The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) has sent two sweeping amendments to the Elections Procedure Code (EPC) to the Board of Directors for ratification. The amendments, if passed, will give the Elections & Referenda Committee absolute discretion to override the EPC in circumstances beyond the UTSU’s control, in order to uphold the spirit and principles of the elections.
Additionally, the amendments will require all candidate endorsements to be approved by the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) before being made known to the public.
Kaleem Hawa, chair of the Trinity College Meeting, expressed concern with the amendments. “You will be, in essence, providing broad and wide-reaching authority over the outcome of elections in times of stress and confusion to the very people who have enjoyed near-complete incumbency for the last decade of student politics,” Hawa said.
Hawa also expressed concern with potential for abuse of the system, citing allegedly unclear wording and lack of explanation as to when the CRO may block an endorsement or use it as grounds for a penalty.
“Given that CROs in the past have been known to show bias in favour of the UTSU with their distribution of demerit points, this provides yet another avenue to entrench the UTSU’s incumbency and limit democracy at U of T,” he added.
The amendments were contained in the Board of Directors package for Monday, September 29. The 197-page document was sent out four days before the Board of Directors meeting, with the minutes of the ERC meeting among its contents. The package is dated Friday, September 22, although September 22 was a Monday.
Teresa Nguyen, president of the Engineering Society, expressed her frustration at the short time frame between the meeting date and when the package was sent out.
“To be quite frank, with the engineering schedule, we have a lot of classes. I think it’s actually unacceptable that the UTSU think it’s appropriate to release the package the Friday before a Monday meeting,” Nguyen said, adding: “It gives students no time to adequately look anything over. It’s inadequate.”
The package also included 16 questions for a plebiscite on the proposed Board of Directors structure to be held in advance of the Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, October 29. The questions are structured as follows: “Do you believe that international students should have direct representation to the University of Toronto Students’ Union board of directors through an individual who is elected specifically to work on issues affecting international students?” This question is repeated 12 times, with “international” replaced by each one of the 12 groups on the proposed Board of Directors.
The question pertaining to college and professional faculty–based student society representation is structured as follows: “Do you believe that college-based student societies should represent themselves to the University of Toronto Students’ Union through a committee?” The proposed board of directors structure does not include representation for individual colleges and allocates three seats for professional faculties. The UTSU did not respond to requests for comment.
