students with names starting with ‘L’? Or students that live in Totem? Or those from Abbotsford?
The disabled are very important and to me this decision wasn’t one to marginalize them.
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John Nov 28
I really think the Ubyssey can produce better reporting than this…
1. The biggest issue, totally neglected in this article: whether or not Tim and Blake did anything against AMS code in the first place! Were they not very upfront and transparent with Council? Sure. Does Council have some legitimate complaints in that regard? Definitely.
But that is an issue of Council and exec functionality – not an issue of breaking rules. The former requires some serious leadership on all sides to mend distrust and hurt feelings, not crying for impeachment! The first order at hand is showing how Blake and Tim broke the rules.
2. And if they didn’t, then this is an issue of Council-exec relations, and it’s probably important to look at the issue with a bit more depth…
Tim and Blake are losing the faith of their Council. That’s bad leadership, not grounds for impeachment. But Council probably isn’t entirely innocent in any of this either…
Exec minutes were probably lacking, at best. That’s something that Council should have noticed and raised issue with earlier in the year. The democracy of the AMS is not perfect by any means (there are a lot of reasons for this), but one of the democratic functions of Council is to be a check and balance of exec power. Sounds to me like Council wasn’t really doing their job properly in the first place!
Furthermore, it looks to me like Tom and Johannes are just back-pedaling now that they realized there is backlash to something they signed. Why would anyone sign something if they don’t know enough about it, or don’t understand it? They are just scared of getting implicated.
Lastly, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that Matthew Naylor has dominated Council politics for years now. For those Councillors who are less seasoned, their lack of faith in Blake gets misdirected into too much faith in Matt. The result: they playing out of Matt’s personal vendettas somehow become legitimate uses of Council’s time. It’s disgusting and its also embarrassing that NO student leaders have been able to overthrow Naylor’s co-optation of Council and redirect debate to real issues that matter to students!
3. Staff are directed by Council and exec – that’s their job! It is totally inappropriate to implicate AMS staff in any of this unless there is some pretty serious evidence to suggest that staff were somehow co-opting or directing the process. Does the Ubyssey have any evidence for this claim!?
Rather than just playing into rumor-mills, why don’t you actually do some leg-work and investigate what is really going on here, Ubyssey!? Or is Matt Naylor now your God too, who’s word goes completely unchallenged?
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Jeremy - Arts AMS Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
“It’s disgusting and its also embarrassing that NO student leaders have been able to overthrow Naylor’s co-optation of Council and redirect debate to real issues that matter to students!”
What are these ‘real issues that matter to students’ in your mind? All of Council have public emails, and all Council meetings (every second Wednesday at 6pm) are open to all students.
If you have concerns that issues aren’t being addressed, or that any councillors are being ‘co-opted’ by Matt Naylor, then please come. But don’t just lambast student volunteers, elected by their peers, on website comment boards when you don’t agree with what is going on.
I look forward to seeing you at Council on Wednesday, December 2 at 6pm in SUB Council chambers.
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Clarke Nov 29
“You oppose Blake?! You must be one of Naylor’s lap dogs!” That, or, we just agree with him on this one.
Blake Frederick has been asked to resign, and if (probably when) he doesn’t comply with that he deserves to be impeached.
Why should he be impeached? We could sit here and troll the internet for new forums in which to debate the tuition issue until our keyboards break, but that’s not the crux of the matter here.
The main point is that Blake KNOWINGLY acted contrary to the desires of the constituents that elected him. Had he consulted ANYBODY regarding this complaint he would have quickly found out just how overwhelmingly opposed students are to this move. But he knew that, so he decided to go behind the students’ backs and do this without telling anybody. When a person is elected to an office it is their duty to represent the population that elected them to the best of their ability. Not only has Blake proved unable to do that but he has shown that he is willing to go to great lengths to abuse the power he has been given to achieve his own personal goals.
Again, what has been debated so far is whether or not students SHOULD want this to happen (and I view that as a valid debate!). However, the fact is that right now they DON’T. Blake knew that but he did this anyway. That is why he should be impeached.
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John Nov 29
Clark:
1. You say “had he consulted anybody… he would have found out how opposed everyone is.” But then you also say he “knowingly acted contrary to the desires of the constituents.” It sounds to me like there are a lot of assumptions about his intentions, trying to make them seem more evil than they really are.
2. Executives have a lot of power to act on issues without the approval of Council. Writing letters, voicing students’ opinions at committees, taking on portfolio projects… Executives have not only been doing this since there have been Executives, but that is what they are elected to do! Its’ their job! They UN appeal was bold, and perhaps a stunt that should have had more support before done, but it is by no means an abuse of power.
And Executives have a lot of leeway on what they can do. Are they accountable to Council, sure. But they don’t need to get Council’s approval every time they do anything. And there is nothing to suggest that the Human Rights Claim goes against the AMS” policy on tuition… Council has every right to not like the move, demand Blake (and exec) to be more transparent and take disciplinary action (they are supposed to be a check on exec power after all). But impeachment!? It’s absolutely ridiculous.
3. The degree to which students don’t support the move is entirely unclear. Just because there is a body of AMS hacks who blog incessantly about their own little groups’ musings, doesn’t mean that represents all students’ opinions. With a student population of 43 000, it is impossible to ever know what the student body “thinks” – and it’s never cohesive. Anyone who thinks that 43 000 are all clear and agreed on even one issue is completely misguided.
4. The degree to which the move “embarrassed” the AMS and UBC is entirely questionable. Look at the responses to the Georgia Straight article – hardly any of them were students and they all thought it was an interesting and bold move.
5. Blake and TIm didn’t break any AMS code. They didn’t do anything illegal. They literally just did something that their Council isn’t happy with. Okay, its bad leadership, its not a good way to go about things, agreed.
But asking people to resign isn’t something that should be thrown around lightly. It should only be used for people who do something illegal and cause a great deal of harm to the society. It’s a political body, disagreements about how things should be done is inevitable!
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John (the first one) Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Point 3) “Entirely unclear”? Really? If you can truly say that you think the students on this campus aren’t overwhelmingly against Blake’s maneuver then we clearly have very different impressions of what goes on on this campus. Many council members that spoke on Saturday mentioned the unprecedented amount of feedback they’d been getting from their constituents and all (except one that I remember, who said it was split) said that the clear majority of that feedback was against the UN complaint. I never meant to imply that every student on this campus agrees, but it seems clear to me at least that most students are against this, and my point remains that had any consultation been carried out then that would have been very evident.
Which brings me to 1, 2) My point was that Blake’s actions are especially egregious because he knew that had he brought this before council it would have been defeated (yes, his knowing that is an assumption, but it’s what I’ve come to believe based on everything I’ve seen and read – do you disagree?). While it’s true that executives are trusted to make some decisions without council (since that would further bog down the process), they still need to act in a way that they feel best reflects what their constituents and council want done! It is an entirely different matter altogether if they start doing things that they know council will disapprove of and because of that they then do those things secretively.
4) You’re right, how “embarrassing” this actually is is a matter of personal opinion. Keep in mind that that is Georgia Straight readership comments – have a look at the Vancouver Sun comments and you’ll see a different cross-section of society. And that’s not to say that Georgia Straight readers should be ignored etc, but, again my opinion, it seems that they are in the minority on this one.
5) You’re right, they didn’t break any code, but they did betray the trust that was placed in them by acting in a way that they knew was contrary to the will of council and of the students they allegedly represent (again, that is what the facts I’ve seen up until now lead me to believe). And although I’m no AMS historian, it sounds like this has been ongoing behavior. Sounds like a pretty good reason to impeach someone to me.
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Jeremy - Arts AMS Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
“But asking people to resign isn’t something that should be thrown around lightly. It should only be used for people who do something illegal and cause a great deal of harm to the society.”
When someone knowingly deceives their organization, and brings massive criticism from all venues, a call for their resignation is more than called for.
When someone does something illegal or causes a great deal of harm to the society they are taken to court.
Your assumption that not breaking any rules exempts them from the judgement of their constituents is completely false. While it was their prerogative to go about this process, the fact that for 9 months, with countless hours put in by themselves and staff, in addition to at least $3000 that was spent, without mentioning it any councillors, committees, or media sources, and having all above groups find out after a press release is called is completely irresponsible, and worthy of the measures taken.
Your other assumption about disagreements being a part of politics is also wrong, as in this case 100% of Council was against the move, and Blake and Tim, on the record, said they did not bring this to Council because they knew it would not pass. They knowingly deceived and circumvented us, ignoring the due process that a measure this large needed.
There is no argument that can justify any of their actions in this matter.
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