Transparency and accountability took centre stage at UTSU’s annual general meeting, pitting union executives against those who wanted better access to documents. After a two-hour discussion, UTSU members decided against changing the way students access the minutes from meetings.
All full-time undergrads at St. George campus and UTM are UTSU members. The union represents 41,000 students.
The wrangling over minutes began when Jamie Auron, president of the University College Literary and Athletic Society, introduced an amendment that called for UTSU to post all bylaws, budgets, and meeting minutes online by the new year. Confusion and disputes over bylaws regularly come up during spring elections that choose next year’s execs.
Union executives didn’t want to make their meeting minutes public. UTSU president Sandy Hudson had first argued that Auron’s proposal didn’t meet techical standards because it called for a permanent change to how documents are accessed. According to bylaws, the execs can make decisions that apply only to the current year. Auron then amended his motion, requesting documents only from past years and this year.
VP external Dave Scrivener proposed removing online access to minutes from Auron’s amendment, saying students can already get the minutes through their board of directors representative.
As students lined up at the microphone to have their say about the amendment, it was clear Scrivener’s argument didn’t sit well with many of them. Students also complained about poor accessibility, citing absent directors and inconvenient UTSU office hours.
“Running a club is difficult without the minutes,” said Catie Sahadath, president of of the Rotaract Club.
Adam Awad, newly appointed VP of university affairs, said the meeting minutes could confuse or mislead students. “[The minutes] are not always clear and don’t always include context,” he said. Auron responded that it’s UTSU’s responsibility to make minutes clear, and that the union doesn’t have to approve previous minutes if they’re faulty. The meeting format did not, however, allow for a back-and-forth debate on the matter, as students took turns to address the speaker.
Hudson said her main concern was that the U of T administration would see UTSU’s plans for upcoming campaigns if minutes are made public. She said current minutes record discussions, which is information she doesn’t want the admin to have, arguing “our minutes are more transparent than they need to be.” Though she agreed with the “spirit of the proposal,” said Hudson, “We have to make sure that we’re not shooting ourselves in the foot.”
Auron put forward a modified amendment to address Hudson’s arguments: instead of minutes, why not post audio recordings behind a password-protected system?
But VP internal Adnan Najmi said that the union barely has permission to contact members by email, let alone set up a system that authenticates against U of T’s databases.
Judging by the final vote, meeting attendees agreed with Najmi. They voted to post bylaws and budgets online, but the contentious issue of meeting minutes remained unresolved, other than Hudson’s passing remark about creating a working group to investigate options.
