Issue of the Day: Policy Motions

Genocide Awareness Project (GAP)and Pro-Choice students at UBC, March 2005. (photo by Gina)

Consider the following:

• McGill University banned Blood Services from blood drives in their building because they ban men who’ve had sex with men from donating.
• Carleton passed a policy preventing anti-abortion groups from getting funding. (link)
• SFU’s student society has an activist stance regarding the genocide in Darfur.
• Concordia explodes with rage every time its student council mentions anything related to the Middle East.
• UBC’s AMS has, in recent history, debated policy motions on Darfur, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Iraq, and even held a (phony) referendum on the legalization of marijuana.

So today’s question: Should the AMS concern itself with issues that don’t directly affect students? Those primarily outside the University sphere?

Those who support such motions tend to argue the following:

• Student groups have the ability and resources to drive social change, and somebody has to push the agenda. “We have to act.”
• It encourages social debate, and the University as a site of social resistance.
• The policies are good.

But when they come up, there is a vocal contingent who tend to say things including:

• Nobody cares what a student society says; our voice is meaningless.
• It’s potentially divisive.
• We should stick to the business of running a student union.

It’s an age-old dilemma. Sometimes it’s purely in the abstract, but sometimes it has bearings on policy. For instance, what bearing would an official AMS policy on abortion have on anti-abortion demonstrations by AMS clubs? If the AMS has, say, an pro-abortion policy, should, or can, it constitute an anti-abortion club? Or should we even be considering these questions in the first place?