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Removal of Akshan Bansal follows multiple complaints -
In the wake of a public accusation on Facebook alleging sexual assault, Akshan Bansal has been removed as vice-president campus life from the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) Executive Committee. Bansal has also been removed from the union’s Board of Directors, which required a separate motion.
Ben Coleman, UTSU president, moved to impeach Bansal at an emergency meeting of the UTSU’s Board of Directors Wednesday afternoon. After an in-camera discussion, the board passed Coleman’s motion with 24 votes in favour, two against, one abstention and one spoiled ballot. According to the UTSU’s by-laws, Bansal’s occupancy of both offices was terminated as soon as the results of the vote were announced.
The union executive’s impeachment follows the surfacing of multiple complaints against Bansal regarding his workplace conduct, including a public allegation, posted on Facebook on December 14, that alleges Bansal committed a sexual assault. The UTSU responded with a statement calling directly for Bansal’s impeachment and condemning rape culture and violence on campus broadly. Five of the seven UTSU executives signed the statement.
Uranranebi Agbeyegbe, president of the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU), did not sign the UTSU’s statement but responded on behalf of the UTMSU on December 22 calling for an immediate investigation into the allegation.
The UTSU’s Executive Review Committee (XRC), comprised of board members and tasked with keeping the executive accountable also received grievances about Bansal over the summer months. The XRC reviewed the complaints, which included claims that Bansal made sexist remarks and was inebriated at work, and recommended that Bansal be placed on probation. The XRC did not call for impeachment at that time.
According to the UTSU’s by-laws, if an executive position becomes vacant after the union’s fall elections process has begun, the opening must be advertised by the UTSU’s Executive Committee. Applicants must be interviewed and no fewer than two candidates must be forwarded to the union’s board of directors for consideration.
The Executive Committee released an official statement on the impeachment late Wednesday evening, noting that “it is important that, as the leaders of the UTSU, executives uphold the mission and values of the organization. We therefore encourage our members to continue to hold their elected leaders to account.”
Bansal did respond to immediate request for comment from The Varsity, mentioning that has was distraught following the meeting’s conclusion.
U of T approach should be driven by clear principles, report says
The University of Toronto can help the world meet the climate change challenge by undertaking targeted and principled divestment from specific companies in the fossil fuels industry, according to a presidential advisory committee headed by environmental engineering professor Bryan Karney.
The committee, after a year of consultations with the university community, financial and environmental experts, and others, presented its consensus report to U of T President Meric Gertler this week.
Read the full report
“Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, matched in its urgency only by its complexity,” Gertler said. “The divestment committee tackled its mandate with the same intellectual energy and integrity that so distinguishes our academic community and I wish to thank them personally for their efforts on my behalf and on behalf of the entire University of Toronto.”
Karney said the committee is recommending a targeted rather than a blanket approach to divestment because some fossil fuels still offer society indispensable benefits that currently cannot be gained through other sources. However, certain fossil fuel companies “engage in egregious behaviour and contribute inordinately to social injury,” he said. “These are the companies whose actions blatantly disregard the international effort to limit the rise in average global temperatures above the 1.5-degree threshold set at the recent COP21 conference in Paris. In our view, such companies are properly the focus of divestment action.”
The committee recommends U of T determine a method to evaluate whether a given fossil fuels company’s actions blatantly disregard the 1.5-degree threshold. Once that method is determined, the university should instruct its investment managers to divest immediately any direct holdings in such companies.
Divestment is only one way U of T can help lead efforts to meet the climate change challenge, according to the report. “Divestment should be placed within the larger context of the university’s most valuable and effective contributions to the global effort to avert, mitigate, or meet the worst consequences of climate change. These contributions flow first and foremost from the university’s fundamental role as an academic community,” especially its teaching and research, the report says.
Karney said U of T’s investment holdings aren’t large enough to have a direct impact on the fossil fuel industry, but the committee called on the university to make an impact by investing in two new funds. One would be targeted at building on the university’s academic strength in research, education and entrepreneurship related to climate change. The other would build on what the committee calls ‘the university’s strong work’ in operational sustainability.
Gertler struck the advisory committee in November of 2014 after Toronto350.org, a student-led group, submitted a petition under the terms of the University’s Policy on Social and Political Issues With Respect to University Divestment, calling on the university to “fully divest from fossil fuel companies within the next five years” and to immediately stop investing any new money in the industry. The committee of 10 included faculty members from law, medical biophysics, philosophy, economics, political science and earth sciences, as well as student, staff and alumni representatives.
Gertler said the process of reviewing the report and its recommendations will begin immediately. “I will conduct due diligence as appropriate, and I will respond to the report sometime in the new year. In the meantime, I hope and expect that the report will draw attention and close study across our broad community.”
The committee met with a wide range of groups and individuals from within and outside the university, including Toronto350.org, students, faculty, staff and financial experts.
An advisory committee struck by University of Toronto president Meric Gertler has recommended that the country’s largest university should divest its investments from fossil fuel companies that “blatantly disregard” the international effort to combat climate change.
In a report released Wednesday, the 10-person committee named Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co. and a number of coal producers including the world’s largest producer, Peabody Energy Corp., as “clear examples” of companies whose shares should be sold. “We recognize we’re not a big player but [divestment] is part of a sea change that says we should be doing more of this and less of that,” said Bryan Karney, who headed the committee and serves as chair of the university’s division of environmental engineering and energy systems.
“Specifically, we think divestment is a binary decision that says these are activities that we should not be doing.”
Mr. Gertler – who called climate change “one of the most pressing issues of our times” – said he would be studying the report and responding in the new year. “We have to make our policy decision with the most complete information available to us,” he said. University of Toronto Asset Management had $7.4-billion in assets under management at the end of 2014, including endowment and pension funds. It owns the specific shares mentioned through a pooled fund, rather than directly.
Universities across the world have been under pressure from divestment campaigns in recent years. More than 30 such campaigns are under way at postsecondary institutions in Canada alone, but few have met with unqualified success. In February, the University of British Columbia’s board of governors will vote on whether to divest $100-million in coal, oil and gas investments from its endowment. In two referendums, more than three-quarters of students and about two-thirds of faculty voted in favour of asking the university to divest its fossil fuel holdings.
Others, such as the University of Calgary and Dalhousie have so far ruled out divestment.
Mr. Karney said the committee singled out Exxon, Conoco and the coal producers as companies that were particularly egregious in their disregard for efforts to limit global warming. The panel – comprising professors and students from a variety of disciplines – accused Exxon of “alleged funding of disinformation” about climate change.
Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said the company “unequivocally rejects these allegations” that it financed a disinformation campaign. Mr. Jeffers said the company has long acknowledged the reality of climate change and proposes a revenue-neutral carbon tax as a means of addressing it.
He said the U of T committee did not contact the company for its position. “If they have questions about what we’re doing, they should come to us,” he said.
Mr. Karney said the committee was not making a blanket condemnation or call for divestment of all fossil fuel companies, including Canada’s oil sands producers that are often the target of climate change activists. Indeed, it concluded that fossil fuels will remain critical part of the energy mix for many years. “A blanket divestment strategy would be unprincipled and inappropriate in the committee’s view,” the report said.
The committee chair said Canada’s oil sands companies have indicated “they’re aware of these concerns and appreciate these concerns and we certainly hope they’ll get on board for saying we need to do a better job, we need to be sustainable, we need to be better at communicating.”
He added that the university should not just focus on divestment but provide leadership in research, action and teaching in how the society as a whole confronts climate change.
Sexual assault allegation, conduct, ignite call for removal from office
The Executive Committee of the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) has called for the impeachment of Akshan Bansal, the union’s vice-president campus life, in a statement released shortly before midnight on December 14 following a public allegation of sexual assault made against him on Facebook. The statement claims that in light of the allegations made against Bansal, as well as Bansal’s conduct, the other members of the union’s executive believe that he is “unable to uphold the values of the organization and unable to fulfill his duties.”
According to the statement, Bansal was first asked to resign, which he has refused to do, leading the union to request that their board of directors move to impeach him.
“The UTSU does not support rape culture and cultures of violence on campus,” reads part of the statement. “Any person who perpetuates these systems of oppression is fundamentally incompatible with our values and mission. We do not wish to have such a person represent us to students, staff, and club leaders.”
The UTSU executives emphasized the gravity of the situation and that their primary concern is for the safety and well-being of survivors of sexual violence, stating, “We have no tolerance for sexual violence of any kind.”
The UTSU’s Executive Review Committee (XRC) received complaints regarding Bansal’s conduct prior to the surfacing of the sexual assault allegations. At a UTSU Board of Directors meeting in June, at which directors voted down the report of Bansal’s hiring, early complaints were raised, with limited discussion.
At a subsequent board meeting in July, UTSU directors discussed XRC meeting minutes, which specified the nature of the complaints. These included allegations of sexual and sexist remarks, inebriation in the office, and concerns regarding misogynistic behaviour. The XRC did not recommend that the board consider impeaching Bansal at that meeting.
The most recent XRC report, presented to the UTSU’s Board of Directors on November 28, recommended that Bansal be put on probation for a month, during which time his activities would be supervised by other members of the UTSU Executive Committee, as well as the XRC.
Responding to a civil suit filed by the UTSU earlier this year, former University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) executive director Sandra Hudson has filed a statement of defence and counterclaim with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice seeking $300,000 in damages from the union.
Statement of defence
On November 19, Hudson filed a statement of defence through her lawyers which offers an alternative narrative of events leading up to her departure from the union in April. Hudson denies a number of the union’s allegations, including that she “conspired to commit civil fraud.” Former UTSU president Yolen Bollo-Kamara and vice-president internal & services Cameron Wathey were also named in the UTSU’s suit and have filed separate statements of defence.
The defence further details how, by the spring of 2015, Hudson and UTSU Arts and Science at-large director Nicholas Grant developed a fraught relationship. Hudson alleges that Grant had accused her of being upset with him for running in the upcoming UTSU election with the Brighter UofT slate, and that he had also made remarks calling her job performance into question.
In addition to addressing Hudson’s overtime, the defence alleges that, during her tenure as executive director, Hudson was “subject to inappropriate conduct and unwelcome comments from UTSU directors. Some of the comments were in relation to Hudson’s perceived sexual orientation, gender and race.”
It is claimed that Hudson brought these concerns to Bollo-Kamara and Wathey on various occasions.
The defence goes on to claim that, although Hudson had never filed for overtime in two-and-a-half years of employment, she did frequently work long hours on “non-managerial tasks,” and had accrued a significant amount of overtime between 2012 and April 2015. Examples of this work included “assisting at polling stations, closing the cash registers at the UTSU office, and completing minutes from various Boards and committee meetings.”
In her statement, Hudson alleges that during the negotiation of her employment agreement she was advised by then UTSU vice-president internal & services, Corey Scott, that it was the union’s practice to pay out overtime to its executive directors.
Around April of this year, the statement claims that a conversation between Grant and Wathey took place during which Grant allegedly told Wathey that members of the incoming Brighter UofT slate, including current UTSU president Ben Coleman, had a plan “to treat Hudson harshly,” before terminating her employment the following September “to humiliate her.”
According to an email statement to The Varsity , Grant alleges that “no such conversation ever occurred, and no such plan ever existed.” Grant’s comments go on to say that, on the topic of there being friction because of his choice to run with the Brighter UofT slate, “Wathey explicitly told [Grant] of her disappointment on the day that nominations had opened, among other things, in an attempt to persuade me to run with [the Change UofT slate].”
Regarding Hudson’s allegation that he had cast aspersion on her work performance, Grant said the following: “At no point did I personally make comments on my views of her work performance to anyone beyond Wathey and Bollo-Kamara, the only two individuals she reported to, and this was only to address concerns brought forward by other members of the Union.”
According to Grant, “complaints had been brought forward to the Executive Review Committee, of which [he] was the chair. Unfortunately, directors are given little to no formal training on dealing with complaints brought forward this way, and when I raised these concerns to each [of] Wathey and Bollo-Kamara individually and several times, neither of them were willing to investigate or address the complaints brought forward by other students. It was only after their lack of action that I made a public statement regarding how these concerns existed and were not being addressed, because I believed that the board ought to be informed.”
In an emailed statement to The Varsity, current UTSU president Ben Coleman addressed the allegations made in Hudson’s statement of defence. “We had always intended to work with Sandy – we knew her experience would be valuable, especially for long-term projects like the student commons. There was no conspiracy to humiliate her,” he said.
According to the defense, Hudson considered this revelation as “constructive dismissal” and informed Wathey that she intended to file a human rights complaint. It was at this point that Wathey suggested Hudson enter into a termination agreement with the union – an official conclusion of her employment that would entitle her to severance pay and preempt her removal by the incoming union executive – “to avoid further strife.”
Initially, Hudson was unwilling, but changed her mind following a series of other negative interactions with UTSU directors, including an alleged incident during which Coleman suggested he “was able to tell [Hudson] and Bollo-Kamara (who are both Black women) apart, because Bollo-Kamara wore lipstick.”
“When you screw up like I did with the lipstick comment, I think it’s important to apologize and learn. Sandy and I had had a private conversation about her frustrations with people confusing her and Yolen, in which I commented that it was especially ridiculous given that their senses of style were totally different. Yolen then posted publicly about it, which is when I realized my remark had come across completely differently than I intended.” Coleman responded to The Varsity. “At my request, Yolen and I met so I could give her a full apology. I proactively set up a meeting with Sandy in April so that I could give her the opportunity to air any concerns she had, and show my desire to prevent microaggressions. I made a concentrated effort for Sandy to feel comfortable working with us, as I knew she had been close to Yolen and Cameron.”
The termination agreement was made effective on April 30 and entitled Hudson to payments comprised of two weeks salary in lieu of notice of termination; two years salary as severance; five weeks vacation; and compensation for overtime. The agreement also included a non-disparagement clause which bars the UTSU from making derogatory statements about Hudson, as well as a confidentiality clause and mutual release.
UTSU’s initial claim
The UTSU’s initial statement of claim, submitted on September 21, alleges that Hudson entered into a termination agreement with former union president Yolen Bollo-Kamara and vice-president internal & services, Cameron Wathey, concluding Hudson’s employment as the UTSU’s executive director. Pursuant to the agreement, Hudson was entitled to $247,726.40 in compensation upon her dismissal – a severance figure equivalent to roughly 10 per cent of the union’s operating budget.
The union contends that entering into this agreement represented a breach of “their fiduciary duty.” Their statement of claim alleged that Hudson, Bollo-Kamara, and Wathey “acted in a manner that was oppressive, unfairly prejudicial to and unfairly disregarded the interest of the UTSU and its members,” as well as that they “conspired to commit civil fraud” and that their actions “constituted civil fraud.”The UTSU’s claim also alleges that, between January and April of 2015, Bollo-Kamara authorized cheques for overtime payments to Hudson, totalling $29,782.22 “for a total of 2,589.5 hours of overtime.”The statement of claim suggests that in her two-and-a-half years as the UTSU’s executive director, Hudson had never recorded any overtime hours until April of 2015.
Counterclaim
Included with the statement of defence filed on November 19, Hudson also filed a counterclaim against the UTSU. The counterclaim seeks $300,000 in damages from the union, as well as a declaration that both the non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses of the termination agreement were breached.
The claim alleges that the UTSU violated the non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses by failing to seek a sealing order – which would have restricted access to information pertaining to the suit – and filing suit before Hudson had an opportunity to procure one. Hudson also claims that the UTSU further violated these clauses when it provided The Varsity with copies of their statement of claim, and when Coleman made statements to the media.
On this claim, Coleman offered the following: “In our statements to the media and students, we’ve emphasized that this is about students’ money, and the ability to have a students’ union that has adequate resources, not about any one person or their character. We’ve also emphasized that we’d like a resolution through mediation or arbitration. We want to resolve this with the least hardship and distress for everyone involved in this situation, and that hasn’t changed.”
Hudson’s defence claims that these acts were undertaken “maliciously and in bad faith” in order to ensure publication and undermine the non-disparagement clauses of the termination agreement.
Moving forward
It remains unclear at this point whether or not the two parties will ultimately go to trial or resolve the issue privately. Neither Hudson, nor the UTSU’s lawyers, responded to immediate requests for comment.
Union of public employees alleges university “bargained in bad faith”
The Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3902 (CUPE 3902), which represents teaching assistants, sessional lecturers, and postdoctoral fellows at the University of Toronto, has filed an unfair labour practice complaint against the University of Toronto through the Ontario Labour Relations Board, effectively initiating a form of legal action against the university.
Representatives from CUPE 3902 released a public statement in which they allege that, during labour negotiations with the university last winter, the university administration were dealing in bad faith in that they did not report data related to the contentious Graduate Student Bursary Fund accurately.
The university and CUPE 3902 entered into binding arbitration in March of this year in order to reach consensus on two unresolved grievances, one of which was the Graduate Student Bursary Fund. CUPE 3902 is now accusing the university of obfuscation. The statement alleges that the data relating to per-student funding on which the union had based their negotiating position was “out-dated, inaccurate and misleading.” The release goes on to suggest that the numbers provided by the university included other sources of income that “union members secured independently of their funding.”
“It cannot be overstated how important this data was to our position in bargaining. It completely underpins the Fund we negotiated. Not only is the Fund now insufficient for its intended purpose, we can’t disburse the money we do have because the data is junk,” added Isabel Stowell-Kaplan, vice chair of CUPE 3902, unit 1.
“The U of T administration lied to us. They lied about our members’ funding levels, then allowed us to negotiate the end to a 4-week strike based on incorrect data they supplied. They bargained in bad faith at a tense time when honest mattered more than ever. This behaviour calls the entirety of collective bargaining, the end of the strike and the whole collective agreement into question,” said Ryan Culpepper, chair of the local and member of the bargaining team for CUPE 3902 in the statement.
U of T’s Angela Hildyard, professor and vice-president, human resources and equity, offered a different perspective on the issue. According to Hildyard, students have been contacting the university to ask about the $1.045 million in funding that was allocated under the Graduate Students’ Bursary Fund during the most recent round of labour negotiations that they have yet to receive.
“The University provided these funds to CUPE in late August 2015,” Hildyard was quoted saying in an email to The Varsity. “At the end of September, the University provided CUPE with the data required to allow them to distribute the funds to eligible students. CUPE has been provided with the funds and all of the information necessary to enable them to disburse the funds. Unfortunately, to date, CUPE has chosen to distribute none of these Graduate Student Bursary Fund monies.”
Hildyard’s statement went on to suggest that the university has “made several requests to CUPE to disburse these funds and we will continue to do so.”Professor Hildyard also indicated that the university “vigorously denies the allegations.” The university will be responding to CUPE’s complaint and “the matter will be dealt with by the Labour Board.”
In a Facebook post released on Wednesday night, the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) offered their solidarity with CUPE 3902 and encouraged students to join in a rally, hosted by CUPE 3902 on Tuesday, December 15 at 3:30 pm.
The committee advising the University of Toronto on the divestment of fossil fuels is recommending that the school divest…partially.
The Report of the President’s Advisory Committee on Divestment from Fossil Fuels released Wednesday recommended a strategy of targeted divestment from fossil fuel companies.
The committee calls for the school to target companies who “engage in egregious behaviour and contribute inordinately to social injury.”
In particular, the committee recommends that the university divest itself of firms who “blatantly disregard” the international effort to limit the rise in average global temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
To do so, the university will have to figure out a method to evaluate whether or not a fossil fuel company ignores the 1.5 degree threshold.
Some examples of companies the committee identified that the university could divest from include ConocoPhillips Co. for its Arctic extraction activities and plans; and ExxonMobil Corp. for “its alleged funding of disinformation.”
The committee also identified as divestment targets a number of energy producers for their production of thermal coal.
Nonetheless, the committee found that not all fossil fuel companies are engaged in behaviour that would warrant divestment. “The Committee recognizes that fossil fuels will remain indispensable and contributor to social welfare for many years,” the report stated.
The school president will respond to the recommendations in the new year
The report noted that the fossil fuels industry and resource sector have been “cornerstones” of the Canadian economy for most of Canada’s history and maintains that the country’s long-term economic development will continue to benefit from resource extraction.
The report also cited the current economic challenges facing western Canada and argued: “The developing world is not the only region in which the fossil fuels industry can be an indispensable social benefit, even as we transition to a less carbon-intensive future.”
According to Amanda Harvey- Sanchez, the University of Toronto divestment campaign lead for 350.org, the report doesn’t go far enough.
“The committees’ recommendations reinforce the outcome of Paris that the fossil fuel era is over and that smart investors have to get out now,” Harvey-Sanchez said.
However, she noted that the committee failed to mention the impact of fossil fuels on people such as First Nations and low income individuals. “So we would urge [University of Toronto] President Gertler to stand up for those impacted communities and divest from all fossil fuels.”
The school’s president, Meric Gertler, said in a statement that he will conduct due diligence on the report and will respond to its recommendations some time in the new year.
Gertler was not available for comment.
A recent report says the school lost over $550-million by not divesting soon enough
The committee was struck after the University of Toronto chapter of 350.org presented the Office of the President with a petition in March 2014, requesting that the University of Toronto fully divest from direct investments in fossil fuels companies within the next five years and to stop investing new money in the industry.
In mid-November an analysis from Corporate Knights, along with 350.org and South Pole Group, maintained the university lost over $550-million by not divesting from the largest fossil fuel firms three years ago.
Toronto 350.org estimates the school has direct holdings in about 200 listed companies, adding up to roughly $30-million through the university’s endowment and pension funds.
In place of the fossil fuel funds, Toronto 350.org proposes that the university invest in green funds, selectively in direct holdings of renewable energy, or companies supporting decarbonisation, among other alternatives.
Currently, fossil fuel divestment campaigns are active at more than 300 schools across North America and a number within Europe as well. To date, 26 universities and colleges have pledged to divest. They include San Francisco State University Foundation, Hampshire College and Green Mountain College.
In total, 181 institutions committed to fossil fuel divestment in 2014, including cities, churches, universities and private foundations. The total amount divested is approximately $50 billion.
The fossil fuel divestment movement began in 2012, aiming to replicate student campaigns advocating divestment from Apartheid South Africa as a tool to pressure politicians.
The University of Toronto could emerge as the first major Canadian university to divest from the fossil fuel sector if its fully accepts an advisory committee’s recommendation to exit from energy companies engaged in processing bitumen.
The committee was set up by President Meric Gertler in March 2014, in response to a petition from Toronto350.org, a chapter of the global 350.org movement, urging divestment from fossil fuel companies within the next five years.
The UofT reportedly has $32.4 million of its endowment fund invested in fossil fuel companies, according to Saskatoon-based The Sustainability and Education Policy Network (SEPN).
Gertler declined to quantify the exposure of its $2.1 billion endowment fund to the sector, but said majority of its investments was in pooled funds, with only a small number of direct holdings. The petition had only sought divestment from the university’s direct holdings.
“I will be spending the next several weeks gathering further information and advice as appropriate to help inform my decision and help the university formulate a strategy for responding to the challenge of climate change,” Gertler said in an interview.
As many as 40 educational institutions across the world, including the University of California and UK-based University of Oxford, representing US$130 billion in investments, have pledged to divest from the sector, according to Washington, DC-based Arabella Advisors.
There are 34 active divestment groups in college campuses across Canada, according to SEPN. Last year, Concordia University said it would invest $5 million out of its $130 million fund in “sustainable initiatives,” as a first step to divestment.
“A number of institutions in the United States and Europe have committed to divestment, but this is a first I believe in Canada,” said Dimitri Lascaris, who submitted the petition on behalf of Toronto350. “No one has gone so far.”
The endowment fund should determine a method to assess which fossil fuel companies “blatantly disregard the international effort to limit the rise in average global temperatures,” the UofT committee advised.
“Once that method is determined, the university should instruct its investment managers to divest immediately any direct holdings in such companies.”
While the committee made exceptions for fossil fuel companies that are demonstrating an effort to reduce their carbon emissions, it highlights “open-pit mining of natural bitumen in Canada, Arctic extraction or exploration, and thermal coal mining in Canada and the United States” as examples of companies the fund should steer away from, especially those that generate more than 10 per cent of the revenues from the sector.
“It’s true that there is some wiggle room, and the devil will be in the details,” said Lascaris. “But the 10 per cent of revenue threshold suggests that the major player from the tarsands sector would have to be divested by the endowment if the president accepts the recommendation.”
The committee cited Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips Co., both of which have operations in Canada, and a number of coal companies as companies that should be divested from, in its report.
The committee also considered divestment with respect to the pooled funds, but noted that divesting from those investment instruments “would be particularly costly and potentially damaging to the financial interests of the beneficiaries at the present time.”
The UofT committee acknowledges that while the university’s holdings are not large enough to impact the fossil fuel sector financially, its decision may have a meaningful impact on “undercapitalized” renewable energy and climate-friendly technologies.
Sandy Hudson, Yolen Bollo-Kamara, Cameron Wathey, named in suit alleging civil fraud
On September 21, the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) commenced a legal proceeding against former UTSU president Yolen Bollo-Kamara, former vice president internal and services Cameron Wathey, and former executive director Sandra Hudson.
According to a publicly available statement of claim, Hudson, Bollo-Kamara, and Wathey signed a termination agreement, in late April, which ended Hudson’s employment with the UTSU in the capacity of executive director. This agreement allegedly entitled Hudson to compensation in the amount of $247,726.40 “as a result of the UTSU’s decision to dismiss her.” This lump sum was equivalent to approximately 10 per cent of the UTSU’s operations budget.
Among the claims against the three individuals, are that they “acted in a manner that was oppressive, unfairly prejudicial to and unfairly disregarded the interest of the UTSU and its members,” as well as accusations that they “breached their fiduciary duty.” It is also alleged that they “conspired to commit civil fraud” and that their actions “constituted civil fraud.”
Included in the termination agreement was a confidentiality provision, in addition to which a mutual release form was signed. The former could prevent the current UTSU executives from revealing the details of Hudson’s departure from UTSU. The latter has the potential to “release and forever discharge the UTSU” from “actions, causes of action, damages, claims, cross claims and demands whatsoever (including all damage, loss and injury not known or anticipated, but which may arise in the future and all effects and consequences thereof).”
The UTSU alleges that it is “evident from the circumstances that Hudson did not wish to work with the incoming Executive Committee, and that Bollo-Kamara and Wathey, knowing that their responsibility for the UTSU’s finances were coming to an end, agreed to dismiss her in order to grant her the benefit of her extremely generous dismissal provisions.”
In addition to Hudson’s alleged dismissal compensation, Bollo-Kamara and Wathey also allegedly authorized cheques to pay Hudson for “1,974.5 hours of overtime which she herself had recorded in a single entry on April 1, 2015 after the election result was known.”
The UTSU claims that Bollo-Kamara authorized payments totalling $29,782.22, which were claimed to be payments of overtime hours worked. The court file indicates that in her two-and-a-half years working as the UTSU executive director, Hudson had never recorded any overtime hours until that April.
The UTSU argues that Hudson stole $126,809.15 from the UTSU when she granted herself the overtime hours and deliberately destroyed confidential information by erasing the hard-drive of the UTSU’s executive director’s computer. The UTSU ends their statement of claim pleading that Hudson’s actions, along with those of Bollo-Kamara and Wathey, were “egregious, outrageous, high-handed, in bad faith, and that punitive damages in the amount of $200,000 ought reasonably to be awarded [to the UTSU].”
Bollo-Kamara stated that she has not received any official documents or information from the executive regarding the proceeding, but has heard only through rumour that there is a case against her. Hudson and Wathey did not respond to The Varsity’s request for comment.
The defendants have 20 days to prepare a statement of defence from the date of having been served the papers. All details reported here are from the statement of claim levelled against Hudson, Bollo-Kamara, and Wathey and are unconfirmed until court proceedings are completed.
Students are denied adequate input on the distribution of tuition funds.
Every day at U of T, choices are made with huge sums of money that have real-world consequences. The money that the university invests — coming particularly from our pockets, moving without our say — funds checkpoints, guns, drones, and bulldozers. The university’s capacity to do so is determined unilaterally. Money talks, but right now, it’s a monologue.
Consequently, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement — like other ongoing campaigns that seek economic responses to political issues — attempts to challenge this unequal and undemocratic power dynamic. Specifically, it recognizes how the university’s millions of dollars worth of investments in these companies reinforces human rights abuses via the occupation of Palestinian territories, and more broadly, by feeding worldwide arms proliferation. It is a movement with a clear institutional focus, and with specific interests in promoting compliance with international law.
BDS represents a voice that is counter to the silent decision-making of our university. The university uses, makes, and invests money in companies with their hands and feet dirty in environmental degradation, conflict zones, and irresponsible exploitation of third world peoples and regions.
Students must prove legal status to obtain essential U of T identification card
“Because I am having some issues providing identity proof documents it is possible that I won’t be able to obtain a TCard until December and in the meantime I don’t know what to do,” said Gloria Liu, a second-year student at U of T. Liu is therefore unable to obtain an official sch ool email and is unable to access university library resources online. She is hoping to resolve this issue before December so that she will be able to fully utilize the services that come along with having a TCard.
The new requirement may be especially problematic for U of T’s 11,000 international students, who come from over 150 different countries. Incoming first-year international student Violeta Lialios-Bouwman believes that extra documentation is unnecessary when a student has already been given a place at U of T.
“With the University of Toronto being an accepting and diverse school, I believe all people should have the right to learn and be part of this community. Having documentation should not be a factor in if a student is eligible to attend and be part of a school. As long as they pay their fees and play by the rules, university should be an option for any dedicated student,” Lialios-Bouwman said.
U of T is also home to a number of refugee students, many of whom may not possess the required documents for the new TCard process. “I can see this impacting refugee students if the student comes from a place that is no longer a state, or the recognized representative of a state. Requiring them to figure out what they can use in place of a passport, and whether or not they count as International or Permanent Residents is absolutely pointless,” said second-year political science and biodiversity, and conservation biology student Lucian Wang. “I think having photo ID should be enough to get your TCard.”
Keep U of T Feminist!
Earlier this week, the University of Toronto issued a campus safety alert in reaction to threats of violence against feminists and women, especially those working in Women's Studies and Sociology.
Join the CUPE 3902 Women's Caucus in speaking out against gendered violence and in favour of safe work places! Our rally begins outside of the Sociology Department (725 Spadina Ave) on the SE corner of Bloor and Spadina!
The University of Toronto went public this week about violent online threats against women on campus, but CBC News has learned similar threats were made last June and kept under wraps.
The University of Toronto went public this week about violent online threats against women in two of its departments, and have now informed staff and students that similar threats were made last June, with critics questioning why it wasn't revealed at the time.
At an emergency meeting Friday, faculty members and students were told that the June threats were brought to the university's attention by a faculty member and reported to police.
A representative from CUPE 3902, which represents University of Toronto teaching assistants, sessional instructors and other staff, said Friday's meeting was the first time they had heard about threats made in June.
The threats were posted on the same website as this week's threats — BlogTO. The violent comments mention using guns, bullets and machetes on women. The posts also refer to Toronto Mayor John Tory and Marc Lépine, the shooter responsible for the 1989 ÉcolePolytechnique massacre in Montreal.
Several students and staff representatives are expressing concern.
"This is serious, like how they were threatening, like the ways they were threatening," said U of T student Arin Torus. "So if they knew something beforehand, they should have said something."
Ryan Culpepper, chair for CUPE 3902, said failing to share these details earlier is "inexcusable" and "there's no question" people's lives were put at risk.
"I think that they were derelict in their duties to inform and protect their employees and to provide a safe workplace," Culpepper said.
The news comes after police on Thursday warned students about the latest online threats, which included rants calling for violence against women.
"Start firing bullets into feminists," read one of the posts.
Toronto police said the latest threats were alerted to them last Saturday but U of T administrators only made the details public Thursday. Police said they do not believe the threats to be credible.
"We worked with police to first try and understand the seriousness of the threat, and as soon as we came to an agreement with them, we released the statements," U of T vice-president David Estok said.
It remains unclear why it took so long for last June's threats to become public.
Op-ed: The U of T divestment campaign will carry on in spite of opposition
On October 27, students gathered at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) to discuss and debate how U of T’s investment practices are complicit in human rights abuses and violations of international law. Most of those in attendance came to hear fellow students and academics share information about the situation in Palestine, and what could be done – but not all of them.
An off-campus hate group attended the event to launch a direct attack on academic debate and freedom of speech. Rather than stand up for these core principles on campus, the university took actions that supported this group.
In 2005, close to 200 Palestinian civil society organisations called on international allies to support them in launching Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), a campaign to achieve basic universal human rights. BDS is aimed at pressuring Israel to halt blatant violations of international law, such as the continuous construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, the on-going destruction of Palestinian homes, and restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement. Thousands of international civil society organisations have heeded this call, including student unions across North America and Europe. In 2012, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU), representing over 15,000 students, joined the campaign. Earlier this year the Ontario Canadian Federation of Students, representing 300,000 students across the province, also voted to support the campaign.
BDS is one of the few tools we have to express our support for Palestinians facing military blockades, dispossession of land, and indiscriminate attacks by the Israeli military. The campaign makes these issues local and asks institutions like ours to withdraw investments from companies complicit in these abuses. Our university has substantial investments in three corporations — Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman — that directly support the Israeli military’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land. These companies have aided the Israeli military through the sale of hellfire missiles, bomber jets, and information technologies that facilitate the continued land, air, and sea blockade of Gaza, which contains nearly two million residents.
At the end of last month, the UTGSU formally launched a campaign called U of T Divest, which urged our university to divest from these companies. The message is simple: students’ money should not support war crimes. This is hardly a controversial position, and it is one supported by millions of students around the world. Even our colleagues in the Ivy League down south are recognising the importance of the campaign, with a growing BDS movement at Princeton. More broadly, the campaign paves the way for the university to adopt ethical investment practices with all of its funds.
The campaign’s growth and popularity has led to a backlash from university administration. These have ranged from bureaucratic efforts to thwart campus organizing — such as blocking pro-Palestinian student groups from booking meeting spaces — to more recently providing de facto support and cover for known hate groups. One such group calls itself the “Jewish Defense League” (JDL). The JDL is a hate group banned in the United States and, ironically, banned from participating in Israeli politics because of its blatantly racist positions. Its litany of abuses is too long to list, but one extreme example is when a JDL member massacred 29 Muslims kneeling in prayer at a West Bank mosque. The JDL described the killings as a “preventative measure.”
On October 27, the JDL deliberately disrupted the BDS campaign launch event by hurling racial epithets at students and visiting speakers, accosting student organisers and attendees, and refusing to exit the room even after being granted time and space to air their vile rhetoric. They went on to accuse anyone who sought their removal from the premises of being supporters of “dirty Arab terrorism” and those who “want to throw acid in the faces of unveiled women.” They also claimed that any “white” supporters of the BDS campaign must have been born with mental disabilities.
We only wish this was the most disturbing aspect of the evening.
Event organizers followed university policy to the letter, giving disrupters three opportunities to cease their disturbances after which they were asked to leave the event. They refused. Again according to the university’s own policies on the disruption of meetings, the university should have then found us an alternative safe space in order to continue the meeting. It did not. Instead, the university played directly into the hands of the disrupters and called for the event to be cancelled without explanation. The JDL were permitted to remain on the premises for over an hour while countless students and faculty were forced to wait in the building’s foyer. With the help of supportive faculty, we were able to secure another room where the event continued.
Through its actions, the university was complicit in supporting a known hate group. In light of this, we are forced to ask whether the university can stand by its claim to foster an environment conducive to “tolerance and mutual respect” in which “radical prescriptions for social ills can be debated.”
In their official response to concerns aired separately by faculty who were present that evening, the university claims to “recognise that there are strong views on our campuses” which “may be discomfiting or even offensive to some.” The problem with this is that the JDL is not representative of campus views; and this is not simply a case of one perspective drowning out others. What occurred is nothing less than a student-organized event being disrupted by an off-campus hate group. The university’s actions raise serious questions about its ability to follow its own policies aimed at ensuring student safety on campus.
There cannot be any tolerance for bigots who seek to bully and intimidate students that engage in academic debate and freedom of speech. Moreover, the university conduct continues to silence voices calling for basic human rights for Palestinians and adherence to international law.
What happened on the evening of October 27 is symptomatic of events occurring on campuses in Canada and around the world. The mainstream popularity of the movement has left defenders of Israel and university administrators scrambling for new tools to shut down debate, organizing, and action calling for social justice.
In spite of these attacks, the U of T Divest campaign will continue. Though stunned by the complacency demonstrated by our university administration, we remain steadfast and stand in solidarity with the student unions at Ryerson and York, who have endorsed the BDS campaign.
We hope that when you — students, staff, faculty, and alumni — visit www.UofTdivest.com you will sign the petition in support of the divestment campaign.
Three decades ago, U of T was one of the last Canadian universities to divest from apartheid South Africa. When it finally did, the walls of apartheid had already begun to crumble. The university was ultimately on the right side of history, though just barely. When it comes to Palestine, will the university be able to say the same thing? Maybe. But it will be up to us to make them.
Disruption and reaction at the university’s Presidents’ Panel
On May 11 and 12 the University of Toronto hosted the “Cities of Learning – The University in the Americas” symposium. The two-day conference addressed the relationship between cities and universities and included a panel discussion featuring university president Meric Gertler alongside three other university presidents from Chicago, Sao Paulo and Beunos Aires.
While the president’s panel was intended to portray a sanitized image of the university, an unsolicited disruption shook the event’s prestige and revealed the university’s true relationship to its students, staff, and city.
During the panel, a group of attendees vocalized their dissatisfaction with the university’s contentious behaviour in its recent labour issues; they were aggressively silenced by the event’s moderator, professor Mel Cappe. We were later informed that this silencing was then repeated after the panel, when the moderator shouted at another attendee who was expressing her discontent with the way things were handled, claiming that he “didn’t have the time” for the group.
The way the university deals with such disruptions is not consistent, but rather, based on its economic interests and marketing agendas. For example, earlier this year an event hosted by the Graduate Student Union (GSU) exposed the university’s investment in companies complicit in war crimes.
Cappe’s actions leverage the power and privilege embedded in his position in order to abuse the nature of open and equitable dialogue. His behaviour is indicative of the complacency of the university administration in perpetuating these power structures by actively attempting to silence those who resist them.
The group’s final proclamation before they were ushered off the premises claimed that the University of Toronto is an elitist institution, to which the moderator response was that he is not ashamed of his own elitism.
Cappe’s response is characteristic of a trend in many institutions of higher learning around the world that celebrate elitism, while enabling an increase in the privatization of scholarship, and subsequently, the commercialization of knowledge.
Recently, a news article published by the U of T News glorified the symposium in question, while completely overlooking the encounters between the moderator and the attendees. Instead, the article focused on painting an idealized picture of the relationship between the university and the city.
While it is uncertain to which organization the disrupting group belongs to, their actions came at a particularly significant time given the recent strike, which shed light on the contentious relationship between the university administration, staff and students.
By failing to use the symposium as a platform to address the problematic realities within our university and our city—whether that was by forcibly silencing voices that wished to make ongoing labour disputes visible, or by concealing the issues of social inequality and exclusion that are experienced during mega-events—the university was complacent in propagating these unequal power relations, all while branding itself as a haven of diversity, collaboration, and creativity.
The events that we witnessed at this symposium, sandwiched between the recent labour strike and the hosting of the upcoming Pan Am Games, cannot be understood in isolation. Rather, they were deliberate attempts to manipulate the public’s perception of the University of Toronto’s relationship to its staff, students, and city; first, by mending a broken image—then, by portraying an idealized one.
“The University of Toronto has won a labour-arbitration case against its teaching-assistant union, in a decision that centred on the issue that was at the heart of this spring’s month-long strike by 6,000 TAs at the university.”
“Arbitrator William Kaplan ruled that the university does not have to guarantee each of its graduate students a set amount of new funding as the union had argued throughout. Instead, graduate students who are members of the union are now eligible to apply to two new bursary funds totalling approximately $1-million.”
“The decision sets the stage for the amount in the bursaries to be renegotiated in the next round of talks in two years. If the funds run short of money, ‘it is open to the parties to change them in the next round,’ arbitrator William Kaplan said in his ruling.”
“Throughout the strike, the union had argued that graduate students who take on teaching duties are employees, not students, and should be paid a wage beyond the $15,000 annual funding guarantee. Still, the two new bursaries leave graduate students in their senior years measurably better off, CUPE 3902 said.”
Read the full-text of the decision is available on CanLII: Governing Council of the University of Toronto v CUPE Local 3902, Unit 1, 2015 CanLII 38167 (ON LA)
The Globe and Mail, July 6, 2015: “University of Toronto wins arbitration against teaching-assistant union,” by Simona Chiose
