McGill Student Speaks Out About BDS

At the end of of the last school year, my second as an undergraduate student at McGill University in Montreal, I applied to serve as a director of the Students Society of McGill University (SSMU). I did so because I was tired of the SSMU not serving the best interests of McGill students, and because I was upset by the repeated scandals that have plagued the organization.

When I applied, an older Jewish student with a great deal of knowledge about the SSMU told me that I needed to remove everything related to Judaism and Jewish organizations from my resume, or else I would have no chance of even being considered for the position. The idea that I needed to hide my Jewish identity and affiliations, in order to have a chance of being accepted into McGill’s student government, was deeply upsetting to me. Nevertheless, I complied, as I knew that the best way for me to facilitate positive change was by getting involved and gaining a platform from which to speak.

The SSMU board of directors is the student union’s highest governing body and has the final say on all legal, operational, human resources and financial matters. Due to my previous experience in student government, especially in dealing with legal and financial matters, and because I serve as the elected vice-president finance of the Arts Undergraduate Society of McGill, the largest faculty association at the university, I was chosen to serve on the board of directors in June.

At the beginning of this school year, the SSMU’s judicial board asked the board of directors to take a second look at a decision that it had previously made, but which had been ignored by the board of directors for 15 months. The decision asserted that boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) motions violate the SSMU constitution, because they are discriminatory in nature. At our board meeting, I vocalized my support for ratifying the decision and voted in favour of it.

Read More: CJN- The Canadian Jewish News