A number of motions proposed as agenda items for the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) have been referred to the Board of Directors for further discussion. The motions in question are a proposed alternative Board of Directors structure in light of the Articles of Continuance and two amendments to these articles.
There is also a motion on the table to move the AGM from Thursday, October 30 to Wednesday, October 29. If the Board of Directors approves this motion, the AGM date will be changed in accordance with the UTSU’s bylaws, which require that notice of the AGM must be given at least 21 days in advance of the meeting.
Ryan Gomes, vice-president, academic at the Engineering Society (EngSoc) drafted the alternative Board of Directors structure proposal. The proposal keeps the college and faculty definitions as they currently are and requests to enshrine these definitions in the new charter documents, created as per the Articles of Continuance, which govern the UTSU’s transition from the Canada Corporations Act to the new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act.
Additionally, Gomes’s proposal stipulates the creation of an equity committee, chaired by the UTSU vice-president, equity. This committee would be designed to address the desire for representation of marginalized communities.
The proposed committee is composed of 12 positions — many of which would represent the same students as the initial board restructuring plan — including a LGBTQ issues committee member and a racialized issues committee member. The committee would be required to provide recommendations on any suggested policy changes that would affect members of that community.
Gomes said that he sought legal counsel to ensure that his motion complied with bylaws and procedures that govern the UTSU.
“At the July board meeting, the UTSU brought in their legal counsel. They actually stated at that meeting that changes to the Articles of Continuance should go directly to the AGM and should not need any approval. So that was the assumption I worked on, and I just wanted to make sure that the motion that I drafted was not going against any bylaws and that we dotted our Is and crossed our Ts,” said Gomes.
However, according to the minutes of a Policy & Procedures Committee meeting on September 16, 2014, Yolen Bollo-Kamara, UTSU president, claimed that lawyers have stated that Gomes’s proposal is “highly inadvisable.” Bollo-Kamara said that she will recommend that the motion be defeated at the meeting of the board based on the recommendations from legal counsel, as recorded in the minutes of another Policy & Procedures Committee meeting dated September 22, 2014.
The minutes of both meetings were contained in a UTSU Board of Directors package dated September 29, 2014.
Two motions submitted by UTSU vice-president, university affairs Pierre Harfouche were also referred to the Board of Directors: one that would disallow cross-campaigning between executive candidates and director candidates and another that would forbid anyone who was not a U of T student, alumnus, donor, or staff member from campaigning on behalf of the candidates.
Harfouche defended the motions, saying that the first motion would make the process more fair for independent director candidates who have limited campaign funds. “This proposal will advantage people who will represent the community, and not people who have more friends U of T–wide who can give them money to run this campaign,” Harfouche said.
Bollo-Kamara said that she does not agree with the principle to restrict members’ rights to associate with others if they choose to, saying that it helps the membership to understand who would work well together.
“It’s no secret that Ryerson is five steps away. It’s no secret that, yeah, if you brought people from other campuses to help out in the election, you would have a lot more support… It’s just not right for people to come here and pretend they understand the issues on this campus or the complexities of the college system,” said Harfouche of his second motion.
Other motions submitted to the AGM agenda include one moved by Kaleem Hawa, chair of the Trinity College Meeting, Rowan DeBues, president of the Victoria University Students’ Administrative Council, and Benjamin Coleman, student governor.
According to Hawa, the motion proposes that all potential members of the Student Commons Management Committee immediately declare conflicts of interests and club affiliations, meaning that UTSU-appointed candidates will have to declare any connection to campus clubs — in the form of executive membership or endorsements — and recuse themselves from voting on space allocation for those organizations.
“Nobody likes paying money into a project they aren’t seeing progress on,” said DeBues, adding: “However, it is obvious that, given the current political atmosphere, having a student run, multi-million dollar facility could just present another area of disagreement, conflict, and abuse. As such, we wanted to preemptively work to make sure that the management of the building is as transparent and democratic as possible,” he added.
Although the University Affairs Board has approved the operating agreement for the Student Commons, the Executive Committee of the University of Toronto’s Governing Council has postponed approval pending the resolution of the ongoing fee diversion conflict.
Sandra Hudson, UTSU executive director, said that all three motions sent to the Board of Directors were also forwarded to legal counsel for review.
The Board of Directors is scheduled to meet on Monday, September 29 to discuss the motions.
