Correction appended December 2, 2012.
Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) held last Wednesday its final Council meeting of the semester. 13 motions were discussed at the meeting, five of which were introduced at the consultative body General Assembly (GA) on November 19.
Council ratified motions regarding departmental democracy, opposing Plan Nord, divesting from Fossil Fuels, and on accessible education.
Another motion adopted at the meeting regarded the provisional protocol that was released by the McGill administration to campus unions on November 9. The motion would see AUS oppose the provisional protocol in its current form.
In a Commentary piece in The Daily, campus unions spoke out against the protocol, stating, “The protocol conflates mere inconvenience with violent disruption and therefore tramples on the rights of McGill community members to express all but the weakest forms of political dissent.”
Philosophy representative to AUS Agatha Slupek was one of the movers of the motion. Speaking about the motion during the meeting, Slupek claimed that the protocol “leaves much room to manipulation and the suppression of dissent on campus.”
“It is too vague,” said Slupek. “And section 2d of the Charter of Rights is the freedom of association, and if the McGill administration is judging the number of participants in a demonstration, then they are violating the freedom of association.”
A copy of the proposed protocol was released by email to staff and students on November 30 and will be brought before Senate and the Board of Governors in January following a “consultative process,” during which those who wish to comment on it will have until January 7.
The only motions that passed at the GA’s consultative body, but were not ratified at Council, were the motions regarding Canadian Involvement in Iran and regarding Accessible Education. Both motions were tabled until the January 16 meeting of Council, their first meeting in the new year.
The meeting also saw the election of Natasha Fenn as interim VP Events. Fenn will be filling the seat left vacant by Josh Greenberg, who stepped down in early November for personal reasons.
Fenn has been a member of the events planning committee for the past two years, as well as an Arts Frosh co-coordinator.
An earlier version of this article stated that the motion regarding Accessible Education passed, when it fact it was tabled until the January 16 meeting. The Daily regrets the error.