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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