SAC Appointments to be ratified but... are they impartial?

As some of you may or may not know, it was decided, after the unconstitutional decision made by the BOA Chair Federico Carvajal, that the current Student Arbitration Committee ("SAC") would be relieved of their duties and that five new student arbitrators would be chosen to preside over the appeal brought forward by Renaud Garner regarding the most recent SFUO elections' results.

Today is Friday, March 20 2009 which means that exactly seven days have gone by since the special BOA meeting that took place on Friday, March 13 2009 in the Senate Chambers in Tabaret Hall.

I can't help but wonder who might have possibly seen themselves willing to apply for a position on a committee (the SAC) that will be entrusted with the power to decide whether or not Seamus Wolfe, Roxanne Dubois, Julie Séguin and Jean Guillaume (from now on known as "the accused") are guilty of having formed a slate during the last SFUO elections' campaign.

Also, another question comes to mind (which is the main reason for me writing this blog on this beautiful Friday afternoon): How will we know for sure whether or not these new SAC student arbitrators are in fact completely, one hundred percent impartial? Technically, it's a well known fact that it's almost an impossible task. It's also important to mention that Dean Haldenby, the current President of the SFUO, is a member of the selection committee that will be entrusted to select the five new student arbitrators. The selection committee will then forward its recommendations to the BOA which, during Sunday night's meeting, will be voting to ratify those recommendations.

First of all, I must say that it will be hard to see any decision made by the SAC as a legitimate decision due to the fact that the BOA Chair Federico Carjaval unilaterally decided to pass last Sunday's motion after at least 1/3 of BOA members abstained from voting not once, BUT TWICE. In a normal situation, such a motion would have failed and would have had to have been tabled at the next BOA meeting. But, as I said before, Carjaval UNILATERALLY decided that the motion would carry even though it seemed quite clear to everyone in that room that he was going against the SFUO Constitution.

Secondly, I think it was unfair that the current SAC student arbitrators were relieved from this case because these people (or most of them) have been the SAC's arbitrators throughout the year and have presided over a number of appeals during this academic year. If they are relieved from THIS particular case due to some apparent irregularities, how can students trust that the decisions they made in other cases were actually the right decisions? It's important to note here that these arbitrators were the ones to have declared that it was in fact constitutional to implement the electronic vote during the recent SFUO elections'. Should the legitimacy of that case be put into question? Might it be necessary to go through the whole voting process again without the electronic voting because we're not sure that the SAC's decision was the right one? The last scenario is absolutely crazy and is just an example I am giving to further demonstrate that the idea of choosing five new SAC student arbitrators that are completely impartial, within the time span of a week, is just as crazy.

Well, I guess we’ll have to just sit back and see what actually does take place at Sunday night’s BOA meeting.