Given that I've voted NDP in every provincial and federal election since I came of voting age in 2003, I also resent the attempt to spin this as some sort of a Conservative plot. You don't need to be a puppet or a pawn to have issues with NSPIRG's lack of accountability, behaviour, or even with the very idea of having an automatic levy on students to fund a highly politicized organization.
Ben Wedge has a lot of energy, and is something of an attention whore, but to call this "his" movement is simply incorrect. Wedge is only a first year student, and many of us have been troubled by NSPIRG's behaviour and lack of accountability for years now. The reason that all of this has exploded in the past few weeks has to do with a backlash against SMAC, a group of students whose members and objectives overlap with those of NSPIRG. They tried to stack the DSU AGM so that they could push through a series of short-sighted and radically left motions that would have been binding on the DSU. Many students were infuriated by this, and in gathering opposition, discovered just how widespread the concerns over NSPIRG actually were. That was how Stop NSPIRG came about - sorry to disappoint conspiracy theorists who envisioned Stockwell Day whispering sweet nothings into the ears of innocent, impressionable young students.
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Ben Wedge has a lot of energy, and is something of an attention whore, but to call this "his" movement is simply incorrect. Wedge is only a first year student, and many of us have been troubled by NSPIRG's behaviour and lack of accountability for years now. The reason that all of this has exploded in the past few weeks has to do with a backlash against SMAC, a group of students whose members and objectives overlap with those of NSPIRG. They tried to stack the DSU AGM so that they could push through a series of short-sighted and radically left motions that would have been binding on the DSU. Many students were infuriated by this, and in gathering opposition, discovered just how widespread the concerns over NSPIRG actually were. That was how Stop NSPIRG came about - sorry to disappoint conspiracy theorists who envisioned Stockwell Day whispering sweet nothings into the ears of innocent, impressionable young students.