If you don’t know much about U of T’s Governing Council, the U of T Students’ Union wants to loop you in. After GC cancelled its first meeting of the year saying it didn’t have enough business to attend to, UTSU decided to hold their own mock GC meeting in the Sidney Smith lobby last Wednesday. GC is the university’s highest decision-making council, and student leaders argued that their input is limited.
“Students have eight seats on [Governing] Council out of 50. If we do show up, we get outnumbered on any vote and all of the Governing Council decisions affect us in some way or another,” said Carol Rodrigues, who sits on UTSU’s Board of Directors as one of the Woodsworth College representatives.
On Wednesday, demonstrators played the roles of various GC members, giving a performance of how they saw this year’s implementation of flat fees for full-time arts and science students—that is, without any real say from the students directly affected.
Jessica Denyer, volunteer coordinator at the Sexual Education Centre, said she could easily think up multiple items for the GC to discuss. “Flat fees, the details on the current state of the endowment that were revealed by their Business Board, discussing the various programs being dismantled right now, the impact of the economy on admissions … that’s four just off the top of my head,” she wrote in an email to The Varsity.
UTSU filmed the mock meeting and intends to show it as widely as possible. “We’re hoping to raise awareness and have people really [get involved with] the Reform GC campaign, which we will be launching shortly,” said UTSU president Sandy Hudson.
