NSCAD student union to consider fall tuition strike if disclosure and divestment calls not met

The student movement for Palestinian liberation continues in Halifax, despite recent police crackdowns at other Canadian university encampments like York University in Ontario and McGill University in Quebec.

The student movement calls on their university administrations to disclose and divest financial ties to Israel’s occupation of and war on Gaza.

Students from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design–or NSCAD–have joined groups from four other Halifax universities to form a pro-Palestinian coalition, called the Students for the Liberation of Palestine - Kjipuktuk (Halifax)–or SLPK–that have set up an encampment on Dalhousie’s front lawn, since renamed Al Zeitoun University.
The SLPK has made a call to all their university administrators to disclose and divest from financial ties with Israel. The encampment has reached week four as of Sunday June 9.
The Student Union of NSCAD–or SUNSCAD–council released a statement on Instagram, on May 29, in support of the coalition’s encampment, in which they call “on all university and college administrators not to violate the right of students to protest and organize on and off campus.”
On Thursday June 6, SUNSCAD released another statement endorsing a tuition strike starting in the fall semester “if NSCAD has not, [by then], met the divestment demands previously released by the SUNSCAD Executive.”

Released publicly by the union on May 10, and sent to the university’s administration, these demands call on NSCAD to:

1. Publicly disclose the entirety of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University investment portfolio.

2. Immediately divest from all weapons manufacturing, military supplying, and companies operating in Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories.

3. Increase student representation on the NSCAD Board of Governors to 50% +1 seats.

NSCAD has not commented publicly on their students’ involvement in the encampment at Dal.

However, on May 17, the university administration responded to SUNSCAD by writing, in part, that, in order to “process trauma prompted by the horrors of war, we need to pause, discuss, look at our options, understand who is impacted on all sides, listen deeply, and work together to reach a place where everyone is heard.”

The university said they are creating a small committee of “student, faculty, inter-university, and staff reps to organize a series of discussions pertaining to war, divestment, university funding, conflict and de-escalation, peace, reconciliation, and diplomacy,” and that these conversations will happen publicly beginning in the fall semester.

In response, the student union wrote that “SUNSCAD will not wait months just to begin discussing NSCAD divesting from genocide.”

In their earlier released statement in support of the student coalition, SUNSCAD hinted at the potential for a future tuition strike.

Their statement called “on all senior administration and board of governors members to respect dissident responses from their student body as the students organize themselves in protest of their tuition funds being invested in entities that profit directly or indirectly from the genocide of the Indigenous people in Palestinian,” as well as a call “on all students to use their collective power in service of the constant struggle for a future with more justice and liberty than the present.”

SUNSCAD president, Owen Skeen, says “it is the responsibility of the students to get organized and to take actions when these things are going on.” Skeen also sits on NSCAD’s board of governors

as a student representative. The board of governors are an integral part of the university making any decisions related to investments and divestments.

Following Robert’s Rules of Order, which the university board governance uses, Skeen filed two motions to amend the agenda ahead of a recent board of governors meeting on Sunday, June 2. Skeen was hoping to raise the following motions for debate and a vote among members, following Sunday’s executive session:

“I move to amend the agenda by inserting [a] motion that all investments of NSCAD University be disclosed publicly’”...[and]

“I move to amend the agenda by inserting [a] motion that NSCAD University divests from all entities in its investment portfolio that are not consistent with BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions) standards.”

Skeen’s motions to amend the meeting’s agenda were dismissed. As a result, Skeen filed an emergency motion to bring the spirit of these two motions to the membership at a later date.

Skeen’s emergency motion was tabled and will be presented at the board of governors’ Financial and Physical Resources Committee meeting on Tuesday, June 11.

The next full board of governors meeting is scheduled for June 27.

SUNSCAD explained in their June 6 post that a tuition strike for the fall is being floated as a result of inaction on disclosure and divestment and students not knowing “the extent to which [NSCAD] is complicit in the genocide of the Indigenous people of Palestine.”

Further, the union’s executive statement, as endorsed by council, said that “until we know exactly where our tuition dollars go, and until we have ensured that NSCAD has divested from all entities directly or indirectly supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people, there is a strong argument for withholding our funds.

“By not paying our tuition, we are directly refusing the possibility of our money going toward the murder of innocent civilians in Gaza, as well as putting a potentially immense financial pressure on NSCAD to divest.”

How would a tuition strike work? It requires organizing the entire student body.

Skeen says the general membership of the student union–i.e. students of NSCAD–”would need to vote in favour of any kind of strike because that’s not something the executive can decide.”

As the president of SUNSCAD, Skeen can call a referendum for a vote, “but a referendum can also be called by a petition for referendum being signed by a certain number of students,” says Skeen, as per the student union’s by-laws.

Then, if a referendum is called for a tuition strike, for example, SUNSCAD would need to hire a chief returning officer to run the referendum, including giving students ample time to respond to it.

Once a referendum is complete, says Skeen, “it overrides all other decisions that can be made and would be mandating the union” on whatever the referendum decides.

NSCAD’s published 2023 financial statement shows that nearly 40% of the university's operating budget came from student tuition and fees, with nearly 45% coming from government grants.

Reads SUNSCAD’s June 6 statement: “With the way NSCAD is organized now, on a tuition-based financial model, NSCAD needs our money to function.

“We will not let this power of the students go unrecognized.”

Lauren Phillips, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Coast