Letter: The Hive Board of Directors Shows Solidarity to the SEIZE Project

The Hive Café Board of Directors Rejects the CSU Adopting the Role of Student Voice Gatekeeper

LettersThe Hive Café Board of Directors — Published March 5, 2019

On Wednesday, Feb. 20, CSU council voted against the voices of over 900 students calling for the inclusion of a referendum question on creating a solidarity economy incubator in the regular elections.

The referendum question was not only supported by hundreds of students in a petition, but followed a previous union referendum mandate which garnered over 80 per cent support, and a unanimous recommendation from the CSU’s own policy committee. SEIZE, the group putting the question to ballot, followed all CSU regulations on the matter.

Furthermore, the CSU council used a secret ballot to vote on the issue, shrouding their accountability to their membership and mandates.

As a solidarity economy organization that has worked closely with and endorsed the SEIZE campaign, we consider this behaviour by the CSU undemocratic and contrary to the values of the union. The Hive Café was a CSU student project before becoming a student-run solidarity economy business, and exists today in spite of similar attempts to arbitrarily undermine its creation.

As the Hive Café Board of Directors, we reject the CSU adopting the role of gatekeeper for the voices of its students. We call on the CSU to immediately reverse its decision, to give students back their right to vote on their own campaign, and to restore faith in the democratic processes of our union by calling a vote in the general elections.

In solidarity,

The Hive Café Board of Directors