PSSA Strike Cancelled Amid Controversy
Questions Surrounding GA Lead to Calls for Exec Impeachment
Editor’s note: a previous version of this article referred to Eric Moses as “VP External.” Moses is in fact VP Internal. The Link regrets the error .
Update: On Wednesday morning, the PSSA sent an update, signed by President Pier-Luc Therrien Pelloquin announcing that the strike was not cancelled.
“I would like to take this time to apologize for the mistake I made earlier yesterday regarding the cancellation of the PSSA strike,” wrote Pelloquin.
While still asking students to go to class today, Pelloquin reiterated that the strike will go into effect as soon as Thursday. He also suggested that another GA may be held on March 14 to vote on whether to continue the strike.
Early Tuesday morning, the Political Science Student Association sent an email to its membership informing them that the strike motion passed at the General Assembly had been “cancelled until further notice.”
The strike was adopted on March 1, and 59 students voted in favour of the mandate and 14 against.
The PSSA represents 1,600 students at Concordia.
“A lot of students have been vocal with the process that was taken,” said PSSA President Pier-Luc Therrien Peloquin. “They were not informed, [so] we wanted to give it another try in a few weeks.
”I think there was a communication failure,” he added, of the newsletter sent to students. “It was the first time we were sending a PDF file.”
Peloquin pointed to low attendance as the rationale for the cancellation.
“The general assembly was poorly attended, we made quorum of 2.5 per cent. There was no way to verify the students of political science for the voting because we did not have the set up.”
A new GA is not on the agenda, however.
“We feel, due to the fact that the [Concordia Student Union] general assembly will be taking place on Wednesday March 7, there is no need to hold a smaller assembly for political science students,” the newsletter stated.
The cancellation caused an uproar among some PSSA members. Facebook groups were saturated with messages from both sides, and a petition began circulating asking for Peloquin’s impeachment as early as Tuesday afternoon.
“I made a website called impeachpierluc.com on which I posted a petition letter calling for his impeachment,” said third-year political science student Nadim Kobeissi.
“Pier-Luc has been continuously against the strike, and I believe this was a conflict of interest for him to announce that he had cancelled the PSSA strike without asking the students.
“The vote was done on March 1, I don’t see any reason why this vote should be ignored,” Kobeissi continued.
PSSA VP internal Eric Moses announced on the PSSA Facebook group page that the email sent by Peloquin was a mistake and that the vote did conform to the ASFA bylaws.
“Please stay tuned for an official piece of communication to be sent out regarding the above mistake, and any other issues regarding this matter,” wrote Moses.
Eric Moses was not available for comments at press time
Stay tuned for updates.
— with files from Colin Harris
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