Democracy at its Finest

Written by John Nnamchi, Canadian student at McGill University, graduating class of 2017

The Student Society of McGill University (SSMU) has once again lived up to its notorious image as a tumultuous organization full of controversy in both its election period and actions of those who were elected. While previous years involved the hacking of a candidate's Facebook account, the distribution of personal messages, ad the president's victory being invalidated, a this year's events tops the leaderboard of utter madness.

The tension began when Igor Sadikov – an Arts Representative to SSMU and member of the SSMU Board of Directors (BoD) – posted a tweet reading "punch a zionist today". Student outrage and condemnations of inciting violence aside, SSMU only agreed to impeach Sadikov after McGill Principle Suzanne Fortier formally demanded that SSMU release a public statement demanding Sadikov's resignation. The anger amongst the student body due to SSMU's inaction to impeach was only multiplied when one week later, SSMU's VP External David Aird was bombarded with allegations of sexual assault from a group multiple female students. This time SSMU took no delay in forcing Aird to resign, but this does not seem to appease the student body in any way. The situation gets worse. The smeared reputation of its innocent members due to the actions of an irresponsible few has caused intense psychological distress amongst its executives. SSMU's president Ben Ger later resigned from his position stating "deeply personal reasons" while another executive wishes to do the same but fears doing so would incriminate himself.

As if this was not enough, controversy plagues this year's election period too. When VP External candidate was asked by the McGill Daily on his thoughts about the set of events that transpired, he laughingly responded "don't get caught". As you can imagine, social media tore Noah apart, and he was shamefully forced to withdraw from the race. Within a mere span of three weeks, SSMU has triggered a massive hysteria among the student body in both controversy and large-scale uproar. While many saw hope in this new incoming election, a technicality in the voting system forced SSMU to recall all votes that were cast on day 1. It seems that 2017 is not a good year for SSMU whatsoever.