What's Going on at RSU

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I ran in the recent RSU election so it is impossible to say this is without bias. If you don’t feel this is a fair assessment of what is going on, feel free to check out the Eyeopener and Ryersonian’s coverage of the RSU. What I can say however, is that none of us who ran are trying overturn the election or get ourselves installed as execs. We just continue to be disappointed by the RSU — which was why we ran in the first place.

RSU 2020-2021 Year Overview

This will be far from an exhaustive list, but I will attempt to cover some of the big moments from the year that won’t get their own heading in this post.

• Only about 1 hour of training was provided to board members, with many receiving zero training despite multiple emailed requests
• The Course Union Director and Student Group Director positions were left empty the entire year
• The Board unanimously voted to release a statement in solidarity with Indigenous students, but the Executives never wrote it or released it
• The Board voted to support the FCS student society and provide them with a letter, but the Executives never wrote or sent it
• Multiple committees that should be open to students were either closed to students or completely never met the entire year.
• I proposed a new committee (the COVID Response Committee) that got approved, but then I was blocked from being on it, it never ONCE met, and they stole all my ideas for it and used them for ADAPT’s campaign points
• Zero executive reports were ever written or presented to the Board
• Only one financial report was ever presented to the Board, and none were ever presented to students

Overall, zero accountability, zero transparency and the entire year the Board members who ran on RISE with the Executives protected them from facing any repercussions for their actions.

Firing All the Staff

The Board was never consulted or informed of the staff layoffs until it became public knowledge. The RSU President, Ali Yousaf, is quoted both to the Eyeopener and to the staff who were fired stating that they were let go due to “lack of work”. This is clearly false since there was MORE work that COVID-19 caused for other students’ unions and organizations. Ali Yousaf then later admitted some staff were let go for other reasons, but that was only two of the fired staff. The remaining 5+ staff were never given a real explanation for being fired, and they have since re-hired for some of these positions which clearly shows there was work to be done and at least some of the staff were fired for likely personal reasons.

My Impeachment

I am still scared to speak about it because I don’t want them to try to sue me again. I tried so hard to make sure my impeachment was public so students could see the whole story, but that didn’t happen. What I can say is that it was completely politically motivated. Ali Yousaf even said a reason they should impeach me is because he knew I was planning to run for President in the upcoming election.

I was not given any of the “evidence” they had against me before the meeting. Proper rules were absolutely not followed in my impeachment and the entire in-camera session was basically just me being yelled at and then trying to defend myself having had only about 10 minutes to prepare.

After my impeachment, when I was threatened with legal action in addition to being impeached, I brought the information to legal counsel. They laughed at it and said the RSU has no case and would likely drop it soon (they did) and I should bring this to the CBC because they’d love this. I planned to release all the information about my impeachment if I was elected, and I call on the RSU to do this since the information has already been leaked online by “Vanessa Higgins”.

Eyeopener article about my impeachment: https://theeyeopener.com/2020/12/breaking-rsu-board-member-impeached/

The Election

I truly don’t know where to start with this one. Let’s start with the “anonymous person” who reported us for going door to door in residence and forcing students to vote for For The Students. The CRO emailed us on the Friday of the campaign and threatened to call the police on us (since it breaks COVID-19 laws) and disqualify us. We very quickly proved it was false and the CRO refused to investigate who submitted this complaint. I know ADAPT was worried and was simply reaching for any possibility to get us disqualified. As is shown with my favourite screenshot from the campaign, they knew they were losing:

[image file lost in migration from old blog site]

The CRO election report failed to properly investigate any of the issues. The CRO took what the ADAPT candidates said at face value without any extra research. We now know at least two people were bribed with positions on the RSU to support ADAPT. Ria Arora (@riariaria.arora) posted to her Instagram her entire conversation with Vaishali Vinayak where Vaishali can be seen saying the following:

You can help us with our campaigning and I can definitely help you out during the term

Vaishali Vinayak, 2021

Earlier in the conversation she said the student group director position is open and later says:

It’s also a paid position as well. And its just one meeting a month. You will have the ability to steer around 100k in funds and you will be advocating for student groups

Not only is this absolutely corrupt, but also ironic since they left that position empty this entire year. Then, when Alexandra Nash put forward a motion to investigate and possibly impeach her for these actions the oversight committee claimed there was zero evidence to suggest election misconduct and Vaishali called the motion racist.

This doesn’t even get into the fact that now-RSU President Siddhanth Satish mass texted tens, if not hundreds, of students who he did not know (including members of the For the Students team and the Eyeopener) harassing them to vote for ADAPT. He received only 3 demerit points because the CRO believed he only messaged a “few” students. Vaishali was also caught pressuring students who did not know her to vote for her because she provided them with Good Food boxes.

Adapt also seemed to have inside information since they posted just after midnight that they were the only team with an international director candidate, before For the Students had posted ANYTHING.

AGM 2021

Leading up to the AGM, the RSU posted once on their Instagram story advertising it. There was nothing else, no emails, no event pages, no posts that wouldn’t disappear after 24 hours. We did not reach quourm (100 students) after waiting 30 minutes past the start time.

Watch this video of the 2021 AGM (don’t worry its only 41 seconds) to see what happened next:

At the AGM that they decided couldn’t proceed (despite many other organizations doing so without quorum) and just read their reports and answer student questions they ended the meeting while a student was speaking. That student was Sam Rowan, a former member of the RSU Election Appeals Committee who resigned in protest.

We did not get to discuss anything at the AGM, pass any motions, or get to ask lots of important questions. Some of those questions are:

• Why is there $4 million unaccounted for in the audit? Why was the board not informed of it and where is that money now?
• Why does the audit of Ram Ganesh’s year have zero mention of the credit card scandal? Will RSU pursue legal action against former execs who stole money?
• What will the RSU do to ensure student data is not stolen again?

What Now?

Students have made it clear — RSU needs to do better. We need a students’ union that works FOR students, answers our questions, and doesn’t lie, steal and cheat. The issue remains that as long as their directors keep defending them there will be nothing students can do except dissolve the RSU. We need everyone who is saying nothing about this corruption to speak up and do their jobs to hold them accountable. If that doesn’t happen, the only path forward is to dissolve the RSU and start fresh.

Follow @forthestudentsru on instagram to stay updated and fill out this Google Form if you want to be part of the team to dissolve RSU.