Queen’s student says he’s forced out of election over support for Jews

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A Queen’s University student says his team was driven out of student elections because an activist group on campus targeted his affiliation with the campus conservative club and his support for the Jewish community after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

Noah Mawji, a political studies student, was planning to run with two others for the executive of the Alma Mater Society, the Queen’s student government. The election was uncontested — unless the student body rallied for a no-confidence vote, Mawji and his colleagues would have won.

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“There was not really a way to lose. It would take a miracle for thousands of students to randomly just for some reason vote no confidence to us,” Mawji said in an interview.

After their campaign launched, when Mawji was doing an interview on Campus Beat, a Queen’s University podcast, he was asked about a campaign that had organized against him, attempting to get students to vote no-confidence.

The group, called No Vote 2024, raised a few concerns, among them, that an uncontested election was undemocratic. The Alma Mater Society (AMS) executive is chosen by a vote of the student body. But in 2024, there was no team running, other than Mawji’s. Because of that, the electoral rules state that the ballot asks students whether they have confidence in the team before them. If enough students answered no, the team would lose and the executive would be appointed by the AMS assembly.

The “vote no” campaign also argued Mawji’s campaign did not have enough of a stance on the financial pressures facing Queen’s. Allison Mei, one of the founders of the No Vote 2024 campaign, told Campus Beat on Feb. 1, that they felt Mawji’s team wasn’t right to represent a diverse student population at a time the university was under such pressure. Mei said the team had few policy plans on social media and didn’t address the budget cuts and financial pressures facing Queen’s.

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It’s the group’s views on his politics that bothered Mawji.

“There have been multiple documented cases of one of the group members association with certain controversial, problematic societies. And because of that we believe marginalized groups on campus might be uncomfortable and anxious,” Mei said.

In a social media post, No Vote 2024 said Mawji’s team had an “unclear stance on pressing issues such as the movement to decololonize campus,” among others.

“Noah Mawji’s affiliation with Queen’s University Conservative Association is a concern to the student body,” the group wrote in a post on Instagram on Jan. 31.

I feel like I’m in danger now. People think that I’m an anti-Indigenous, anti-Palestinian student

In 2021 and 2022, Mawji was on the executive of the Queen’s University Conservative Association, which, in June 2021, condemned protesters who had covered a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in fabric and, also around the same time, condemned the toppling of a statue of Egerton Ryerson in Toronto.

“We support political diversity within student institutions however we believe John A. Macdonald should be remembered as the notorious colonist he was, whose legacy represents violent genocide and the erasure of Indigenous nations across Turtle Island,” No Vote 2024 wrote on Jan. 31.

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No Vote 2024 did not respond to National Post’s request for comment, sent via Instagram, and the Post was unable to reach them via email.

Mawji told National Post he had no role in the conservative association statement regarding Macdonald.

The group also raised concerns about Mawji’s presence at a Nov. 21 meeting of the Alma Mater Society, saying that Mawji was “aligned with the students at the meeting who called Palestinians terrorists.” In an Instagram post, the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights said that at that meeting, which saw delegations of pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students address matters on campus, one student “referred to students standing in solidarity with SPHR as terrorists and directly pointed at the group while mentioning the word ‘terrorist.’”

Mawji said he had attended the assembly with “some Jewish groups on campus,” but did not speak, didn’t hear anyone call anyone else a terrorist and was only there for 10 to 15 minutes.

After that, he said, the No Vote 2024 group had booths and flyers to distribute to students.

“Some of my friends went up to them, and speak to them, and they were saying, like, you know…. ‘He’s affiliated with groups, with certain Jewish groups on campus,’” said Mawji.

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“I was emailing the student government being like, how is this allowed? This is a smear campaign, like, I feel like I’m in danger now. People think that I’m an anti-Indigenous, anti-Palestinian student running around,” Mawji said. “And the (student government) was basically saying to me, this is not a smear campaign, they have the right to do this. Like, basically, suck it up.”

The Alma Mater Society didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“Our intent was never to start a smear campaign,” Mei told the Queen’s Journal.

“It was more just to be that competitor that they didn’t have from being uncontested,” Mei said.

It went on for a “couple of days and obviously was a very, very stressful period of my life,” Mawji said. His teammates felt that way, too, and one of them withdrew.

“I think that he just kind of got overwhelmed and things weren’t going our way,” Mawji said.

That colleague, Nico Brasset, told Campus Beat that he understood the No Vote campaign’s argument about the election being uncontested.

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“I think it’s only fair … that the students really have more options to decide who they really want to represent them,” said Brasset.

He withdrew from the campaign on Jan. 31. He said there were “major disagreements” between himself, Mawji and Jason Kim, the third team member. He also said it was fair for students to question Mawji’s political associations.

After Brasset withdrew, the whole team was disqualified. Instead, on Feb. 13, the student government met to appoint the executive team. The assembly voted no confidence after four hours of debate.

On Feb. 29, the AMS Assembly appointed three members to the executive team.

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