541 signatures--20 signatures off--new statement to UBC Accountable

Hello Everyone, The counter-letter is still doing its work. With the signatures just on the website in addition to the petition signatures, we've got 541 signatures in total. I'm also glad to tell you that Yann Martel and Alice Kuipers are the latest writers to take their signatures off the UBC Accountable Open Letter. If you are not following Kim Goldman's account on Twitter, that makes 20 total signatures off, and 28 added since the UBC Accountable open letter appeared. UBC Accountable originally said that they would revise their open letter to take the concerns of complainants into account. But they did not do this. Instead, a statement called "Procedural Fairness for All" has been put on the UBC Accountable site. This statement does little to change the import of the open letter. You can find it on the Counter-letter context page: URL is below. The statement has some good things in it, to be sure, but there's a lot that leaves me shaking my head. All of the principled responses to the open letter are ignored, and there is a discussion of social media "backlash" instead. And there still isn't much concern for survivors and no evidence they were ever consulted in the making of this statement. Worse yet, the open letter is still up on the site. What does this statement mean in this context? Who actually wrote it? Who actually works on and funds the UBC Accountable site? We still don't know. I am working with a couple of other people to write a reply to that statement, with the help of some of the complainants in the UBC Accountable case. Without paying attention to what complainants want, I believe that any effort to weigh in on this case at this point doesn't make much sense. When that statement is out, I'll share it here. As always, thank you for signing and to many of you, thank you for speaking out and offering support to the complainants. They told me that it means the world to them and gives them strength. Take care, Julie Rak