On Tuesday Feb. 14, the SSMU Judicial Board (J-Board) invalidated QPIRG’s fall referendum question. The J-Board ruled the question to be unconstitutional because it dealt with two separate questions, asking students to simultaneously support QPIRG’s continued existence, and a change to make the organization’s fees opt-outable only in person.
In an email to the Tribune, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson said that he accepts the J-Board ruling as consistent with the administration’s view of the fall referendum. He suggested that the J-Board ruling may signal the end of negotiations with QPIRG.
“As I understand it, the J-Board’s decision means, in effect, that there are now no valid referendum results, so that leaves us with nothing to discuss [with QPIRG],” he said.
Kira Page, McGill alumnus and member of the QPIRG board, said that negotiations with the administration continued via email before reading week, with no indication that the administration had been affected by the J-Board ruling. According to Page, QPIRG did not submit a question for the winter referendum.
“By the time the J-Board decision came out, we would have had to write a referendum question, have it approved by Morton Mendelson and Elections McGill, and collect 700 signatures in two days, so that was not actually doable at that point,” Page said. “It wasn’t an option we were able to go forward with. But I think the reason we weren’t doing that in the first place was that we stand by the referendum results from last semester.”
Regarding the J-Board results, Page said that QPIRG is “dismayed and disturbed” by the ruling. The group has not yet released an official public response to the ruling.
Petitioners Zach Newburgh and Brendan Steven stated in a press release that they are “satisfied” with the results of the J-Board hearing. However, the decision cannot be finalized until it is ratified by SSMU’s Board of Directors (BoD). In their press release, Newburgh and Steven call on the board to affirm the J-Board’s decision.
“The integrity of the SSMU’s referendum process demands [the decision’s ratification],” they said. “The SSMU cannot set a precedent, which allows referendum questions to stand when they do not provide members of the SSMU with a clear choice when voting.”
According to SSMU President Maggie Knight, the BoD will debate the ruling during their Mar. 1 meeting, and the decision will be ratified unless 4/5 of the directors vote against it.
The J-Board, however, did not fully support Newburgh and Steven in all aspects of their petition. The decision rejected the second part of the petition, which questioned the impartiality of Elections SSMU chief electoral officer Rebeca Tacoma’s actions throughout the fall referendum period.
“Where an administrator with a level of expertise is making a decision within his or her jurisdiction, the decision must be given a high level of deference,” the J-Board’s final judgment read. “It is unrealistic to assume that a CEO, a student, with the help of a few staff members, can be everywhere at once … [to judge her based on this assumption] would be impractical and unfair.”
Tacoma said she had mixed feelings about the J-Board’s decision. While she was relieved that the J-Board supported her decisions throughout the fall referendum period, she acknowledged disappointment that QPIRG’s referendum question was ruled unconstitutional.
“It’s been a very long process, and although it was not the most pleasant process for me personally to go through, I think [the case] was important for SSMU because now we’re realizing a lot of flaws in the system that we didn’t realize [were there], because this kind of case has never really happened before,” she said.
Tacoma listed the extension of the case beyond the fall semester and the temporary suspension of the J-Board’s activities in January as problems arising throughout the case that have caused SSMU to look more closely at the system. However, Tacoma doesn’t feel that the results of the case will have much effect on the upcoming referendum period.
“The ruling really only creates a precedent for questions where there might be two issues involved, and that’s not really common,” she said.
SSMU President Maggie Knight said that the case has been a learning process for everyone involved.
“This case has presented many challenges in terms of the current Judicial Board system and highlighted the challenges that I came into office intending to fix but which I had not been able to change before this petition started proceedings,” she said. “It’s a controversial issue that touches many people deeply and evokes a lot of emotions.”
