In its Dec. 4 issue, The Tribune published a review of the Post-Graduate Student Society (PGSS) executives The Editorial Board reported on Secretary-General Satish Kumar Tumulu’s lack of initiative (“he has yet to take concrete steps to improve channels for executive and student communications”), but followed it with an uncritical quote from Tumulu about lack of initiative from students to voice opinions about divestment, the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL), or Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM).
Advocacy on these topics has been energetic, consistent, and well-documented. This fall, a motion was submitted to the PGSS’ General Meeting calling for the PGSS to share the Expression of Concern about Israeli companies among all its members. The motion presented on the agenda was changed without the consent of the mover to insert defense of McGill and remove ‘Palestine’ from the title. At the General Meeting, an amendment was made to revert the motion back to its original form and the motion was approved. But after this approval, Tumulu said in an email that executives will not enact the motion. In the same email, he redefined the role of a General Meeting, saying it should only concern itself with financial statements, governing documents, appointments, and removals. This contradicts the spirit of a General Meeting, and also the description on PGSS’s own website, which states, “[t]he General Meeting is the way for members to directly participate in the decision making processes for the society that represents graduate students […] you can also submit agenda items on topics that YOU think are important”.
Meanwhile, the approach PGSS has taken towards AGSEM has been antagonistic. The PGSS provided AGSEM with no support during the strike and refused to let AGSEM put up posters in Thomson House. A PGSS member told me they were expelled from a funding working group after being accused of sharing financial information with AGSEM, without being told what information was supposedly shared.
It does not take in-depth research to reveal the struggles for democracy at PGSS during Tumulu’s term, and I wish the students who have been fighting to be heard at PGSS were acknowledged in the Tribune’s reporting. The Tribune Editorial Board should welcome graduate students to its team, and pay attention to voices that are marginalized by the PGSS’s institutional power.
