Juno News - December 16, 2019


Ryerson University student union torn apart by social justice kerfuffle


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

147.45567

Word count

1,020

Sentence count

42

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ryerson s Student Union President Vanessa Henry is facing impeachment, and one of her own has resigned over an incident involving a non-indigenous student singing the song "Colours of the Wind" from the Disney film Pocahontas.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, everyone. I found a very interesting story this week. It was originally reported in Ryerson
00:00:09.760 University's student newspaper, The Eye Opener. As of this past week, four Ryerson University
00:00:15.600 Student Union executives were facing impeachment, and one executive resigned over an incident where
00:00:21.920 a non-Indigenous student sang the song Colors of the Wind from the film Pocahontas. Can you paint with 0.99
00:00:30.320 all the colors of the wind? Can you paint with all the colors of the wind? The RSU Vice President Equity,
00:00:43.360 Vice President Education, and Vice President Operations were facing impeachment this past week
00:00:49.360 after being accused of breaking student union bylaws. Specifically, they were accused of not
00:00:55.360 working 40 hours a week as per their job descriptions. But the case of the president, Vanessa Henry, 0.96
00:01:01.840 it's a little more interesting. She is facing impeachment because the Vice President Marketing, 0.99
00:01:07.200 Victoria Anderson Gardner, accused her of creating a hostile space for students. Anderson Gardner cited 0.94
00:01:14.240 one recent event as the main reason behind her motivation for introducing a motion for notice
00:01:19.520 of impeachment. At an on-campus brunch event, a non-Indigenous student sang the song Colors of
00:01:26.480 the Wind from the Disney film Pocahontas. And apparently, according to Anderson Gardner, the VP Marketing,
00:01:33.360 Indigenous students at the brunch were very upset by this song performance. Then our friends at the RSU
00:01:40.320 released a statement addressing the Colors of the Wind Pocahontas incident, but some of the executive
00:01:47.920 members agreed with what the statement said and some didn't, so the statement was deleted. Then just
00:01:53.840 this past week, the Vice President Equity, one of the ones who was facing impeachment, resigned, saying
00:02:00.080 that the Ryerson Student Union environment was unhealthy and damaging. That same day, Victoria Anderson
00:02:07.280 Gardner, the VP Marketing, resigned, and she released a whole statement which said, in part,
00:02:13.680 I am stepping down as the VP of Marketing of the Ryerson Student Union on my own accord. As some people
00:02:20.160 are aware, I was admitted into the Center of Addiction and Mental Health due to the high stresses I have
00:02:24.880 been experiencing since starting my term at the RSU. The work environment and recent events triggered my PTSD,
00:02:32.160 along with the extreme traumas I have experienced in my life. It was recommended by my psychiatrist that
00:02:37.680 I leave Toronto and take a break from everything for my own well-being. How my trauma has been dealt
00:02:43.360 from the board, who considers themselves as my employers, has been re-traumatizing. This is something
00:02:49.520 I personally experienced from the President herself in regards to me speaking out on a statement she
00:02:54.640 released that I identified as anti-Indigenous, accusing me of being anti-Black. Okay, so I guess
00:03:00.720 we have a hint here as to what happened with the Colors of the Wind incident and the RSU releasing a
00:03:06.480 statement that some of the executives agreed with and others didn't. Apparently, it looks like the VP
00:03:12.560 Marketing here thought that the statement that they released was anti-Indigenous, and she told the
00:03:17.840 President that, but then the President told her that she's being anti-Black because the President is Black. 0.99
00:03:24.560 But ultimately, in a board meeting held this week, the motion to impeach the VP Education did not pass,
00:03:30.720 the motion to impeach the VP Operations was put off until the spring semester,
00:03:34.880 and the motion to impeach the President will be discussed at an upcoming board meeting.
00:03:39.600 There were other matters discussed at that board meeting as well, such as allegations of workplace
00:03:44.320 harassment and one of the elected executives being underqualified for his position and people asking why
00:03:51.280 he applied for the job if he didn't know how to draft financial reports and that kind of thing.
00:03:55.840 So out of the six executives, only one is seemingly free of conflict and controversy. So this story,
00:04:03.360 why bring it up? Well, it shows that these social justice pet issues like a non-Indigenous person's 1.00
00:04:09.760 performance of Colors of the Wind actually has the power to tear people apart and cause an entire
00:04:15.840 workplace breakdown. And moreover, this story is not unique in the sense of badly managed student
00:04:23.120 unions. And remember, student unions get so much money from students, they get millions. And to do
00:04:28.400 what? Well, whatever it is that these Ryerson executives are doing, apparently. And the Ryerson
00:04:34.320 Student Union in 2017-18, so that academic year, they collected $2.25 million in student fees.
00:04:43.600 The funny thing is, this was the second scandal this year for the RSU. So in February 2019, the previous
00:04:50.720 President, Ram Ganesh, was impeached for alleged overspending and financial mismanagement.
00:04:58.160 Reportedly, a credit card statement from the Student Union credit card back then said that hundreds of
00:05:04.240 dollars of what are student fees were spent at a shisha lounge and LCBO liquor stores and a bar,
00:05:12.240 among other places. And this behavior is not limited to Ryerson either. In 2015, the University of
00:05:18.800 Toronto Student Union Executive Director, Sandy Hudson, allegedly engaged in civil fraud by paying herself a
00:05:27.120 $277,508 severance package. That was settled out of court. In 2018, over at the University of Ottawa,
00:05:37.680 the President of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa, his name was Rizki Rashik,
00:05:43.120 he was reported to the Ottawa Police Services for scam and identity theft because he used student fees to buy
00:05:50.880 $950 glasses. He spent $609 at Louis Vuitton, $498 at J'aime Coiffure, a high-end hair salon,
00:06:01.680 and $338 at Audi Auto Repair. Rashik forged a signature of one of the union's vice presidents in
00:06:10.080 order to open a new bank account as well. Rashik was cleared of criminal charges but,
00:06:15.360 of course, he was forced to resign. Ideally, student unions should be working for students' rights,
00:06:20.960 but it seems like a lot of people running these unions and the people who are attracted to them,
00:06:25.920 they're unaccountable with student money, they mismanage student money, they don't really do
00:06:30.960 anything to earn their salaries other than maybe throw a couple of social justice events every year to
00:06:36.560 boost student engagement and therefore justify their salary and job. The question then becomes,
00:06:42.800 are these student unions really necessary?