Threats of legal action and questionable financial reports dominated the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union board of directors meeting Friday, following SCSU’s Monday announcement that the campus pub Bluff’s would be closed indefinitely beginning Feb. 6.
While presenting Bluff’s finances, SCSU chief financial officer and interim accountant Cihan Ok admitted many of the numbers shown were incorrect, but blamed the accounting software.
Ok and SCSU president Zuhair Syed blamed the pub’s poor finances on mismanagement and miscommunication from the former Bluff’s manager Zalia Conde and former SCSU accountant Henry Climaco, both of whom they fired.
SCSU accounting analyst Safeen Sorathiya said he looked at the Bluff’s accounts during Conde’s two-month sick leave. He claimed the cost of food and salaries had doubled due to overtime wages and overstaffing.
Ok said he had not kept up with the pub’s finances because the reporting structure of the SCSU staff and interpersonal conflicts led to a lack of communication.
Ok and Syed also blamed incompetent SCSU staffers as one of the main reasons for the restaurant’s failure, but did not name anyone.
“There are some people within our corporation who just can’t do their job properly,” Ok said. “They’re not trained to catch mistakes. They’re not trained with a consulting background or a financial analyst background. They don’t have any type of accounting background.”
When asked what qualified him for the job of chief accountant in the interim period accountant Climaco’s was fired, Ok responded he had been a financial analyst for two years, worked in consulting for more than three years and also owned his own company for more than three years.
“My main job as owner of a consulting firm is how to make a company profitable,” he said.
Syed raised the possibility of pursuing legal action against media outlets and members of the board after the closure was reported in The Varsity, The Strand and Maclean’s online, though he did not give specifics.
Syed alleged the board was being unfairly targeted in the media and proposed legal action against an unnamed director of the board for “breaches of interest and confidentiality” after their comments were published.
According to Syed, SCSU currently only has one spokesperson for the organization. Other directors’ comments to media, he said, resulted in conflicts of opinion in print and raises serious allegations against members of the board.
Syed said at the next board meeting he would be speaking about “a number of actions” the SCSU could take in regards to “comments that are totally false and can’t be substantiated.”
“[The media] can’t write whatever they want and misquote whatever they like and spin the story the way they like it and personally attack people because they don’t like the positions they’re holding in the union,” he said, adding that a possible lawsuit is a way to make the media more accountable. “There’s writers out there who love to have this organization to fall down and would do anything to ensure that would happen.”
Syed also urged the board to impress on students that the published articles on Bluff’s only referenced unproven allegations, and to wait for the results of the financial audit.
SCSU Executive Elections are currently happening this week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in the Student Centre.
