At the October General Membership meeting members voted to endorse the SFU Against Goldcorp and Gentrification (SAGG) letter against Goldcorp.  The four demands articulated in the letter are:

1) SFU remove Goldcorp's name from all buildings and projects.

2) That SFU administration develop procedures to give low-income Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents control over all SFU DTES campus developments (currently at Woodwards and Railway) and programs directed at low income residents.  SFU administration must not decide for DTES resident how to spend the $5 million earmarked for DTES "development" by Goldcorp.  The use of such money must be directed by DTES organizations with elected resident boards.

3) SFU must not accept funding from corporate human rights abusers like Goldcorp. We demand that the current backroom process for seeking and accepting private donations be replaced with a transparent and accountable policy to be developed by SFU students, faculty and the union community.

4) SFU administration advocate to put the public back in public education.  We demand full provincial and federal government funding for public education.

Please read the full letter and write to SAGG expressing your support.

As part of our week of action to put the public back into public education, the TSSU, GSS, SFSS, and SFPIRG invite you two talks.

On Monday, November 8th....

Looking Back, Moving Forward: A History of Activism at SFU

SFU has a reputation of being a radical campus that has fought for a wide range of social and political issues. This is in large part because of student and worker activism on campus. This panel will explore the roles that students and workers have played in shaping the learning and working environment at our university.

As we currently struggle with rising tuition fees and insecurity in our work, what lessons can we learn from the ways in which past SFU students and workers have organized to improve learning and working conditions at our university? Past students and worker leaders will help us to answer this question by sharing their experiences of campus-based activism.
Monday November 8th
12:30-2:30 MBC 2294

Featuring. . .
Mordecai Briemberg - former SFU Professor and Community Activist
Marcy Cohen - Former SFU Student Leader and HEU Research Director
Jerry Zaslove - Founding SFU Professor

Caelie Frampton - Former Coordinator with the TSSU

Refreshments Will be Served
*****

And on Wednesday, November 10th, right before the rally:

Where did the 'Public' Go in Public Education? Funding and Student Debt at SFU
MBC 2212 - Grad Lounge
12:30-2:30 pm

Tuition is rising, class sizes are expanding, and there is an increasing presence of corporations on campus. At the same time that the administration states that there is no money to keep classes size and tuition low, the university is expanding by building new campuses and new programs. What are the relationships between rising tuition, debt, and class sizes, and the privatization, and corporatization of our university?

This panel will discuss the current state of education at SFU and across the country from a number of perspectives: teachers, undergraduate students, and a graduate student will all speak on the effect of corporatization and cuts on public education. By connecting our experiences to the changes occurring in the university and in the government, we can work together to resist such policies and shape better educational experiences for the present and future.

Featuring. . .

John Henry Harter - Sessional Instructor at SFU
Jeff Knaggs - SFU Undergraduate Student
Myka Tucker-Abramson – SFU Graduate Student and member of the TSSU
Alison Hearn - professor at University of Western Ontario

Refreshments will be served.

For more information on both events, please email organizer@tssu.ca