Updated: PSSA will honour strike mandate

Of the six student associations and organizations who held a General Assembly last week to vote on a five day extendable strike against the Quebec government’s proposed tuition hikes, the Political Science Student Association has had the most confusion regarding a strike mandate. 

At this point, the PSSA will technically be on strike, but its executive along with the CSU recommend that students go to their classes until another GA takes place. 

At Thursday's vote, 59 members of the PSSA voted in favour of a strike with 14 opposed and one abstention. Immediately following the meeting, complaints and contestations were made towards the PSSA executive demanding that the vote be annulled since it represented only a small fraction of the 1600 students in the department. The Arts and Science Federation of Associations stipulates that each member association have a quorum of 2.5% or 15 people to enforce binding decisions in a GA. The PSSA achieved quorum with 74 students in attendance.

Early Monday morning, Concordia Student Union President Lex Gill, who is at the forefront of the pro-strike movement at Concordia, proposed on the PSSA Facebook group that the strike be delayed until a GA is held to discuss a strike. “I think it is inappropriate to ask people not to go to class with this amount of confusion,” said Gill. “I support the strike but I think we need to have an information meeting that all political science students receive notice by email for before going forward.”

On Tuesday morning, PSSA President Pier-Luc Therrien sent an email to its members announcing the cancellation of the strike until further notice.

At approximately 2:00pm, PSSA VP Internal Eric Moses Gashirabake denounced Therrien’s email. He said, “The PSSA Executive Team has no power to unilaterally void that result.” Gashirabake also suggested that Political Science students honour the vote and go on strike tomorrow as planned.

Shortly after Gashirabake denounced Therrien's announcement, political science student and pro-strike activist Nadim Kobeissi created a petition online to impeach the PSSA president for “illegally” cancelling the strike. The petition also states that Therrien has a conflict of interest because he does not support the strikes.

By about 9:00pm, Therrien retracted his statement. He said that he was mistaken to believe that he had the power to cancel a binding GA motion.

A meeting has been organized for 8:00am Wednesday in the LB Atrium to discuss how to proceed. Students are invited to attend. 

In other strike news, Tuesday saw the Graduate Students Association, Urban Planning Association, and Sociology and Anthropology Student Union all vote to join the strike as well.

Photo by Joel Balsam on Thursday Mach 1, 2012 at PSSA GA.