First and foremost, the GA YES Committee would like to thank all of our campaign volunteers for the hard work that they did over the past several months. To everyone that signed the initial petitions and helped with signature collection, to those that did class-talks, walked people to the polls, encouraged people to vote online, told their friends about the campaign -thank you. Without your support, none of this would have been possible. Without your efforts, over 1100 students wouldnt have voted for General Assemblies. While it is true that we didnt reach quorum, gathering 3.9% of undergraduate voters when 5% was needed, we shouldnt be too disappointed. We undertook something that had never been tried before in English Canada and nearly succeeded on our first try. And we should really emphasize that this was simply the first attempt; the responses we got to the campaign were overwhelmingly positive. The political culture of the SFUO needs changing, and one bad vote isnt going to stop us from doing that. So why didnt we reach quorum? There are a number of answers to this. We could point to the fact that students are preparing for exams currently. The recent by-election may have made students tired of voting. Bad weather certainly didnt help. The SFUO could have been more active in its promotion of the campaign. By way of self-criticism, a number of our organizers were inexperienced when it came to a campaign of this magnitude. But what is important is that we have learned from this experience -skills have been acquired and will not be forgotten- and that weve built a solid foundation on which to move forward. So what now? Over the next month we on the GA YES Campaign will re-assess our strategy to see what worked and what didnt. We will examine whether or not it makes sense at this point to call for a second referendum during the February elections, or whether we should wait until the next Fall semester to re-launch the campaign. We remain committed to the idea that a referendum is the only legitimate way this issue can be decided. uOttawa campus certainly has not heard the last of us. In the mean time, for those of you that wish to continue to organize toward progressive and revolutionary changes on our campus, we encourage you to get involved with the Marxist Students Association, the group which initially launched the campaign. We will be holding an introductory event on January 15 to introduce people to the Revolutionary Student Movement and the uOttawa Marxist Students Association; details will follow soon. At the end of the day, this was a valiant first effort. Weve learned a lot and we will not give up. As one of our organizers put it after the results came out last night, GAs are still inevitable. Solidarity!
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 19:19:55 +0000
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