On March 28, the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) held a Board of Directors’ (BOD) meeting to discuss their new U-Pass initiative and changes in student levies. The union ratified the results of the 2025–2026 UTMSU Spring election in an emergency BOD meeting on April 2.

Executive reports 

Vice-President (VP) Internal Ronny Chen kicked off the executive reports by announcing the start of the hiring process for the next UTMSU’s VP Campus Life, which is the only hired executive position in the union. The job posting was open from March 27 to April 2. 

VP University Affairs Sidra Ahsan followed with updates on the union’s transition planning and legal support initiatives for students. 

She shared that the union is organizing a scavenger hunt for participants in its Academic Mentorship Program, which works with student societies at UTM to support incoming students. Afterward, the union plans to evaluate the program’s 2024–2025 mentors to determine how much each person will receive for their honorarium payment. 

Ahsan also highlighted the union’s recent meeting with Downtown Legal Services, where the union and the services representatives discussed the growing backlog of academic offence cases. “If someone reaches out for an academic offence or that sort of support, they often don’t hear back,” she explained.

“We… got some information on how [the legal services] triage people, how they decide… who to give priority to,” she added, noting that the UTMSU is planning joint training sessions with the legal services for their executives so they can “better advise [students on] certain issues you may… want to talk to a lawyer [about].” 

UTMSU President Joelle Salsa and VP External Daniel Ripoll then shared updates on the union’s transit advocacy.

They spoke about a recent meeting with the UTM administration, MiWay, and the City of Mississauga, where they presented the results of their student transit survey from November to February. The survey remains open for students’ responses as of writing.

“We presented the results of that survey, which showed what students need the most [and] their demands, according to over 200 student responses,” said Ripoll.

Salsa added that they also shared a geographic information system report with the administration, to support the union’s push for expanded GO Bus routes to campus. The report illustrates how long it takes students to commute to UTM from various areas around Mississauga. 

Based on the union’s transit survey and geographic report, Ripoll and Salsa recommended that MiWay expand Route 126 to operate all day; introduce routes from UTM to Milton, Brampton, and Vaughan; and add weekend services to the 110 and 101 Express lines. 

Ripoll confirmed that MiWay is already planning to implement one of these recommendations:  the expansion of weekend service on the 110 and 101 buses. 

“So that’s a potential improvement we can look forward to next year,” he said. Ripoll added that MiWay plans to release details in the summer or early next year.

Finally, VP Campus Life Joy Pius reported on a February Montréal trip organized by the union. She noted this year’s trip was longer and cheaper compared to previous years. Compared to the 2023 winter trip, which cost students from $335 to $625 for four days, the 2024 trip was a day longer, from February 18 to February 22, costing $286 per student. 

Levy amendments revised

The board revisited levy adjustments that were originally approved at the February BOD meeting. 

Throughout the 2024–2025 academic year, the UTMSU membership levy was $41.11. Chen clarified that although the board had increased it to $41.85 in the February meeting, the U of T administration requested revisions to align with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — a measure reflecting changes in the cost of an average assortment of goods and services. As a result, the revised levy has gone down to $41.81.

The same happened to the World University Service of Canada (WUSC), House Canada, and Regenesis UTM levies. The 2024–2025 year levies were $1.41, $2.50, and $2.50, respectively. 

The fee for the Student Refugee Program provided by WUSC — UTM’s chapter of a non-profit organization that supports youth education, employment, and empowerment globally — was changed to $1.44 in the recent BOD and was later decreased to $1.43. The union raised both the House Canada and Regenesis fees to $2.55 in the earlier BOD and then reduced each of them to $2.54 per part-time student. 

The Board also approved a $2,500 allocation to UTM Student Affairs to support U-Pass’ technical transition from QR codes to PRESTO cards, which will allow students to load their U-Pass as a voucher onto their registered PRESTO cards. 

The UTMSU President Joelle Salsa had hinted at this new initiative in her recent exit interview with The Varsity.

Spring elections ratified 

At the emergency BOD meeting on April 2, board members ratified the Spring 2025 election and referendum results following a report from Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Kyri Williams. 

Williams reported that voter turnout reached 17.8 per cent, a modest increase from last year’s 16.3 per cent. A total of 2,874 ballots were cast across seven polling stations. 

Andrew Park was elected UTMSU president; Rui (Owen) Zhang as VP Internal; Miatah McCallum as VP Equity; Rajas Dhamija as VP External and Manaal Fatima as VP University Affairs. 

All three election referendum questions proposing CPI-indexed levy adjustments for Blind Duck Pub and Student Centre passed. By indexing these levies to the CPI, the fees will be automatically adjusted each year based on inflation rates. 

Board members approved the CRO’s report and passed motions to ratify the results.