YFS accused of misspending

Raymond Kwan
Senior Staff
Allegations of misspent student funds and broken by-laws surfaced against York’s student union in the wake of last week’s visit from former British politician and anti-war activist George Galloway.
Former British MP Galloway spoke on invitation from the York Federation of Students (YFS) to a sold-out crowd of 500 students in Accolade East building about the war in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after having been previously banned from entering Canada by the federal government.
Gregory Kay, Schulich School of Business director for the YFS, alleges that, in hosting Galloway, the YFS broke the organization’s by-laws because the executives did not receive approval from the group’s board of directors, and thereby acted on their own without authorization.
Krisna Saravanamuttu, president of the YFS, explained his actions were well within the union’s mandate and maintains that no rules were broken.
“To be completely frank, the executive committee is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the student’s union. We report all of our activities at monthly [BoD] meetings through well-documented and well-developed board reports,” said Saravanamuttu.
“In addition, I would respectfully say that that’s an asinine-type logic. If we were to follow that logic, that means I wouldn’t be able to respond to an email or pick up a phone call until our monthly board meeting,” he argued.
Alex Bilyk, York’s director of media relations, confirmed the YFS hired five Toronto police officers at a cost of approximately $3,500 while York provided five of its own security officers for $2,400, a total of $5,900.
Saravanamuttu said he could not comment on the security costs because they have not yet been finalized.
According to Bilyk, in addition to the five officers already provided, Toronto police 31 division made their own assessment and decided to send an additional 15 officers for the event.
Toronto Police Constable Trish Mills, 31 division community relations officer, was not available for comment at the time of the publication.
Kay argued the YFS should never have spent any money in bringing in such a controversial figure to the campus.
“I think the YFS was founded to promote unity and they’re clearly not accomplishing that goal,” said Kay. “They knew this would be very divisive.”
“These aren’t the average views of the York population and for […] the YFS to advance their own political agenda through bringing in George Galloway appals the mainstream student body and is a huge misappropriation of student funds,” he added.
Saravanamuttu maintains that aside from the money spent on security, no student funds were spent to host the event.
“I think Kay may be unaware of or simply choosing to ignore the fact that the YFS made no financial contribution to have Mr. Galloway speak at York University,” said Saravanamuttu.
He also stated the money made from selling tickets for the event were donated to the Canadian Peace Alliance for their upcoming anti-war convention in March.