UTSC students are headed to another executive election after a vote at an SCSU emergency board of directors meeting Wednesday night, which ended at 2 a.m.
The meeting was convened in the aftermath of the SCSU board of directors’ decision to reject the Elections Committee report on their 2007 executive elections, to air and debate options on what to do next.
SCSU chair Susie Vavrusa started it off with a presentation outlining current and possible consequences of the rejection. Vavrusa warned that the decision could threaten the job security of SCSU’s full-time staff if a complaint to Student Affairs results in levy dollars being withheld.
Central to her presentation were explanations of three different options for dealing with the SCSU’s uncertain future. The first was simply “doing nothing” and allowing the decision to wait for next year’s board to act.
Her second option was for another election to be held on April 9. Vavrusa warned that the date specified for voting would be a “UTSC Monday”-the last official day for classes at the campus. This means that the population of students on campus would be significantly lower than normal-which could drastically alter the turnout for the election.
Holding another election with the same Elections Committee would be “cooking the same steak twice,” Vavrusa pointed out, saying that “by voting against ratification, the board has stated that the Election Committee cannot follow procedure…and the Elections Committee should be fired and not be running the same election again.” Additionally, Vavrusa contended that the hiring process for a new Elections Committee would take a minimum of three weeks and would further push back the timeline for a new election.
The third option she presented was having the board of directors reconsider ratifying the Elections Committee report.
Following this, a document was presented regarding the collective sentiments of a group of former SCSU exectives, many of whom, such as Jeff Rybak, Lendyl D’Souza and Mathieu Dagonas, were in attendance. In their letter they insisted that if the SCSU board of directors believed its election process has failed, its only option was to hold another election.
Nonetheless, near the end of their letter they demanded the board ratify the results, suggesting that “any other decision saddles the students’ union with a precedent to suggest that a board may hold elections until it gets the result it wants.”
The board opted to hold the new election despite the urgings of Vavrusa and the others. Once again, the positions of president, VP students and equity, VP academics, and VP external will be up for grabs on April 9, in an election costing around $1,600.
“I’m exhausted, not tired,” said chair Vavrusa, after the nearly six-hour meeting came to a close, and with it a weeks-long elections debacle, pending a few more hurdles.
Of concern to the chair is the fact that the elections committee, contracted to run two elections during their employment, will have to agree to extend their employment period before any election can proceed. Additionally, the day of the re-election coincides with the last day of class for UTSC students and is a religious holiday.
The conditions of the re-election require a five per cent minimum voter turnout in order for the election to be deemed valid, about half the average turnout for SCSU elections in the past. In the event of a failure to reach this outcome, the board will try once more to ratify the initial Elections Committee report they rejected for the 2007 executive elections.
If voter turnout is between five and nine per cent of eligible UTSC students, successful candidates will serve their positions for a half-term until October, when another election will be held for executive positions.
“I’m really doubtful that [Vavrusa] can be reached…I don’t even know if I’ll be here,” said Vavrusa, laughing.
About the $1,600 price tag of another election, the three-year SCSU veteran had this to say: “That’s a lot of student money that could be, in essence, useless if we don’t have enough voter turnout.”
