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