Queen’s University students may be voting to impeach the university rector after he published a letter defending Israeli Apartheid Week.
Nick Day, the rector, is an elected official who represents undergraduate and graduate students to Queen’s administration, and is usually a student serving as an educational advocate for students.
A petition circulated by Queen’s Campus Conservatives, Queen’s Liberal Association and Queen’s Israel on Campus was presented to the Queen’s Alma Mater Society (AMS), the student association, at their meeting March 10.
The petition contained 2,200 signatures from students in favour of Day’s impeachment.
The AMS passed a motion to hold a referendum March 22 and 23. Thirty-five students voted in favour of holding the referendum, zero against, and three abstained, according to The Journal, Queen’s student newspaper.
Day wrote the letter in response to a statement made by Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, calling Israeli Apartheid Week “unethical,” according to the Canadian University Press newswire. Day said that Ignatieff’s statement “betray[ed] a deep lack of intellectual integrity.” It was published on Day’s Facebook page and the website rabble.ca.
Day accused Ignatieff of misusing his position as Liberal leader ”to insulate from criticism the perpetrator of a mass-slaughter,” Day wrote, signing the letter as rector of the university, which is the main cause for student outrage.
Jake Roth, a first-year Queen’s student who created a Facebook group calling for Day’s impeachment, told Canadian University Press that it’s nothing personal.
“I think he’s using his authority inappropriately,” Roth said.
Queen’s principal Daniel Woolf released on online statement about the university’s position on Day’s actions, saying that the university does not endorse the remarks, and said that Day’s use of his title on the letter was “inappropriate.”