London – A
motion was proposed at the Goldsmiths Students’ Assembly yesterday to
commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day and victims of genocide.
Education
officer Sarah El-alfy urged students to vote against the proposal, rejecting it
as “eurocentric”.
This
comes a day after it emerged the NUS voted against a
motion to condemn ISIS and support the Kurdish resistance on the grounds of
“Islamophobia”.
One
student added: “The motion would force people to remember things they may not
want to remember.”
Another
suggested she couldn’t commemorate the Holocaust because she thought the Union
was explicitly “anti-Zionist”.
One
of the students present said the proposal should be voted against as it would
affect the Union’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
RT: @drcab1e: <3 Sarah.
Wonderful support from Goldsmiths’ students on preventing Eurocentric motion going through. #GSUAssembly
— Sarah GSUEducation (@GSU_Education) October 14, 2014
The
unfortunately-named President Howard Littler said after: “Someone brought up
Israel-Palestine out of the blue but I made a point of information and said I
didn’t want to conflate the two.”
He
later audaciously added that the whole thing is just “a storm in a teacup”.
The
motion was proposed by Goldsmiths student Colin Cortbus who is also a Tab
reporter and helped write this story.
His
motion – which is posted below in full – failed with just one vote in favour
from Colin out of an estimated 60 present.
