Last Wednesday, the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) held its October council meeting. The meeting featured discussion about the upcoming Quebec and McGill Education Summits, and included a presentation by a representative from the Fédération Étudiante Universitaire du Québec (FEUQ).
The newly elected Parti Québécois (PQ) government is to hold a summit on education within 100 days following the Sept. 4 provincial elections. While no date has been specified, the summit is expected to occur sometime in early 2013.
As of now, the PQ government has not provided details for how the summit will be structured.
FEUQ representative Marc-André Legault explained to Council the purpose of the Quebec education summit, as well as what FEUQ is doing in preparation for the Summit. According to Legault, FEUQ wants to present the PQ with the students’ hopes for the summit.
“We have to use the momentum we have,” Legault said. “We want to do that summit, and push and advocate for [the] students of Quebec.”
FEUQ has proposed the creation of a presidential committee for the summit. It would oversee all aspects of the operation, including memorandums, recommendations, and consultations. In FEUQ’s vision, the committee would consist of four members: a student, a government representative, an administrative representative, and a faculty member.
FEUQ is seeking recommendations for its proposal from its member associations. As a member association of FEUQ, PGSS offered their recommendations through a motion at council. External Affairs Officer Errol Salamon read aloud the recommendations.
PGSS’s suggested improvements to FEUQ’s current document include the creation of five partner groups in the summit, as opposed to the original three that FEUQ proposed. The motion also reads that each of the five groups should be composed of 20 per cent from each of the following categories: undergraduates, graduate students, representatives of the university community, government representatives, and external partners.
In addition, PGSS also asked that a fifth member—a graduate student—be added to the presidential committee, and proposed additional discussion topics for the summit that address international, out-of-province, and Anglophone students.
There was also a continuation of discussion around the logistics of having an Education Summit at McGill—a motion the PGSS passed at their September Council meeting.
“This past council motion for a Committee of the Whole was only to talk more about the specifics,” Gretchen King, PGSS equity commissioner, wrote in an email to the Tribune. “I think the rest will be planned by a sub-committee headed on the PGSS-side by the External Officer.”
King has been working with Salamon, SSMU Vice-President External Robin Reid-Fraser, and PGSS Secretary General Jonathan Mooney, on creating a McGill summit.
Salamon spoke of the team’s current vision of a McGill summit, which would take place in November.
“We want to do events related to the summit … one or two days per week in January,” Salamon said. “We would keep this as open as possible.”
According to Salamon, the team would organize two types of events: large General Assembly-style events designed to pass motions and mandates, and smaller breakout sessions to facilitate discussion about issues on a smaller scale.
Though nothing has been set in stone to date, last Wednesday’s PGSS Council made some important headway in the organization of future education summits, and other events designed to bring the on-going discussion about accessible education to the McGill community.
