The SRA meeting on Sunday was a joke. There is no other word for it. When the topic of the firing of the Silhouette Executive Editor came to the floor, the MSU Executive fought to stop the discussion. The Vice-President Finance backed by the Executive Board immediately challenged the Speaker of the MSU on the grounds that the SRA should not be discussing any decision of the Board of Directors. The challenged lasted about 30 minutes and in the end, the Speaker’s ruling was upheld. The SRA did have the right to discuss the actions of the Board of Directors much to the anger of the BoD and the Executive Board. Immediately, Andrea Dowell called for a vote of non-confidence in the MSU Speaker. Immediately, Kyle Park moved for a secret ballot. Waqas Kayani countered with a motion to move a roll-call vote. I spoke in favour of the roll call vote as students would finally find out where there members stole on the issue. Kasmani and Park both spoke strongly against it. They felt that it was a bully tactic on the part of students. They are correct that it was students “bullying” the SRA to actually let us know how they are representing us.
The non-confidence vote failed as members of the Executive Board and BoD both abstained or voted confidence. The only two that voted non-confidence were Kasmani and Mitchell (Drew).
Finally, the discussion on the Silhouette situation was to begin. At this point, Dowell moved to adjourn. They had the majority and the meeting ended in defiance of students present.
After the meeting, numerous members of the EB and BoD threatened me if I blogged on the issue. The MSU has been fighting hard to have me expelled from McMaster and I can assume this is the consequences they speak of for my blog.