The World of Sam Reynolds

Co-written by Sam Reynolds & Jonathon Van Maren

SFPIRG’s official description as found on their website:

What is SFPIRG?

The Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group is a student funded and directed resource centre at SFU. We support environmental and social change through research, education and action. SFPIRG is always looking for on-campus and off-campus volunteers! Join an Action Group, have input in the library, or just hang out.

The Simon Fraser Public Interest Group has been active at Simon Fraser University since 1981. They define themselves, as noted above, as an advocacy (although they use the word “support”) group for environmental and social change. According to their website, they offer such valuable services as a student lounge (ironically situated directly adjacent to the student rotunda, a spacious student lounge area), a bike tool coop for repairing bikes, a compost drop-off bin, distribution of Burnaby trail maps (we’re extremely curious as to how many people go to a little-known university social justice group for tourist information), the procuring of information for prison inmates (who, apparently, do not get the same access to information as the rest of us. Who would have thought?) and workshop as well as events. The resource they tout  as being most valuable to the student community at large is the library of books and DVD’s they offer (the Social Justice Lending Library). Here are a few recent DVD additions to their library, as published on their website: Battle for the Trees, An Inconvenient Truth, Tar Sands: Canada for Sale, The Refugees of the Blue Planet (environmental refugees), Who Killed the Electric Car: A Lack of Consumer Confidence…or Conspiracy?, and Butch Women and Public Bathrooms. We were excited to learn SFPIRG state in their Annual Report that they will “continue to prioritize the purchasing of new DVD’s to build our collection.”

In order to administer this highly valuable (and apparently time consuming) resource to students, the SFPIRG, which has an appointed—not elected–board of only seven members and levies student fees in order to fund their activities, spent $127,902 on salaries and benefits and $130,233 in 2009, in addition to $ 11,683 in 2008 and $ 19,735 in 2009 on “Office and Administration”. Due to the enormous amount of money the SFPIRG receives from SFU students (the majority of whom are not even aware they pay money each semester for optional bike tools, a compost pile, and the Social Justice Lending Library), they are currently running, according to their Statement of Operation and Net Assets, a surplus of $176,090. Keep in mind that many SFU programs are currently suffering financially in the current economic climate, and Department Student Unions, which thousands of students are currently involved in, get only $600 each semester in funding. They received $196,802 in student fees in 2009, $149,965 of which they spent on “Salaries and Benefits” and “Office and Administration”, which leaves a grand total of $46,387 to spend on the resources for students—of course, after subtracting the $11,313 they donate to social justice organizations completely unaffiliated with SFU, which leaves us with $35,524.

It is important to note here that SFPIRG attached a statement to their financial records stating that “We have not performed an audit or a review engagement in respect of these financial statements and, accordingly, we express no assurance thereon. Readers are cautioned that these statements may not be appropriate for their purposes.” SFPIRG states that this (along with an appointed as opposed to elected board of directors) is commonplace for “non-profit organizations”, apparently forgetting that the vast majority of non-profit organizations secure their funds through donation, not through student levies. SFPIRG receives nearly $200,000 dollars each year from students, while spending less than a quarter of that on the interests of SFU students—even less if you consider the number of students who actually use SFPIRG. Interesting for a group that claims to be “student-based”; rather, in their Annual Report for 2008-2009 they state that one of their key values is “self-representation and self-determination.” How accurate: they represent themselves and are determined to reward themselves.” Incidentally, at the 2010 Annual General Meeting the chair could not give a ballpark number of students that actually use their organization.

According to the British Columbia Societies Act, every society must have an Annual General Meeting (AGM) once a year. At this meeting the membership of the society is afforded the opportunity to voice their concerns about the group, approve the group’s budget, and choose the group’s board of directors. Normally this is an exercise in democracy guided by the British Columbia Societies Act and Robert’s Rules of Order (the set of laws which nearly every meeting is run upon).

When the SFPIRG held their AGM, it was expected that they would operate this meeting within the guidelines of Robert’s Rules – after all their name implies that they work for the public interest. However, the undemocratic spectacle that occurred the afternoon of February 10^th proved otherwise.

The SFPIRG began advertising their AGM in early February. They placed around campus a number of plain blue sheets promoting this event. These nondescript sheets attracted little attention. A week after their advertising campaign began, the confirmed guest count on their Facebook event was only at 14. This was less than the quorum that their bylaws required. Thus, they began to rebrand the event as “Tar Sands Exposed”, highlighting the guest speaker they had scheduled for the end of the event:  Clayton Thomas Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network.

One could speculate that the SFPIRG had a nefarious goal in mind. According to their bylaws, if they do not make quorum at the AGM they must only conduct the “presentation and consideration of financial statements” and the “presentation and consideration of the report of the board on the activities of the preceding year”. Essentially, they would avoid the responsibilities of meeting their membership and justifying their self-existence. The SFPIRG’s directors expected to move through their meeting without opposition, without the student body holding them to account.

Sam Reynolds and Robert Lutener have their disagreements. In no way are they ideologically married, yet both men share a common belief: they both strongly oppose the SFPIRG’s undemocratic and blatantly dishonest modus operandi. Thus, they began formulating plans to orchestrate action against the group. They worked hard to solicit support from like minded people, such as Jonathon Van Maren among others weeks before the event took place, organizing on Facebook. At their February 10^th AGM the SFPIRG was met with a surprise.

After the sign in and presentation of the Agenda, the SFPIRG directors presented their Annual Budget Report. While many of the SFPIRG supporters in the crowd accepted this without much critical thought, Alysia MacGrotty, Simon Fraser Student Society External Relations Officer, had issues with how money was spent in the group’s budget. Of particular interest to MacGrotty were the salaries and benefits paid out to staff, and the consultant fees which jumped from $255 in 2008 to $8,500 in 2009. Lutener also echoed these concerns. The chair, an SFPIRG staff member, was not impressed. She quickly called a vote to the matter, which passed.

Conflict intensified when amendments to the SFPIRG’s bylaws were brought to debate. The proposed bylaws sought to increase the number of associate, non student, members on the board of directors and on the society. Most of the students in the crowd who came to voice their opposition to the undemocratic and dishonest practices of the SFPIRG strongly against any such amendments; John Morrison III, humour editor at The Peak, passionately voiced his concerns that democracy was not being upheld and dishonesty was at play. The students tried to voice their discontent with the amendments, though they were verbally accosted by SFPIRG supporters in the crowd and the chair herself.

It was clear to many in the crowd that the chair was neither experienced in the running an AGM, nor partial. Joe Zelezny, SFSS treasurer, repeatedly called points of order and attempted to correct the chair when she ignored Robert’s Rules of Order. Ada Nadison, President of the SFSS, was also present and voiced her concerns about the unorthodox practices by the chair.

James Plett, a student in the crowd, was finally fed up with the blatant disregard for the democratic process that was displayed and said “Come on people, we live in fucking Canada”. Clayton Thomas Muller (presenter involved member of the SFU First Nations on Campus) approached Plett and threatened that he would call security.

The first bylaw amendment failed due to the opposition of disgruntled (and democracy loving) students. As a result, the chair attempted to pass the entire combined agenda in omnibus (fearing this filibuster would reoccur), stating that this was in the “interests of everybody’s time”. This was met by protest by the students present, and therefore deserted by the SFPRIG staff members.

Originally, the AGM business was scheduled to only last an hour. An SFPIRG supporter put forward a motion to table the meeting temporarily to allow the keynote speakers to present their seminar on the apparent evils of Alberta’s tarsands (which was billed as the highlight of the afternoon). This motion was quickly passed, and the meeting was temporarily paused to allow the presenters to speak, with the SFPIRG members hoping that the fee-paying disrupters would have dispersed by the time the presenters had finished.

The concerned students filed outside to wait for the AGM to resume. Many left to get refreshments or use the washrooms.Sam Reynolds and Eric Onderwater remained out in the hallway, waiting for the meeting to resume.

While the meeting was adjourned, SFPIRG supporters had called security, apparently threatened by the dissenters in the crowd. Three security guards approached Reynolds and Onderwater and asked them whom they represented, and what their intentions were.

Reynolds responded that they represented nobody but themselves, and their intentions were to merely voice their concerns. The security guard seemed satisfied with the answer and left. Unknown to Reynolds, Onderwater, and the concerned students, campus security had called the police to help them respond to call. The Olympic torch was due to arrive on campus the next morning, and the Olympics kicked off in less than 72 hours – perhaps security thought this was an anti-Olympics event in the works (though SFPIRG organizers were distributing defamatory anti-Olympic pamphlets).

In response to the call, one uniformed RCMP officer arrived accompanied by two plain clothes Vancouver Police Department officers. It was curious why two VPD officers came out, as the SFU campus is in Burnaby, which is RCMP territory. The officers chatted to campus security and left a few moments afterwards, feeling that this event was not worth their time or effort. When Reynolds inquired why the VPD were on scene, one of the campus security officers rudely responded “We’ll call whomever we want”. The AGM was called back to order and people filed back into the room. One of the security guards said that if anyone was going to act out they would get their student number and put a misconduct charge on their file.

The AGM was promptly adjourned because it lacked quorum, and SFPIRG directors were informed that an SFPIRG related motion was being proposed at the SFSS meeting which was currently underway.

As the SFPIRG AGM reconvened under the watchful eye of RCMP, VPD and SFU security, the Simon Fraser Student Federation (an elected body, for a refreshing change) convened at 6:30. Jonathon Van Maren presented a motion on behalf of the disgruntled students at the meeting to hold a referendum putting forth the following question to the student body:

“SFPIRG has demonstrated its unaccountability by withholding access to basic information such as budget, work reports, and meeting minutes. SFPIRG has demonstrated that it is an exclusionary ideological clique which is of limited effectiveness by the minimal interest and use by the student body. Therefore, be it resolved that the SFPIRG cease collecting a student levy from the student body of SFU.”

The board of the SFSS received this motion and opened the table for discussion. The SFPIRG staff, who were at that time still conducting their AGM, were alerted by someone present at the SFSS meeting, adjourned their AGM to a later date, and began filing in to make their case. Accompanying them were those students disgruntled at the SFPIRG’s undemocratic and exclusionary nature, such as Sam Reynolds, Robert Lutener, John Morrison III, and James Plett, among others.

The SFSS meeting rapidly turned into a replay of the SFPIRG AGM, except with Robert’s Rules of Order in place and enforced. SFSS board members expressed their desire to see a petition presented by those disgruntled with the SFSS, although many board members privately expressed their support of the motion against SFPIRG. SFPIRG board members made emotional appeals to the board, noting that they had been practicing since 1981, admitting that they had no idea how to run a meeting according to Robert’s Rules of Order, and in the same breath demanding the disgruntled students give them time to organize themselves appropriately. A point presented by Van Maren noting that if, as they emphasized so strongly, they had been practicing since 1981, they should have learned to run a meeting by then (noting that both of us had been born after 1981, yet had learned how to walk, talk, and run a meeting in a shorter period of time) received only glares. SFPIRG members attempted to defend their “contributions” to the student body, and reacted emotionally whenLutener declared that “I have no problem with progressive groups carrying out their work on campus. What I have a problem with is a group being run by a troika of self-interested fops!” Plett pointed out that if SFPIRG actually followed its self-described mandate and held itself accountable to the student body that financially supported it, many of the concerns would disappear. John Morrison III refuted the claim made by SFPIRG members and one SFSS board member that this was an attack by an ideological minority on SFPIRG, first pointing out that almost every single disgruntled student present had a different ideological standpoint, and stating that since SFPIRG itself was an ideological minority group, the argument itself was irrelevant and should be presented to the student body for a vote.

An SFPIRG member, displaying impressing acting ability, decried the motion, stating dejectedly that “all we want to do is work with people and address their concerns!”, neglecting to mention that the arrival of opposition at the AGM had resulted in SFPIRG calling security. The motion received the support of SFSS board members Joe Zelenzy and Alyssia MacGrotty, along with several others, but the SFSS reached the decision that in order to hold a referendum, the students opposing the undemocratic nature of SFPIRG must present a petition of students to the board, after which the motion would be passed without vote. Several SFSS representatives, including President Ada Nadison, who, as chair of the meeting, could not vote, and offered to sign the petition.

This petition will be in circulation as of Thursday, February 11. It seeks to enlist all students who feel that the SFPIRG does not represent their values, do not provide any valuable resources or assistance to them, or who feel the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year paid to the SFPIRG could be used more productively elsewhere.

*Update February 11*

It should be noted that there were reports of  threats by several SFPIRG members directed towards dissenters during the AGM that included physical assault if an individual did not “cease speaking”. One concerned student who attended the meeting was followed to the bus stop by an SFPIRG supporter and was threatened with physical assault and promised that he would  “never got [sic] a job in B.C” because the SFPIRG supporter “knew people” and would ostensibly engage in an organized smear campaign against the student.