Secret settlement with ousted KSA members is a travesty

By The Runner

Last Thursday, the KSA announced it had reached an out-of-court settlement with Nina Sandhu, an ex-director of the society, and Gary Dhaliwal, a former student and RAF affiliate. Both were suing the KSA after they, and 24 others, were ousted from the society last year.

Both sides agreed that the special general meeting held Nov. 30 was appropriately called and held, and that the impeachment of the old board of directors and creation of a transitional board at the meeting should stand.

The motion, which put the 26 people in bad standing at the meeting has been overturned and those named have agreed to wait three years before running in any KSA elections.

It gets better.

Both sides have agreed to keep the settlement confidential.

Kwantlen students have already had enough secret dealings. They made this clear last November. This decision is a slap in the face of the 300 plus students who braved pepper spray and repeated fire alarm evacuations to send a message that secrecy has no place in the student government.

This was supposed to be a transitional, caretaker board in charge of running the day-to-day operations of the society. This board was meant to call an election as soon as possible so that a duly-elected board could properly and fairly wade through the mess that was the KSA and put the society back on track.

This decision solves the current board’s pressing legal concerns, but it essentially indemnifies the former directors and RAF members — Aaron Takhar, Justine Franson, Nina Sandhu and Sean “Birdman” Bassi, among others — from nearly anything.

“The KSA, the former directors, current directors, and other individuals named in the special resolutions at the SGM have agreed not to engage in further litigation regarding past events relating to the society,” the press release states.

This caretaker board’s decision to settle the suit effectively buries all of the unanswered questions surrounding the original RAF/Aaron Takhar suit from 2006 and its settlement by family members who lied about their relations to Mr. Takhar last year.

“The out of court resolution was motivated by a desire to resolve all outstanding issues from the past in order to allow the KSA to move forward and focus on serving the students of Kwantlen Polytechnic University,” it reads.

A caretaker board that has made a monumental decision such as this is not, in fact, serving the students of Kwantlen. This board is failing to hold those to account for their actions in exchange for a three-year promise.