On Nov. 21, over 80,000 Cégep, college, and university students across Montreal walked out of their classrooms to call out their institutions’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine. At McGill, students walked out of classes at 1 p.m., organized by Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR) at McGill in collaboration with Law Students For Palestine at McGill, Divest McGill, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) McGill, Profs4Palestine, and the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill. Protestors gathered outside of the University Centre before heading to Concordia University. There, groups from McGill, Concordia, and other adjacent Montreal institutions and communities filed into the Henry F. Hall Building, going from one floor to the next. Afterward, the protest once again filled the streets of downtown Montreal before dispersing at around 3:45 p.m.
The protest began in front of the University Centre, which houses the offices of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU). In a statement to The Tribune, a representative from SPHR at McGill who wished to remain anonymous explained that along with walking out of campuses in support of Palestine, the McGill contingent was also walking out for what they believed to be inaction from SSMU.
SPHR submitted a motion through SSMU channels for the entire body to join departmental strikes across McGill in support of Palestine, which would have brought together roughly 24,000 students. The SSMU-wide Strike General Assembly (GA) would have required a 500-person quorum. While 12 GAs were hosted across various departments in the days leading up to Nov. 21, the facilitation of a SSMU-wide strike GA was denied.
“They deflected to obscure legal ‘constraints’ which they had extrapolated so ridiculously and conveniently as to not allow the SSMU to make any public statement in relation to Palestine. After confronting them for over two weeks, we learned that this pretense was clearly a ridiculous and misconstrued interpretation of their legal limitations regarding the injunction,” the SPHR representative wrote.
In a statement to The Tribune, SSMU President Dymetri Taylor shared that the SSMU Steering Committee denied SPHR’s first motion for a strike GA because it had actionables taken verbatim from the Policy Against Genocide in Palestine (PAGIP), which a present court injunction has forbidden SSMU from enacting in any part.
“We communicated as much that, due to the ongoing case and injunction against the SSMU, we cannot do anything that the Courts would perceive as us enacting the [PAGIP]. If we did, we would be in contempt of the Court, leading to further sanctions against the SSMU, potential fines, or worse,” Taylor wrote.
Taylor also shared that SPHR then worked on another draft of the strike motion, which called for a strike general assembly and a referendum to vote on the strike scheduled for Nov. 28-29.
“This time, it was not as clear as to whether or not we would be in violation of the injunction, thus, we sent it to our Legal Counsel. Another issue before that, however, is the fact that more than 50% of the students who signed the petition were from a single Faculty, which is not permissible under our internal regulations,” Taylor wrote. “We have been waiting for a legal opinion since November 14th, and they take time to procure.”
However, the SPHR representative expressed frustration toward SSMU for its “colossal failures” in representing the student body over the past year.
“We see a clear pattern of this within the SSMU where last year they failed to contest the injunction on the historic PAGIP. This year, when we’ve seen them revoke SPHR’s status [as a] club […], fail to adequately address the current condition on campus, and fail to adequately take a stand in solidarity with the student body as they’ve been disciplined, arrested and criminalized,” they wrote. “And now finally, we see their inaction in the face of this strike [….] We have honestly let the SSMU get away with not being a representative force for way too long.”
A representative from IJV McGill who wished to remain anonymous encouraged students to join in on the national protest for Palestine.
“It’s been over a year of genocide. It’s been over 76 years of occupation. There are chances for you to get involved. There [is] rally after rally. Make your voice heard,” they said in an interview with The Tribune. “I understand that it’s scary on campus right now with our administration placing literal surveillance on us. But you have a voice, and you can use that.”
