The Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) of McGill University gathered for its first council meeting of the Fall 2024 semester on Sept. 4. Despite continued calls from Secretary-General Satish Kumar Tumulu for attendees to recruit other voting members to join the meeting, only 26 councillors were in attendance. The meeting marked another instance of the council failing to meet quorum—33 voting members, or roughly one per cent of the PGSS’ membership. As a result, attendees could not vote on the motions discussed. 

In an effort to meet quorum going forward, the PGSS will be enforcing the Society Activities Manual’s (SAM) rule which requires councillors to attend at least three council meetings in order to keep their seat. 

Next, Tumulu turned the conversation towards the legal dispute surrounding PGSS’ statements and motions in support of Palestine. This includes their statement following the December 2023 council meeting, as well as three motions that passed at the February 2024 Annual General Meeting: Motion 7.1,  Motion 7.2, and Motion 7.3, which aims to “support and encourage [Post-Graduate Student Associations] to address the ongoing genocide in Gaza and investigate their ties to settler-colonial violence and [the] genocide against the Palestinian people.” 

As per their Memoranda of Understanding (MOU), PGSS met with McGill to discuss the approved motions. The council then concluded that they would implement Motion 7.1 as is, that they would reject Motion 7.2, and that they would implement Motion 7.3 with modifications from McGill. 

However, on June 20, McGill and the PGSS received a legal notice from an anonymous member of the society who asked both parties to abide by an interlocutory injunction against motions 7.1, 7.3, and the council’s December 2023 statement. The notice asserted that the motions contradicted the PGSS’ governing documents. Tumulu explained the chronology of events.

“After we received the legal notice and [attended the] first hearing, […] McGill also said [their] legal consultation thinks that we are breaching the MOU, but before that […] we never received [an] official email saying we’re breaching [the] MOU,” the Secretary-General said in the meeting. “So [on] the day of the first hearing, it was decided that PGSS would go [into] discussion with McGill and come to a neutral point, if possible.” 

In the intervening months, the executives requested that McGill provide amended versions of the Motions. Notably, the McGill administration revised Motions 7.1, 7.3, and the December 2023 statements to exclude all mentions of the words “Palestine,” “Israel,” “Gaza,” and “genocide.”

“The language would have to depart from a focus on Palestine and solidarity with a particular people and instead focus on general commitments that allow PGSS to uphold its commitments to all of its members,” explains a comment left by a McGill administrator on the amended version of Motion 7.1.

Though they were unable to vote on whether to approve these modifications, attendees like Brenagh Rapoport of the Organization of Urban Planning Students (OUPS) expressed their gratitude that PGSS was looking to their members for consultation before amending the motions. 

“I don’t think that anyone would say that we should hold a line that would actually threaten PGSS’ ability to continue representing our students and exist as the official representative body. But I am glad to hear that there is an interest on the part of PGSS executives to push back in some way against McGill,” Rapoport said. “Clearly it’s something that our student body cares a lot about, and it’s really important, and we can’t let McGill just completely erase it.” 

Moment of the meeting: Kumar Tumulu strongly encouraged members to apply to the Appointments Board Lottery to fill several notable vacancies, particularly the PGSS’ two seats for graduate students and one for a postdoctoral scholar in the McGill Senate as well as a seat on the Council of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (CGPS). 

Soundbite: “These motions were decided through democratic processes. If we let McGill just change motions whenever they want […], we will never hear the end of it.” – Ambre Lambert, Member Services Officer