coppied from an email sent to the cs dept from Clement Abas Apaak.
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My fellow SFU students,
My name is Clement Apaak; I am a former president of the SFSS, former member
of the SFU senate, and a current student member of the SFU Board of
Governors. I write to you to ask you to take your campus and student
society back. Please vote and get our beloved SFSS out of the CFS. Our
SFSS has shown courage in the last two years, and has placed the interest of
SFU students' front and centre. We must now use our votes to help it get
out of a broken, corrupt, undemocratic, and unaccountable national student
organization, the CFS. Please read and pass this on to all SFU students you
know.
I have spend most of my years as an SFU students serving you, and our
university community in various capacities, and I was part of the recent
action led to the unprecedented removal from office of members of our SFSS
student board who engaged in a witch hunt, and underhanded practice for
political gain and to stratify the wishes of their sponsors, the CFS.
To set the record straight, I used to be an officer of the CFS. I served as
the graduate representative to the BC provincial component, and as the
international student commission at the national level. In all I have
attend four national CFS meeting on behalf of SFU students, and 3 provincial
meetings, as well as other events arranged by the CFS. By virtue of the two
positions I held in both the provincial and national components of the CFS,
I know first hand that the basis for which I have joined the call for us to
get out of this broken institution are well founded.
I know of many instances during which the CFS, BC component, interfered with
SFSS
elections on campus. When I run for grad issue officer, our slate at
the time, my profile as a candidate, and posters were made in the CFS
offices. While on the board at that time, CFS staff imposed candidates on
us that we were asked to hire as SFSS staff; research and policy, and
communications. When I became president a few years later, this continued,
in spite of opposition from board members, including me. I wrote to the CFS
as president, as directed by the SFSS board of directors when, then,
external relations officer, Shawn (Philippe) Hunsdale invited CFS officers
to our campus to do class room speaking without due consultation with the
board or executives. As it tuned out, this was one of many instances in
which he communicated and gave permission to the CSF to engage our students
without the knowledge of the board.
This interference came to a head on collision with those of us who did not
approve of it when Hunsdale become president after me. AS we now know, he
used underhanded tactics, and concocted charges, in collaboration with his
lover and right hand woman, Margo Dunnet, to dismiss one of our long and
outstanding staff people at the SFSS, Hattie. Why, because she was a staff
person who was not seen as loyal to the CFS as was regarded as an obstacle
in the bid of a CFS- owned company to take over as the broker for the grad
health plan. Given that I was the person who attended meetings with Hattie,
and knew first hand where these stupid charges were coming from, I said no,
refused to be silenced in the face of shameless and blatant lies aimed at
causing be to back off. Together with independent thinking board members,
forum, grads, and the GIC, we mobilized to impeach the bad, ill informed and
CFS puppets. Our side won the support of the SFUI administration, and the
courts ruled in our favor. I mention this because; it is connected with
where we are today.
For your information, I had not yet concluded that I would support the call
to end our membership to the CFS even after the impeachment, and court
victory because I though, maybe this time the CFS will work at changing the
issues for which we as SFU students have complained about since the 1990s.
I came to that conclusion that we had to leave the CFS when word got to me
that Margo Dunnet, had been hired to work for the Dawson Students Union out
east, and that Shawn Hunsdale, had changed his name to Philippe Hunsdale and
was again back in student politics at a college in Quebec. It become clear
to me, as is the case with many other former CFS supporters on campus that,
the CFS rewarded leaders that our students impeached, and could not have the
moral basis to say that it values the membership of the very same students
who impeached Shawn and Margo. It was also clear that the CFS was not
willing to change.
Speaking of change, as a member of the CFS local 23, [that is what the SFSS
is know in the CFS], I introduced many motions at national and provincial
meetings seeking to reform the provincials and national executives of the
CFS to include international students and have been present at most of these
meeting since 2002. On each occasion my proposal was killed at the
committee level or at the closing plenary of these meetings. When I finally
got a motion passed at a national meeting about four years ago to create a
position for an international student on the national executive, the
leadership moved to ask that that idea be sent to the national executive to
investigate such a possibility. The outcome of that investigation is not
known, but the fact is that international students have no representation on
the national executive of an organization that clams to value them.
Then, as I was working with other BC student unions to ask for the repeal of
section 23 c of the BC University Act, so that international students can
run for, and sit on the boards of their institutions, the CFS offered no
help, and was unsupportive. I was called names for working with the AMS
(UBC Student Union, and its president, Spencer Keys), the University
presidents council, and MLAs, Harry Bloy in particular, to seek changes to
23 c of the Act. As you know, I was successful and now represent you on the
board of governors as the first international student in the history of this
province, and likely all of Canada to have done so. Because of what the
SFSS did, we now international students serving on boards in other parts of
BC.
I have come to the conclusion, based on seven years of active involvement in
student politics at SFU, BC, and Canada, and my intimate knowledge of how
the CFS functions, that we need to get out of it. It is not about the
principles for which the CFS stands; it is the way it has been run, its
resistance to change and insatiable need to directly influence our SFSS. It
is clear that the main reason why the CFS is now fighting to keep the SFSS
as local 23 is because of the fact that it will lose 430, 000. Well, it is
too late, and we must VOTE NO. We must send a clear message to the CFS and
to the rest of the student unions in Canada that we have a choice, and the
choice is no to take pack our campus, keep our money, and to serve our
students. And yes, we can if we go out and vote. Yes we can get ride of
the CFS from our campus. YES WE CAN, YES WE CAN, YES WE CAN.
In Solidity,
Clement Abas Apaak
