Students’ Society Vice-President External Max Silverman is looking to make some noise on campus with his latest initiative, the SSMU Flying Squad. The group, which is still in its early stages of planning, plans to make it easier to mobilize students for issues that require support. According to Silverman, this may range from campus protests to educating the student body on a number of issues to be decided at a later date.
Drawing from his experience during the 2005 student strike, Silverman is proposing the squad be modelled on the strike unions in order to facilitate the mobilization of SSMU in a more timely manner. The new initiative had a table at Activities Night, where those supporting the idea of a mobilization committee asked students to attend their first meeting the following week.
Roughly thirty students attended the meeting late Wednesday evening in the Shatner building. Silverman took a passive role in the first meeting and said he was eager to listen to others.
“I don’t want it to be Max Silverman’s Flying Squad,” he said.
Attendees attempted to flesh out the club’s mandate and voiced their opinions of how the Flying Squad should be structured, what positions should be created and how the group would operate.
Several different ideas were put forward concerning the group’s structure: becoming a loose network of activists who meet on a need basis; the creation and maintenance of a moderated student list-serv for mass emails; and the assignment of permanent publicity coordinators.
The Flying Squad faced its second challenge later in the week at SSMU Council, where it was decided that the only autonomy the Flying Squad would have is that of organization. The members of the Flying Squad would be allowed to mobilize on campaigns within the SSMU mandate which SSMU doesn’t have means to mobilize for. However, this also may mean that council has purview over the squad and can veto causes adopted by the squad.
SSMU President Aaron Donny-Clark, who chaired the council meeting, felt that councillors reacted positively.
“The issue of the Flying Squad came up during Max’s report,” he said. “There were a few questions about it from council, notably on the procedure,” he said. “It seemed to be quite well received.”
However, not all councillors were as supportive.
One SSMU councillor, who wished to remain anonymous, disagreed with Donny-Clark’s impression of events.
“I’ve been talking to a few people, and councillors are concerned about the level of autonomy, but overall think it is a good idea. We’re in favour of a mobilizing body, but these kinds of decisions on issues should be made by elected bodies.”
The councillor also added that these concerns were brought up during council, but not heavily.
“We’re going to wait and see how it goes before taking any further action,” the councillor said.
The issue of autonomy was also raised during the initial Wednesday meeting. Arts councillor Rachel Abs explained there that she was confident that SSMU would be on the same page as the Flying Squad and would not quash any of their initiatives. Silverman added that if a protest was blocked by SSMU, students can still act outside of the group and participate regardless of their affiliation.
-Additional reporting by Kate Spirgen
