Counterattack

It looks like the charlie-foxtrot banning the CF from a job-fair at UVic has been broken up, at least for the time being:

Today was a victory for democracy and freedom of choice. In an overwhelming display of disapproval for the UVic Student Society board of directors' paternalistic and elitist attitude toward the student body, we packed over 100 students into the upper lounge of the Student Union Building (SUB) for the UVSS meeting. Many spoke of their frustration over the motion passed earlier this month, students abhorred by the decision of the board to give in to the demands of a small faction of the student body who wished to "send a message to the military" by banning them from recruiting in our SUB and condemning our men and women in uniform as "war criminals" on nothing but allegation.

At the beginning of tonight's meeting, a motion was added to the agenda to put the matter of the ban to a student body-wide referendum at the annual general meeting, a movement which was passed. What ensued was more than 2 hours of speeches from students, both for and against overturning the motion from earlier this month to ban the Canadian Forces, though admittedly, we outnumbered the UVic Students Against War (SAW) group by an extremely wide margin.

The SAW crowd claimed that they were not suppressing freedom of speech or freedom of choice. They brought forth their usual tirades about "imperialism", "militarism of Canadian society", "allegations of torture", etc, which they felt justified them in campaigning to the board on September 10th, even without a representative of the military present to defend the CF. One anti-war activist stood up and accused us of attempting to intimidate them by organizing and rallying our numbers to the meeting, saying that in fact it was US who were in the minority. I sincerely doubt that. They had just as much warning about the meeting as we did, organized appropriately, and brought out everyone who supported their argument. It just so happened we did the same thing and brought nearly ten times their numbers. One of them even played the race card, denouncing our side as "mostly white" privileged and upper-class students. When one member of our side, a student-soldier who had served seven months in Afghanistan, spoke of the merits of the Canadian Forces' work in that country as well as emergency responses in crises at home, the minute SAW crowd interrupted with cries of "whatever!" "bullshit!" and "shut up!"

The motion to overturn the ban until the vote at the AGM was carried easily. Most of the board members who voted in favour of the ban abstained, while the remaining directors unanimously voted to overturn it.

Now they just have to make sure the vote at the AGM goes the right way. But given what Graham Noyes and his friends at UVic have been able to accomplish so far, I figure the chances are good.

Bravo Zulu!