Open Letter to the AMS Council

The Student-Run Sexual Assault Support Center (SASC)

“The SASC is an independent, student-run centre that provides prevention, outreach and support services for people who have experienced sexual assault and harassment.”1 The SASC has been filling a necessary service for the past 16 years, since 2002. They describe themselves as being  “committed to the education, support, and empowerment of people of all genders who are survivors of sexualized violence as well as their friends and family”.2 Through their feminist, anti-oppression framework, SASC is dedicated to working towards ending all forms of violence. As an anti-violence organization, SASC supports anyone who walks through the door. No one gets turned away. SASC additionally provides support for individuals with issues other than sexualized violence as well.

AMS Decision to Cut SASC Support Services and the Repeal of this Decision

Recently the AMS announced it would cut support services provided by SASC.3 This decision was then reversed five days later after a backlash from the student community that included 2184 signatures on an online petition.4 During that time survivors and their allies took to social media to share their thoughts on the closure. Using the hashtags #savethesasc and #choicesforsurvivors students shared their stories and sentiments about SASC: the help that it has provided; feelings of outrage, hurt, and betrayal about this decision; and mistrust in the UBC service SVPRO that was intended to take on the role of AMS service SASC. Students were wary about whether SVPRO would have their best interests at heart, particularly in light of its close affiliation with the university and the AMS. Given the outpour of support and gratitude that the SASC has received from students and faculty alike, it is unclear why the AMS felt it necessary to cut the support services of the SASC. In fact, while SASC is open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, SVPRO is currently only open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekdays. It does not seem that students are dissatisfied with the services that SASC provides, although it has become apparent that the students have questions and concerns about SVPRO7.

Following this outcry, the AMS has apologized and repealed their decision.5  However, an apology is not enough. The five-day closure left feelings of mistrust and betrayal among UBC community. Many individuals feeling less safe on campus now than they did before and the situation had the potential to be retraumatizing for survivors. This decision was made despite the fact that UBC has been facing intense criticism over the past few years in regards to its sexual assault policy, and the way it has responded to reports of sexual assault.6–10 The lack of transparency in making this decision, including the absence of consultation and the choice to go in camera, also caused many students to lose confidence in the AMS’s ability to be accountable to students and look out for student interests. The decision-making process contradicted several of the AMS Executive Goals 2018-2019, including Team Goal #1, Student Engagement, which commits to “ensuring that [the AMS] better engage[s] and represent[s] students by going to where it’s accessible for them to involve them in decision-making” and the President’s Goal #1, Accessible Services, which commits to accommodating the needs of marginalized, discriminated and disadvantaged groups.11

Symptom of a Larger Systematic Issue: Addressing Inconsistencies in AMS Proposed Policies

What happened to the SASC is a symptom of a larger ongoing problem. During the March 2018 referendums, a fee-restructuring proposal was put forward that, if passed, would require the recipients of student fees to put their funding up for a vote every three years.12 These fees would include funding for vital resources for students such as the resource groups (including The Women’s Centre, Pride Collective, Social Justice Centre, Colour Connected Against Racism, Student Environment Center), Student Aid Bursary Fee, Student Legal Fund Fee, Childcare Bursary Levy Fee, and the Bike Kitchen Fee. If passed, this referendum might have meant the defunding of any of these important programs. However, this referendum also would have almost doubled the Sexual Assault Support Services fee every year, raising the fee from  $3.55 a year to $7.00, and securing the fee allocated to Sexual Assault Support Services as one that would not have to go through the renewal process every three years. This referendum came before the cuts towards the SASC had been announced, and at the time seemed as if the AMS had asked students to choose between giving more funding to the SASC or potentially defunding the resource groups. The particular way this Fee-Restructuring Proposal was composed forced students to decide between guaranteeing to fund the Sexual Assault Support Service or to fund the resource groups. This was grossly inappropriate as both resources are vital to the health and quality of life for individuals on campus. Additionally, neither the resource groups nor the SASC knew these two issues had been grouped into one referendum questions until after the referendum had already been released for voting. The Fee-Restructuring Proposal did not pass, in part due to pushback from the resource groups, however it does demonstrate a recent trend to cut funding for support services on campus.

To counteract this trend we, the resource groups, in collaboration with the AMS Bike Co-op and Bike Kitchen, have compiled a list of demands for the AMS. We believe that, if met, these demands will safeguard the funding that is needed in order to successfully run the resource groups, SASC, Bike Kitchen and other groups that greatly contribute to the quality of life at UBC. Securing these groups’ abilities to remain active parts of campus life not only benefits students and faculty at UBC, but also the greater Vancouver community at large.

Student demands for the AMS going forward

In the interests of preventing conflicts like these from occurring in the future, we are demanding that the current AMS Council:

  1. Explain how they came to the decision to defund the SASC. After a previous (failed) referendum question in March 2018 on changing funding for the resource groups while doubling funding for the SASC, the decision to entirely wrap up support services operations at the SASC on only three months of notice appears contradictory, and some insight into the discussions and deliberations that occurred on this subject — including, if possible, ones that happened behind closed doors — could help in letting the community at UBC understand why this change in course occurred, and might help to rebuild the trust of the resource groups and the SASC’s employees and volunteers in the AMS as an organisation.
  2. Take steps towards granting the SASC a greater level of organizational and operational independence. One organization we have looked at as a possible model for this change is the Student Radio Society of UBC, and its radio station CiTR. We do not feel sufficiently confident that future AMS Councils will never attempt to shut down the SASC — and by breaking the direct chain of command from the Council (and the AMS as an organization) to the SASC, this risk could be mitigated substantially. Clearly, given the example above, the AMS has a long history of giving funding to groups outside their control, and it would be beneficial to the relationship between the AMS and the SASC to adopt that kind of model, going forward.
  3. Make improvements to the decision-making structure of the AMS to prevent these disputes from ever reaching a stage of public conflict. The current model that AMS uses for decision-making is, at times, insufficiently transparent — and this especially applies in cases where their decisions affect marginalized students. Some changes on that front which would help:

    a)          Guaranteed minimum quotas of historically marginalized groups: women, people of colour, LGBTQIA2S+ people, indigenous people, and disabled people – especially the inclusion of peoples who represent more than one of these demographics at a time – in executive or council positions at the AMS. It is imperative for diverse voices to be represented. This may take form in a permanent seat for SASC and resource groups at AMS decision-making bodies.

    b)          To facilitate those quotas, the AMS would likely have to both promote running for council, as well as student at-large positions, more eagerly (so as to get enough students running), and, more importantly, improve their existing support to candidates for council – aiding students in getting the academic concessions, etcetera, that they need to be able to run for, and be present on, council.

    c)          Making all information that might be of use to students who want to participate in the AMS’s politics easily accessible – specifically, not needing to go out of one’s way to talk to AMS staff or volunteers just to get information that, by all means, should be available via a simple search on a website. In general, if there is any information that can be made more accessible, and doesn’t absolutely need to remain inaccessible, access to that information needs to be streamlined. In particular, this includes posting meeting minutes on a more timely basis, making committee meeting times, locations and agendas public, ensuring all AMS policies are publicly available and up to date, and maintaining a more accessible, clear, and user-friendly website.

    d)          Draft and make changes to AMS decision-making procedure to ensure adequate consultation of groups most affected, or in closest proximity, to the impacts of those decisions. The resource groups call on AMS council to enact an enforceable protocol that follows principles of full consent, intersectional and harm-reduction frameworks. This means the insertion of communication channels, negotiation tables, and self-determination (veto) of student groups with regard to decisions directly affecting their activities.

For instance, this would mean establishing a requirement that any decisions related to the SASC or sexual assault victims-survivors must be discussed with and voted on by the SASC and sexual assault survivors and that changing that requirement itself must be consulted and voted upon in the same manner.

  1. Implement concrete measures to make it harder for future AMS Councils to defund services provided to students, be they the resource groups, the SASC, or other ones. For example, instead of holding referenda on “fee structure changes”, substantial funding cuts to any service should require their own referendum question, which needs to be phrased to emphasize that this would be actively reducing the capacity or quality of an existing service by reducing or eliminating its funding. As well as restraining future Councils from possibly acting in a reckless manner without sufficient oversight and accountability, this would improve transparency, by removing the ability for large, far-reaching financial structure changes to include reductions to student services. Furthermore, the recommendation in 3d above, that the AMS Council should have to consult with groups affected by decisions and give them a vote on the decisions, should also apply to attempts to defund organizations.

Signed: The Resource Groups Allocation Committee, The Pride Collective at UBC, The UBC Social Justice Centre, Women’s Centre at UBC, Colour Connected Against Racism UBC, The AMS Bike Coop

 

Works Cited

  1.   CBC News. UBC student society reverses decision to cut support services at campus sexual assault centre. CBC News (2018). Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ubc-student-society-reverses-decision-to-cut-support-services-at-campus-sexual-assault-centre-1.4721963. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  2.   AMS SASC. AMS Sexual Assault Support Center: About Us. AMS Sexual Assault Support Centre (2018). Available at: http://amssasc.ca/about-us/. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  3.   Hamid, M., Holmes, M., Ilnitchi, C., Hakim, C. & Akuecbeny, K. AMS Statement on Changes to SASC. AMS (2018). Available at: http://www.ams.ubc.ca/2018/06/ams-statement-on-changes-to-sasc/. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  4.   The Gender Race Sexuality and Social Justice Undergraduate Association. #SaveTheSASC Petition. change.org (2018). Available at: https://www.change.org/p/ubc-alma-mater-society-savethesasc?recruiter=false&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=sign_checkbox. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  5.   Hamid, M., Holmes, M., Ilnitchi, C., Hakim, C. & Akuecbeny, K. AMS Apology and the Future of SASC. AMS (2018). Available at: http://www.ams.ubc.ca/2018/06/ams-apology-and-the-future-of-sasc/. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  6.   Hager, M. Criminal charges less likely in UBC sex-assault cases. The Globe and Mail (2017). Available at: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/criminal-charges-less-likely-in-ubc-sex-assault-cases/article34014500/. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  7.   Holmes, M. Submission to the UBC Board of Governors regarding Board Policy 131 and the Prevalence of Sexual Violence at UBC. AMS 1–7 (2018). Available at: https://bog3.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2018/04/6.3_2018.04_Policy-131-AMS-Submission.pdf. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  8.   McCabe, S. Part One: Then; One Year Later; Despite a shiny new policy, sexual assault survivors do not know where to turn for help at UBC. The Ubyssey (2018). Available at: https://www.ubyssey.ca/features/one-year-later-then/. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  9.   Kane, L. UBC denies mishandling sex assault complaints in response to human rights battle. CBC News (2017). Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ubc-sexual-assault-human-rights-complaints-1.4411398. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  10.   The Collective in Solidarity with the SASC Team. Letter: 16 years of support at the SASC coming to an unjust end. The Ubyssey (2018). Available at: https://www.ubyssey.ca/opinion/leaving-gaps-in-support/. (Accessed: 1st July 2018)
  11.   AMS. Executive Goals 2018-19. Available at: http://www.ams.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/022-19-Executive-Goals-Report-2018-19.pdf. (Accessed: 2nd July 2018)
  12.   AMS. Fee Restructuring Proposal For The Referendum Of March 2018. (2018).