Democracy’s Disquiet
By Agnibho Gangopadhyay
Watching the members of the Executive of the St. Antony’s College Graduate Common Room during its May 31st meeting was like seeing a meaner and more puissant version of good old Rip Van Winkle, struggling to come to terms with major and crucial changes after a prolonged intellectual torpidity.
On that day, three GCR members proposed a motion to express solidarity with the Quebec student movement, where CLASSE, a coalition of student unions in Quebec, has been organizing sustained strikes over the past 3 months to stop a 75 percent increase in provincial tuition fees. The Quebec Government responded by passing Bill 78 on 18 May 2012, which requires that any gathering of 50 or more people submit their route to the police eight hours ahead of time and agree to any changes that may be stipulated. Failure to comply will be met with a fine of up to $5,000 for every participant, $35,000 for someone in a ‘leadership’ position, and $125,000 if a student union is deemed to be in charge. According to Javier Zuniga, Special Advisor at Amnesty International, the Bill constitutes “an affront to basic freedoms that goes far beyond what is permissible under provincial, national or international human rights laws.” In defiance of the Bill, over 400,000 people took to the streets of Montreal on 22 May 2012 in one of the largest demonstrations in Canadian history. As a result of this and other protests, the Legal Committee of CLASSE is fighting 1047 ticket and penal charges on behalf of all people “regardless of their role in the organization of demonstration or their political affiliation.“ The proposers wanted the GCR to produce a letter of solidarity with this movement, and send a donation of £750 to the CLASSE Legal Committee.
So the meeting of May 31st began. It was clear the Executive and a few others were well prepared to erase this specific motion even before it was discussed or voted on. Aspects of charity law in the U.K – which seek to preclude donations to political entities by charities or instituions that are in the process of becoming so (such as the GCR) – were read out by the chair prior to the meeting’s commencement. Following this, a motion to have the CLASSE motion struck from the agenda was proposed by the VP Welfare and seconded by the GCR President. This maneuver of employing specious legalism in order to stifle democratic deliberation failed. The majority of the GCR membership voted against stirking the CLASSE motion from the agenda.
After completing a few procedural imperatives – such as electing a new chair, approving the minutes of the last meeting, and introducing the agenda – the meeting properly began. Following discussion and voting on motions related to a Ball, a picnic, and allocations for club funding, the CLASSE motion’s moment finally arrived. During the discussion that ensued, the executive tried to cut down the time that this obviously important motion was absorbing, again and again. That was countered by interventions from those who supported due deliberative process. These students interrogated the validity of the claim that the motion would have lethal legal ramifications and sought to counter, transform or manage them collectively, if the scarecrow comes alive. Finally, the motion was passed by a majority; a clear democratic verdict both for student solidarity and the taking of political positions by GCRs. The reaction to this was an array of fractious and melodramatic gestures by Executives and a few others, which in real terms translate into sharp retorts, walking out and other histrionics. In this atmosphere of visceral toxicity the meeting had to be adjourned, which diverted attention from a very significant political act.
This was the first move of oligarchic reaction in the face of a democratic groundswell in this college. Then, the Executive and a few other members of the GCR handed over the fate of a democratic decision to a body that deliberates on constitutional matters. And all of this happened without the entire student body being informed, despite ‘Annex 1: Responsibilities of Elected Members’ of the GCR Constitution stipulating: ‘The President shall consult and inform Executive Officers and the GCR as a whole, on issues relevant to the student body’. Given that the GCR membership voted in favour of the motion, any process which is attempting to revoke it is clearly a relevant issue to the student body. Now the whole matter is well on the glorious path of procrastination, a costly delay as Quebec students come under greater attack.
But the real issue here is not about the little constitutional games we play. It is a struggle between a small number who are against substantive democracy while veiling their support of the status quo in the shroud of neturality, and a majority of students with a holistic understanding of their location in society and the world. In a world of crisis, tumult and inequality, the latter see status quo, law and economy as entities which are not immutable, but things that can be changed by political agency. Every instance of unfreedom and coercion is ominous for all of us, any conception of insulation is merely a delusion. Hence, the patterning of new solidarities. The passage of the motion points to the fact that students want a deepening of democracy in St Antony’s College and have a desire to transcend the parochial and anti-political disposition of the GCR here and now.
Perhaps CLASSE will not receive the money from St Antony’s College, money that will be burned in barbecue or dissolved in high tea. But this motion and its small history has clearly put the legitimacy of the way representation works in this college into question. The students here clearly need and want a more democratic, transparent, decentralized, politically sensitized representative organ. This might very well be the beginning of a passage from the GCR to a student’s union in this college.
bob
11/06/2012 at 09:55
Agnibho Gangopadhyay, you seem like an idiot for writing this. just shut up.
Mazi
13/06/2012 at 15:50
I don’t think this vote, which represented a small minority of the student body in St Antony’s had any relation to democracy, or freedom of expression. The latter is an individual right, and as a student, dear Agnibho, you and everyone else has the right to support or contest the Student movement in Canada, or anything else. But as a collective body within the University system, therefore inherently focused on education and knowledge, the GCR is not meant to express support and or condemnation of political realities in Canada and anywhere else. In that case, it seems to me that there is a case of COERCION of EXPRESSION for the majority of the student in the college, rather than the deliberation of the will of the majority. The GCR is not a parliament, where its members are meant to participate and express their views on policies; it is an educational and academic environment, for which most of the students have paid quite a conspicuous amount of money, and perhaps because of this, do not have time to express their political view on unjust events around the world. And I could add many other reasons…as, Why Canada? just because you are acquainted with its reality? and why not Italy, Israel, Ivory Coast?
do not misrepresent the issue debated in the GCR as one in which democracy contends bureaucracy. It is rather the noisy encroachment of the few for the benefit of none.
Agnibho
13/06/2012 at 22:45
dear mazi,
i appreciate your reading of the event, one which provokes a number of very pertinent questions:
-isn’t the voting process an instantiation of the tenets of democracy and freedom of expression and collective decision-making?
-if not, why does the institution of voting exist in GCR meetings at all?
-if the passage of this motion, made possible by majority vote, is coercion, what is the legitimacy of other such motions passed in GCR meetings all through the year?
-when we try to address one problematic issue, should we stop and slide into melancholy and inaction thinking that there are so many problematic issues in this troubled planet?
-and thus, do nothing about everything? nothing about Canada, because there is Italy, Côte d’Ivoire and Israel? nothing about Italy, because there is Canada, Côte d’Ivoire and Israel? so on and so forth?
-who or what decides what the GCR is meant to be? the GCR itself, as determined by its voting record? or the lone opinions of you or me? while i base my generalizations about students in this college on the voting and concrete support for the motion on 31st May, and my faith in the sanctity of GCR meetings, how can you say that the students are not interested in ‘politics’ citing nothing tangible in support?
-how are fee hikes, student’s protests, repressive measures elsewhere unrelated to education and academics at oxford? do not the past few years tell us that the same can happen to any chunk of the student population—anytime, anywhere, even to us? wouldn’t we expect solidarity then?
in the spirit of further discussion,
agnibho
Mazi
14/06/2012 at 00:12
Thank dear Agnibho,
I will try to be short for the sake of clarity, in what I think is a matter of pertinence in the collegiate institutions rather than anything else. You ask:
1)isn’t the voting process an instantiation of the tenets of democracy and freedom of expression and collective decision-making?
…I answer:
The voting system is a pragmatic solution for the deliberation of the college self-management. The petty-debate on whether to fund a barbeque or a high tea might seem shallow and pointless when compared to existential problems of access to education and right of employment, nevertheless, within the framework of this system, “the college”, the well-being of students depends on those rather than these. Under these considerations I consider non-pertinent issues related to external, albeit student-related struggles.
The voting system might indeed be affected by the under-representation of those students who consider GCR meetings a pragmatic means of management, rather than a political tool of assertion. The GCR is I believe a very useful arena of debate and confrontation about our life and experience in college, and in Oxford. It delivers services and tries to represent the needs of our students. It is not a representative, in the sense of party system, or political affiliation. It is meant to follow not the logic of struggle for power, but that of collective management.
Therefore, I used the word coercion of expression in order to indicate that a statement of support by the GCR on a very specifically located event, “Canadian student protests”, cannot be representative of the student body, simply because it is distant, unrelated to the life in this environment. In this, I want to emphasise the difference between our individual identity, with all out baggage of idea(al)s, concerns and interests, versus our collective identity as GCR, a student body that focuses on communal life and self-management.
Hence, is this a case of mismanagement of out economic resources? It seems yes, if our concern is the well-being of ALL St Antony’s students.
Also, as you say inaction/action…
I believe that action is the right of everyone. Indeed, you are free to create groups of students within the student body to support the struggle of Canadian students, and actually ask for support in your activities: rooms for discussion, facilities for expression of views, etc. It is this kind of activism, which comes in a dialectic manner in contact with the students, that is at the base of individual freedom of expression, rather than the deliberation of 40 people out of 450.
Does anyone prevent you and anyone interested from participating in active support as individuals, and group of individuals? I think the answer in no.
I might also point at the distinction between what affects students’ life in Oxford directly and what might shape the international environment in which they live.
It is true that the trend towards austerity and shrinking educational support for students is a perilous one, that’s why we should rise awareness rather than undertake ideological battles, with the risk of creating useless tension within the student body. As you know the protests in the UK against the rise in fees were huge, and few of our students were involved in the campaign. But Canada, I reiterate, is nothing the GCR can deal with. It is a question of pertinence, at the end.
AS I said, I will keep it short, indeed it was an euphemism…
Best,
Mazi
Fact Checker
14/06/2012 at 09:38
Of note: people can vote multiple times for the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on a comment (just clear your browser window and vote again). On either side(s) of this issue, the ratings for the comments are probably not accurate, since someone can simply keep voting for whatever they want and give a skewed persepctive.
Spartacus
14/06/2012 at 13:59
I think it entirely inappropriate and dishonest to accuse people who disagreed with you to be against democracy. Why not do a college-wide referendum if you think the issue here is democracy? It is deeply insulting and offensive for people who have lost family members fighting for democracy this century to be told they are anti-democratic because they feel politics should not be the place of the GCR. Shame on you.
Joe Hayns-Worthington, St. Antony's.
15/06/2012 at 15:12
Dear Mazi,
Our motion passed by simple majority. We have never suggested that, therefore, every member of St. Antony’s supports the motion. We know that the motion has angered many people; yet it passed. You, and the various people that have formally objected to the motion, are not arguing against us; you are arguing against the majority will of this year’s final GCR.
People attempt to put limits on what the GCR ought to do. However, there are no limits in the constitution on what the GCR’s ambit is, beyond UK law. The democratic decisions of the GCR define what its purpose is; it defines what is pertinent to it. It is not for you or I to decide what is ‘unrelated to the life in this environment’; the GCR decides, as it has against motions that I cared about on several occasions. On the first page of the GCR’s constitution it says that the GCR ‘acts as the representative body for its students in the life of the college’ and that ‘GCR meetings shall be the highest authority on GCR matters’. I do not make the mistake to think that any decision taken by the GCR will then define the students’ opinion; however, the constitution clearly states that the GCR, as a representative body, is defined by the students that care to constitute it. Those students who attended the last meeting did define the GCR, against your and the executives wishes for the body.
There have been two other styles of argument against the CLASSE motion. The first of these comes from a “no fighting in the war room” attitude towards the GCR. The GCR, as was pointed out at the last meeting, is the only place in which we can all as equals deliberate on the trajectory of the college. It is the place to dispute and decide together. All arguments contrary to this – ‘take it to OUSU’; ‘campaign on your own’; ‘just shut up’ (see above) – are attempts to delimit the potential of a body that is, to say again, the only place in which we can convince, and be convinced, about what action to take together. The cousin of this Kubrickian attitude – he was joking, of course – are fallacious appeals to custom, such as that ‘these things are not typically done by the GCR’. Appeals to precedent, within a constitutional body, fooled no one. The GCR ‘is’ whatever any given meeting decides, albeit within the admirably broad confines of its charter (and hence UK law).
The second argument is that the CLASSE motion, and therefore all other motions that are concerned to look outside the narrowest confines, are illegal. Yet law is not some immutable corpus, to be followed, as led by an ur-solicitor, unthinkingly. There are many circles of law, many Dante’s, and a wide selection of Virgils. All Antonians read texts that show that parliaments are not the only preserve of politics; that everyone’s everyday is politically charged, whether they recognise it or not. Similarly, it is near self-evident that law – as opposed to an imagined Law – is about contest between interpretations (and if this were not the case, there wouldn’t be any lawyers).
I want the body that claims to most directly represents me to be as open as possible. I want as few constraints as possible on what discussions take place within the GCR, and what actions it might take following from these. I find not a single sentence in the constitution that could be used to dispute this; and if one is found, and a case for anti-politics is made, I’m going to argue against it, and so for the right of the GCR to be an affective, cosmopolitan body, rather than a distributor of pocket money. Most of the institutions that we will come to engage with – commercial, educational (and so on) – are not democratically premised. The GCR is the one space in this college in which every participant is an equal interlocutor (provided they attend). Merely by dint of being a student here, one can be affective within the GCR. Of course, I recognise that the GCR’s final decision is not, therefore, what every member of the college assents to: but, to put it bluntly, sometimes one finds oneself outvoted.
The GCR is the place for dispute, not uniformity. Others and I do not want to ‘destroy’ the GCR; we want to allude to its democratic nature, and to utilise it as a body that can have a demonstrable affect on the world about us. I baulk at suggestions that students and universities are somehow detached from the world outside of private libraries and security gates. I feel that we are implicated, whether we like it or not. People chortle at the idea that ‘everything is political’; ‘if everything is political, then nothing is’. This is as unconvincing as the axiom that ‘if everything has mass, then nothing does’. I and the other authors of the motion know that many people found and find it objectionable. We also see that many students do not view themselves, or students generally, as imbricated in a wider politics. However, the GCR was not in accord with either of these points when it voted to give money to CLASSE, and so to help fight an unjust law, and the growth of an iniquitous system of education that, unfortunately, is more firmly rooted in this country.
Lastly, others and myself are keen to see the constitutional process unfold in the proper way, and hope to convince the constitutional committee to uphold the motion. We would like this to be seen as a testimony to our openness both towards other viewpoints, and due process.