Engineering director Pierre Harfouche’s three motions were not approved at Tuesday’s University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) Board of Directors meeting, effectively removing opposition motions from the agenda of the upcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM).
The first of Harfouche’s motions called on the UTSU to support the stance of fee-diversion-seeking divisions at the Student Societies Summit. The third was a charter amendment that would allow a division within the university to decide by an intra-division referendum to divert fees from the UTSU.
Both Harfouche’s first and third motions were ruled out of order by the Board of Directors as bylaw amendments would be needed before their submission. Though Harfouche aimed, in the phrasing of his motions, to avoid making bylaw amendments, the UTSU considers it an atttempt to work around the established procedure. “In conversation, Mr. Harfouche admitted that he phrased the motions in the way that he did in an attempt to avoid having to make bylaw amendments, which must be approved by the Board of Directors according to the Corporations Act,” commented UTSU president Munib Sajjad, adding that “This doesn’t stop the fact that his motions require bylaw amendments.”
Harfouche’s second motion called for the appointment of new representatives from the union to the Student Societies Summit, the focus of which is the questions around fee diversion. This motion was similarly ruled out of order on the principle that it seeks to undermine the university administration’s stance against the changing of Summit members. This position has been acknowledged by other members of the Board of Directors, though Yolen Bollo-Kamara, vice-president, equity, and one of the UTSU’s representatives at the Summit, was unavailable for comment.
Harfouche said he was happy to be present at Tuesday’s meeting. According to Harfouche, the last occasion when his motions were discussed, he was not informed of the location, time, or even that his emails had been received by the union until after the meeting had taken place. Harfouche outlined the timeline of his exchanges, saying; “On Monday, I submitted the motions, on Wednesday, I emailed the UTSU asking them to confirm again, and on Friday I finally got a response that they had seen them. What they didn’t tell me was that a day earlier at 9:00 am they had already had a meeting and already ruled them all out of order.” He says he was told after the fact by the UTSU that he would have had to ask to get details of the meeting, “and I was like, ‘well why didn’t you tell me about it,’ and they said ‘oh you’d just have to ask’ and I was like ‘well, how am I supposed to know?’” The UTSU commented that since Harfouche attended the Policy Town Hall, where procedures for submitting motions were outlined, it was expected that he would be aware of the union’s policies.
Harfouche’s concerns about communication are echoed by Aimee Quenneville, who represents University College on the board. Quenneville said that in order to gain any information about the Student Societies Summit at any point so far, she has had to ask the executives directly. “We have not been informed at all,” she remarked. “I didn’t even know that the Student Societies Summit was taking place at all, and I was informed by the vice president of the University College Literary and Athletic Society. That’s how little we were told.” Quenneville also gave credit to the executives who have been trying to make the UTSU more transparent and accessible, but added that information has not always been forthcoming, especially considering the comparatively small number of members of the Board of Directors.
Some members of the Board of Directors are more concerned about the exclusion of these motions from the UTSU’s November 27 AGM. UTSU director Ben Coleman was one of the few who challenged the ruling. For him, it was a question of principle that motions for the AGM be as inclusive and representative as possible. In an email to The Varsity, he said: “If I were Pierre, I would have taken a different approach. However, I challenged the chair’s ruling because I believe we have a duty to consider motions from our members as fully as possible, regardless of whether or not we agree with them.”
Similarly, while recognizing that the motions contravened standing bylaws, Quenneville expressed measured support for their inclusion in the AGM: “I think that because this discussion is so important to students right now, it is something that should be brought to students for their own understanding and their own interpretation.” Benjamin Crase, also a director, and one of Trinity’s Heads of College, challenged the rulling as well, going so far as to say that Harfouche was “stonewalled.”
Even so, Crase does not see the AGM as the setting for questions of fee diversion. “It is a question that should be answered by an open and democratic referendum process held by the constituency in question, recognized by the University as outlined in University policy,” he wrote to The Varsity. The UTSU was pleased with the outcomes of Tuesday’s meeting, and said that the executive is looking forward to the AGM.
