CMSA Meeting Minutes - May 14, 2024
Tues May 14, 2024
Present: -
Absent: -
Regrets: -
Minutes
Joint statement regarding police violence and encampments
Encampments at UofC and UofA were met with a lot of police violence
Condemning police violence against this is a good thing to do
Organising a joint statement between western Canada med schools about this
Very up in the air, no firm timeline
Currently trying to coordinate meeting
Alberta, Calgary, Sask on board as of now
Can we add more to this statement from the humanitarian perspective?
Would this make us safer?
As it stands, the goal of this letter is supporting students having the right to protest
Israel-Palestine statement
Not much communication between CMSA and Palestine Advocacy group since our last meeting
Spinies to host a town hall on why we have not released a statement
This is known by the whole Spiny class
Increased pressure on the CMSA should be expected after this
Current options for releasing a the statement
Don’t release a statement
Release the current statement with slight modifications
Focusing on mistreatment, discrimination, racism, etc.
Release a statement similar to Evan’s
Have discussed reasons against this as a group in the past
Jewish students still against the statement
Concerns voiced:
Not humanising the Jewish and Israeli perspective
If we release it as is, it seems sided, in their opinion
Want to see a statement that there has been Jewish and Israeli suffers as well
Don’t want them to comment on conflict itself because they believe it is outside our scope
Ie. If we want to focus our statement on mistreatment, discrimination, racism does it need to mention all the other stuff in the Middle East
Ie. If we want to call our admin on lack of mistreatment, lack of protection for students, etc., why can’t we just have a general statement?
Should be context around the statement
Ie. tearing down the art piece
Commenting on humanitarian piece falls under our jurisdiction as medical students
Not political context
To what extent do we touch on humanitarian, global context in the statement?
To determine the content of the statement we need to have a concrete goal and purpose of the statement
Should the historical perspective be included in our statement?
Action Items:
Complete drafts to present to CMSA for our second May meeting
CMSA to vote on contents of Israel-Palestine statement