Fed up with the university’s “undemocratic practices” and the Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) internal legal dispute, a group of students, workers and faculty members have created their own assembly.
The Carleton University General Assembly aims to involve undergraduate and graduate students, as well as teaching assistants, faculty members and workers in an effort to be better represented on campus.
Unlike CUSA, the general assembly is without a formal leader. The group practices a form of direct democracy in which all members of the assembly have an equal voice, said organizer Christian Belisle, a third-year human rights and film student.
“The whole point of a general assembly is to give everyone an equal vote,” said Belisle, who is also a CUSA arts and social sciences councillor-elect.
While all the meetings thus far have been strictly organizational, Belisle said the assembly hopes to bring together a diverse group of Carleton students, workers and faculty for an event March 26. The event was planned in anticipation of a cancelled March 27 Board of Governors meeting.
The Board of Governors is one of the “undemocratic structures” that Belisle said the general assembly is targeting.
“When you have only four student representatives on a governing board of 32 [members], it doesn’t allow for full transparency,” he said. “The university is comprised mostly of undergraduate and graduate students, and then a large number of staff and faculty. Logically, what should follow is this group should have a larger voice, outside of community members.”
While the first in-person, non-organizational meeting has yet to occur, the general assembly maintains a Facebook group with more than 90 members. Social media has been essential in getting the word out to the Carleton community about the existence of the general assembly, according to fellow organizer Chris Hurl, a PhD candidate.
“We’re getting the word out through different groups and organizations as well. We’ve presented motions to CUPE 4600 (representing TAs and contract instructors) and the [Graduate Students’ Association] to support the general assembly, and both were passed unanimously,” he said.
The support of a large number of diverse groups on campus would be integral to the success of the general assembly, Hurl said.
“Look at the way general assemblies have been used in the student movement in Quebec. They get people involved at all levels of the university, and across every department,” he said. “It might seem logistically difficult, but they managed to get 200,000 people on the streets for a protest.”
– Read The Charlatan’s take on this new development here.
