At Norman Bethune Square on October 27, the Concordia Student Union, Überculture, Free Education Montreal, Sustainable Concordia, and Tap Drinkers Against Privatization (TAPThirst) gathered to protest the Concordia administration’s decision to sign an exclusive PepsiCo contract without student consultation.

TAPThirst, an organization that advocates against the bottled water industry, was the most outspoken of the groups and had been heavily involved in talks with the administration.

Laura Beach, sustainable ambassadors coordinator for Sustainable Concordia and a member of TAPThirst, issued a mise en demeure—a legal notice expressing student concern—to several members of the administration after they failed to consult with students before signing the contract with PepsiCo. Beach said the administration promised her verbally, and in an email, that students would be included in the negotiation process.

“Traditionally, we do not include students in negotiations for contracts,” said Chris Mota, director of media relations at Concordia.

Mota said the administration had intended to seek student input on the contract, and discussed setting up a meeting between student groups and PepsiCo. However, according to Mota, Concordia ran out of time and had to sign the contract because it needed a provider.

“A decision was made at the senior level to sign the contract with Pepsi,” Mota said.

The Concordia protest occurred a few weeks after McGill students  rallied on September 22 against the closure of the Architecture Café. Like those at Concordia, McGill students complained that they were not consulted.

Both the Concordia and McGill administrations have tried to make amends. The PepsiCo contract contains a clause that gives the university the option to stop the company from selling bottled water. In addition, Roger Côté, the interim vice president of services at Concordia, is talking with student groups about the issue.

The McGill Senate recently created a “working group to examine how consultations and related communication with students are currently handled at McGill, and to recommend improvements,” said Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson, according to a press release issued by the university on October 19.

Michael Di Grappa, who started  his position as the vice president of administration and finances for McGill on November 15, is a recent import from Concordia University. Di Grappa was vice president of services for Concordia and heavily involved in the PepsiCo contract discussions. He didn’t agree with the view some students hold of the Concordia administration.

“I don’t think that you can extract from one particular issue … that there were problems,” said Di Grappa. In addition, he said, the contract included scholarships and job opportunities for students.

Di Grappa added that students were concerned only about bottled water.

“When someone is talking about the beverage contract with all of those elements, and someone is talking about bottled water, that is an infinitesimally small portion of the overall contract,” he said.

Beach, however, said there is more to student concerns.

“What happened this summer wasn’t just about bottled water,” she said. “It was about a more sustainable beverage contract.”

The Environmental Advisory Committee at Concordia made recommendations on the contract, and 35 members of the university’s faculty, from every department, signed on to the recommendations. The Committee’s suggestions, Beach said, were overlooked by the administration.

In addition to the environmental impacts, Beach said, “I haven’t met any student that wants to turn their university into a mall, [but] that’s what’s happening.”

Di Grappa said that while the administration tried to understand student concerns, “It [was] not clear who was speaking on behalf of the students and that [was] part of the problem.”

Holly Stewart

How can it be that 250 million children under the age of five are alive right now and don’t have a birth certificate? How can there be 13 countries currently listed by the United Nations’ Security Council that are at war with children engaged as combatants, as cooks, or as servants? How can there be an estimated 150 million children worldwide who are engaged in various forms of child labour?

These were some of the questions posed by United Nations Children’s Fund representative Susan Bissel on Thursday at panel discussion on international  children’s rights.

In a room of roughly 20 McGill students and faculty members, Nadja Pollaert, the director general of the International Bureau for Children’s Rights, joined Bissel to address the topic of protecting children’s rights worldwide.

In her remarks, Bissel stressed that even in today’s globalizing world, where social and economic issues are increasingly integrated, issues of children’s rights go largely unnoticed. She said this is a major  issue that we ignore all too easily.  

Bissel explained that a birth certificate is a document many people take for granted, but children without such documentation lack an internationally recognized identity.  

“Children without birth certificates, in theory, don’t exist,” she said. “They can fall victim to exploitation and violence and no one would even know.”

Bissel believes that robust international law could be the key to improving children’s well-being. She cited the Convention for the Rights of the Child (CRC) as an example of the highest international organization recognizing the need to not only address but also codify solutions.

The second speaker, Pollaert, focused her discussion on child trafficking, calling it “a trendy issue” in our current political and social landscape.

Her organization focuses on the key areas of sexual exploitation of children, children in armed conflict, children and justice, and general promotion of the CRC.

Pollaert addressed the critical role of the police in the issue of children’s rights.  

“Police are the beginning and sometimes the end of child victims,” she said.  

Pollaert explained that in some countries, instead of a source of protection, police are a main source of corruption, leaving the child nowhere to turn if they are being abused.

Pollaert also spoke on the increasingly difficult problems that have arisen in the children’s rights domain with the introduction and spread of the Internet.

“Young girls and boys are presenting themselves on the Internet and exchanging sexual favours for goods such as BlackBerrys or jeans,” she said. This leaves these children a vulnerable position locally and internationally.

After the talks, audience members were invited to give their thoughts and engage in a dialogue with the panelists.

Sam Goldman, a McGill alumnus and former history teacher, didn’t want to downplay the severity of the issues presented, but felt the most important issue was overlooked: permanent genetic malformations due to poor maternal health. Without tackling this problem at the source, he said, “we are dooming a considerable portion of the human race. This is a large problem getting bigger all the time.”

Bissel acknowledged the importance of this issue, but refrained from offering a comprehensive answer. She claimed that it was unfortunate that such a critical problem goes largely unnoticed but acknowledged that a significant portion of UNICEF’s $4 billion dollar budget is being spent on maternal health.

In her closing remarks, Bissel hoped for a future increase in the protection of children’s rights.

“The challenges are enormous,” Bissel said. “But so too are the possibilities for action, collaboration, and great outcomes for children and their families.”

In the face of numerous unanticipated financial difficulties that have come to light this semester, the Arts Undergraduate Society’s Executive unveiled their Financial Recovery Plan to the AUS Council last Wednesday.

“Like the real Marshall Plan, this isn’t just us throwing foreign aid at something,” he said. “It’s a plan to allow all parties to recover themselves.”

In addition to the deficit of approximately $30,000 incurred by Frosh, the AUS owes $18,000 to both the federal and provincial governments in back taxes, as well as $83,000 to the Faculty of Arts due to the organization’s failure to pay their share of the Arts Student Employment Fund.

The Marshall Plan, which is based around the four tenets of accountability, automation, solvency, and growth and partnership, is designed to address the AUS’s current financial challenges and to ensure that similar issues do not occur in the future. The first step in this process, Marshall said, was re-evaluating the organization’s business partnerships both within and outside of McGill. The assessment resulted in the dismissal of the AUS’s former accountant and the hiring of RSM Richter, a professional accounting firm, to manage the society’s books.

“One of the main advantages that attracted us to RSM Richter was the fact that they were able to provide us not only with an audit service, but with an entire team, a team that includes a tax attorney, legal advisors, and an accounting service,” said Majd al-Khaldi, AUS VP finance.

Thanks in part to RSM Richter’s negotiations, the AUS’s federal tax debt is now settled. While Marshall is still in negotiations with the provincial government, he said he is hopeful that situation will soon be remedied as well.  

“We’re now reaching out and trying to get help, because we’ve realized that the traditional perspective of … some student leaders … to kind of take on challenges and … refuse to ask questions, has been damaging for the AUS,” Marshall said.

In addition to revisiting the AUS’s accounting structure, al-Khaldi and Marshall have been working with the group’s banking institution, the Royal Bank of Canada, to revisit the AUS’s investments. According to al-Khaldi, this is long overdue.

“The AUS has had investments in the past, and since the financial crisis I would hazard to guess that they weren’t revised properly,” he said. “In that sense, we haven’t been using our money to its fullest potential.”

Marshall also emphasized the assistance the AUS has received from the Faculty of Arts administration, particularly with regards to the debt they owe on the Arts Student Employment Fund.  

“With regards to ASEF, we do have the dean’s support for a payment plan, so that’s going to be paid over the next few years,” Marshall said.

“The Faculty has had discussions with the AUS about the Arts Student Employment Fund, and we are working together on a plan that ensures that students continue to benefit from the Fund and allows AUS to meet its obligations without putting further stress on its cash flow situation,” said Dean Christopher Manfredi of the Faculty of Arts in email to the Tribune. “Student associations are independently incorporated entities whose relationship to the university is governed by memoranda of agreement. For the most part, the relationship should be governed by the provisions of these agreements, but everyone obviously has an interest in collaborating to ensure that funds are properly administered.”

Despite the difficulties they have faced this year, both Marshall and al-Khaldi emphasized that all student organizations can learn from the AUS’s experience. To help ensure that a similar situation doesn’t affect another campus group, the Executive is working on a document that will outline standard financial, legal, and tax procedures for student-run corporations in Quebec.  

“For legal purposes, we all have to be companies, but we aren’t great at running them, clearly,” Marshall added. “I’m hoping to share this with all student associations because there’s a huge benefit to sharing this sort of thing. I don’t want anyone else to ever have to go through the experience we went through with all of this. But it’s a great year. Student services haven’t been affected except in the positive.”