OCSU Statement of Settler Colonialism in Palestine

30 days cannot begin to encapsulate the profound agony endured during 75+ years of occupation. This month marks a devastating milestone, with over 10,000 lives lost in Gaza, and thousands more missing, unmarked, and unidentifiable.

The OCSU has always been a champion for student voices, but our silence has been a deafening contradiction of our principles. We would like to make it clear that genocide should never be a subject of neutrality.

We grieve for the loss of homes, dreams, aspirations, and lives affecting men, women, and children. We mourn for the loss of safety. We ache for those left orphaned and widowed, for the martyrs and survivors. We mourn the dispossession of Indigenous Palestinian land and civilians. 

We stand in solidarity with our Indigenous and Racialized peers who bear intergenerational traumas stemming from settler colonialism, land seizures, apartheid, and genocides.

We have the responsibility to educate ourselves on the history and context of this dire reality. We extend our compassion to the Palestinian, Arab, and Jewish communities who have shouldered the unfair burden of tirelessly educating us whilst continuously fighting for their own humanity. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people who risk their lives daily to document and communicate to the western world. They speak to us in a language foreign to them, pleading with us to witness their struggle and to see their humanity. We stand by the Jewish community, whose grief and fear have been exploited by corrupt, greedy, and oppressive systems to enact a cycle of continuous violence.

To our peers, community, and members, we implore you to:

1. Call upon the House of Commons in Parliament to require the Prime Minister to take the necessary measures to address the Israel-Palestine conflict

2. Call for an Immediate Humanitarian Corridor in Gaza

3. Take the time to learn with us and review these resources

• All the Walls Will Fall: 2023 Palestine Liberation Resource List Curated by the Popular University of the Palestinian Youth Movement

• Unveiling the Chilly Climate: The Suppression of Speech on Palestine in Canada, written by Sheryl Nestel and Rowan Gaudet and published by Independent Jewish Voices

• Okanagan College Library’s exhaustive resource list 

No amount of words or expressions of compassion and solidarity can ever fully capture the overwhelming grief, tragedy, suffering, and trauma brought about by this genocide. Above all, let us hold each other with more compassion and create space for learning, understanding, and collective grief. 

We maintain hope that through united efforts, we can persistently call on our representatives, sign petitions, rally, amplify Palestinian voices, and educate ourselves to demand a ceasefire. 

Collectively and individually, the OCSU acknowledges our ongoing need for learning and unlearning. We must stay united to champion the liberation of Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Hawaii, the Uyghurs, and Indigenous People of Turtle Island, just to name a few. 

Liberation for one means liberation for all.

From the river to the sea,

OCSU

OCSU Letter of Support for First-Year BSN Students

April 11, 2023

The Okanagan College Students’ Union is writing to Minister Selina Robinson, the Okanagan College Board of Governors, Okanagan College Education Council, Carly Hall, Dean of Health and Social Development, the University of British Columbia-Okanagan Senate, the Kelowna MLA’s, and our OC Community in solidarity and support of our Bachelor of Nursing students and faculty. 

We are deeply concerned and disheartened about the recent announcement of the intended consolidation of OC’s 1st and 2nd year BSN program with UBC Okanagan. Our first year BSN students are being put in an unfair and nonconsensual situation and they have yet to hear of how they will be supported through this transition, aside from their seats in the program. A final decision may not be rendered until mid-summer by the OC Board of Governors and Education Council, plus the UBC-O Senate. The timing of the decision-making bodies will have serious financial, transitory, and housing planning impacts for these students as they have outlined in their letter to you.

It is deeply unsettling to see that, once again, Okanagan College students are not being considered or consulted on decisions which directly affect them, and that Okanagan College leadership is once again declining to communicate with the community and public.

We are furthermore shocked that the dedicated long-term faculty will be without employment and their instructional skills are not being utilized in continuing to help address the province’s nursing shortages.  

We are questioning how all of our community members who donated to the new Health and Science building in support of the BSN program, including ourselves, will be informed that their generous contributions are no longer going where they intended. Their funds are vital to this institution. 

OCSU is calling on the stakeholders of this consolidation to take into consideration the asks and concerns of the year one BSN students of Okanagan College, and to recognize the unfair predicament they are being forced into. We also ask you to support the nursing faculty who will be without secure employment this fall in a time when the province has committed to supporting nurses in BC in the face of our healthcare system crisis. Okanagan College leadership must address the concerns and predicaments these students are now in and  guide them in how they are to proceed from here as soon as possible. It is unacceptable for OC’s leadership to once again leave students in the dark over a decision that directly affects them.

In Solidarity,

Okanagan College Students’ Union Board of Directors