Queen’s Students Vote to Remove Rector

Removal Centered on Israeli Apartheid Week Controversy

News Alanna wallace, cup ontario bureau chief — Published March 29, 2011

WATERLOO, Ont. (CUP)—Undergraduate students at Queen’s University have voted to recommend the university remove rector Nick Day from his position, while graduate students drafted a letter in support of academic freedom and Day.

Day sparked controversy at the Kingston, Ont. campus when he signed an open letter published on Rabble.ca with his position at the university earlier this month.

His article was in response to Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s statement calling Israeli Apartheid Week unethical.

Despite the results of the referendum, which took place March 22-23, the university has no policy for removing a rector. The rector only leaves office when another individual is elected to take their place, and the process of calling elections is a student matter, according to the Queen’s Journal.

A total number of 3,803 votes were cast during the referendum, meaning 26.7 per cent of students’ society members voted, a high turnout society speaker and chief electoral officer Rob Lee attributes to the referendum’s controversy and publicity. 72 per cent of those who voted chose to recommend Day’s dismissal from his position.

“Any time there’s a lot of controversy or debate around a particular issue or an election issue, you often get a higher voter turnout and in this case there was a lot of grassroots efforts by students and student groups to influence the vote one way or another,” said Lee.

However, the referendum results are only a recommendation that the university relieve Day of his responsibilities, said Lee.

At the same time, Queen’s graduate and the professional students’ society also held a discussion regarding the Day’s article. The society held an annual general meeting on Mar. 22 and spoke on the issue.
“Nick Day essentially commented and opposed [Ignatieff’s] statements and recognized the importance of academic debate, of political expression and asserted his personal and individual rights as a citizen to
be public on an issue as controversial and important as this,” said Andrew Stevens, a Queen’s graduate student who is a member of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and a former organizer of IAW events at the university.

Stevens highlighted the differences between the meeting held by the undergraduate society, where the decision to hold a referendum was based solely on the petition brought forward by students to have Day removed, and that held by the graduate society, where discussion surrounding the politics of Day’s statements was outlined.

“There has not been a straightforward debate about this issue at the [undergraduate level],” said Stevens. “When there was a meaningful discussion about this question and the politics around it, the [graduate society] members that were present actually supported the rector and supported the cause of freedom of expression.”

After much discussion, the latter society voted to endorse a letter in support of “academic freedom and Queen’s University rector Nick Day” with 99 students voting for the motion and 42 students against.

With opposing sides of the argument prominent at both meetings and throughout the referendum, Day expressed the importance of fostering dialogue at the university.

“I respect the democratic process and the results of both votes,” Day wrote in an email to the Canadian University Press. “I’m glad that students were active on this issue; as university students we should be engaged in our communities and express our opinions.

“It’s good to see that the study body has a healthy diversity of positions on this issue.”

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 28, published March 29, 2011.