Called to order at 1:30 p.m. and adjourned at 7:09 p.m.
On August 20th, the UOSU Board of Directors (BOD) convened to host their seventh monthly board meeting of the term.
Key points on the passed agenda include changing committee assignments, updating POL-GEN-2 —Policy on Executive Benefits — and establishing an election code of conduct.
Slowed by technical difficulties and the meeting’s light attendance creating problems reaching quorum, the meeting began half an hour later.
The meeting begins with student statements after approval of committees and board meeting minutes and declarations of conflicts of interest.
Statements by students
This meeting’s statement by students came from Arman and Haya of the Ottawa Ismaili Student Association. The members have been struggling to find a consistent place to hold congregational prayers, and are only able to hold their prayers once a week, which isn’t enough compared to similar groups at different campuses.
“We are both a club and a religious community but we are being treated as though we are only a club,” the members said in a written statement. “We want a space where our community can come together to pray, as is a pillar of our faith.”
Motion A — Committee Assignments
This motion was moved by social sciences director Brandon Ly, and seconded by interim student life commissioner Rayne Daprato; the objective was to confirm committee re-assignments for both members of the board and the executive committee. Such reassignments included Daprato and advocacy commissioner Maisy Elspeth joining the advocacy committee.
Justin Dalphy, a board director for Telfer, asked if the committee assignments were constitutional. “Are executives allowed to take the seats of other directors and interim [board members]?” Daprato clarifies that many of the committee re-assignments are due to executives replacing spots left by the now-resigned operations commissioner. There are also additional vacancies due to the absence of a union president.
After an amendment by Daniel Thorp, an engineering director, is passed, there is a brief review of the overall committee assignments. The main motion passes by unanimous consent.
Motion B — Operations Commissioner Role
Moved by Daprato and seconded by Ly, the objective of the motion is to fulfill the responsibilities of the now-resigned operations commissioner. This includes permission by the BOD for the executive committee to find an interim commissioner, as well as delegating the responsibilities of the role to the remaining executive members.
Dalphy raised a question regarding the clarification of the clause “(…) a committee of the executive plus the chair of governance, [elections oversight], or the Chair of the Board be struck to write their recommendations and present them to the board”.
Lukas Redmond, the deputy clubs and services commissioner, explained that the numerous committee chairs are necessary only if one chair is unavailable and to speed up the hiring process. “If none of [the chairs] are able to participate, then it’s just the executives’ [decision].”
After clarification that a similar process was used for fulfilling interim executive roles, the motion passed unanimously.
Motion C — Appointment of Additional Signing Officer
Moved by Daprato and seconded by Thorp, the goal of the motion is to assign Elspeth as a signing officer for financial decisions due to the resignation of the operations commissioner.
As per UOSU policies, the union needs two signing officers on purchasing, which includes the union’s Executive Director. A similar motion has passed at the July BOD meeting, which proposes that two members of the executive committee be made signatories. The motion’s goal was to ensure that the student life commissioner could purchase materials and other goods required for the preparation of 101-Week.
The motion passed unanimously.
Motion D — Update to POL-GEN-2
Moved by Ly and seconded by social sciences director James Adair, the goal of the motion is to approve the updated version of POL-GEN-2, the union policy pertaining to the executive committee’s benefit. POL-GEN-2 was reviewed and edited by the election oversight committee (EOC).
The major changes to the policy is the re-addition of a $ 2,500 tuition benefit that was removed in 2020, and adjusting the transportation allowance so it covers both OC Transpo and STO costs.
Quanah Traviss, the director for the Indigenous Students Association (ISA), explained that the tuition benefit was re-added to incentivize people to fill positions on the executive committee. “We’re trying to make the position as enticing as possible,” he said. “This isn’t money that’s going straight to their pockets, it’s helping them pursue an education.”
Thorp suggested that the tabled benefit might be more ideal to make the benefit cover a fixed number of classes (around three).
Gabrielle Muzschyka, the director of common law, suggested that the tuition benefit was previously removed to prevent executive members from taking a large number of classes to earn the benefit and become stretched thin over UOSU responsibilities.
“Say school is really expensive, [and] you’ll have to work an extra year to take certain classes. Arguably, you could do it while you’re an executive and get the money to afford [the classes], and then take more classes and do less UOSU work.” she said.
Health sciences director Daniel Berysniow suggested that the board maintains the $2500 fixed number from an accounting perspective. “[This is so] everyone who is applying knows the exact benefit to them, instead of one person having a higher benefit even though they’re taking the same number of classes.”
Redmond argued against the tuition benefit, saying that the union should pay executive members more. Ly said that he “doesn’t disagree” with the idea of a pay increase, but it was voted down at the previous General Assembly. “I want to respect the will of the students.”
Thorp clarified that he doesn’t want to encourage people to take more classes. “I don’t think the reimbursement should be based on how many classes one takes,” he explained. “We select a number of courses we’re trying to cover, and then we reimburse accordingly.” Thorp justified his suggestion due to the fact that tuition and course fees vary drastically across faculties, as well as depending on student status.
Muzschyka felt as though there was not enough representation from the executive committee during the meeting to pass the motion, and should be reviewed by the union’s Human Resources department and previous executives.
Traviss clarified that most of the reviewed version of POL-GEN-2 was created with feedback from executive members.
Dalphy raised the idea of pro-rating the benefit for executive members since they can spend it after 60 days into their term. However, there are some concerns about returning the money following the hypothetical resignation.
Thorp moved an amendment to change access to the tuition benefit from the beginning of the academic term to the end. Interim student life commissioner Daprato explained that she raised similar concerns during discussions of the Union’s consultation of the policy.
“I think the reason [the benefit] is at the beginning [of the term] is because that’s when tuition has to be paid,” she said. “If the goal is to be more accessible to students who need to make that payment and don’t have that tuition money sitting in their bank account, it becomes something where it is not as useful to certain students if it’s like a reimbursement.”
After clarification that an executive member can decide whether to split the benefit across the semesters, Berysniow substituted the amendment so each executive member can receive $1250 for each semester, totaling $2500 for each academic year. Additional wording clarified that the benefit can be distributed across spring, fall, and winter semesters at the executive’s discretion; if the executive chooses not to take classes during a term, the benefit will “roll over” to the following term.
Dalphy proposed a sub-amendment that would allow the executives to claim a twelfth of the $2500 (amounting to $208.33 per month). The sub-amendment failed.
After an hour and a half of total debate, the motion was ultimately tabled.
Motion F — Elections Code Approval
Moved by Ly and seconded by Berysniow, the goal of the motion was to update the union’s elections code — the last official review of the code was in 2020.
There were some additional amendments to the elections code, such as ensuring the code aligned with UOSU’s constitution and properly defining a volunteer for candidates.
Dalphy moved to strike the concept of classroom talks because it might not incentivize more students to run for union positions and rely on students’ relationships with professors.
Several members of the board disagreed with the motion, emphasizing that it promotes student engagement and leadership qualities. “I feel as though if you can’t make that initiative to reach out to people like professors, you maybe should not be taking on a role like this one, where you have to interact with both students and professors,” Muzschyka said.
Daprato also said that for those who run uncontested, class talks allow candidates to educate students about UOSU.
Some members, such as health sciences director Grace Tongue, did not like the idea of mandating how candidates conduct their campaigns.
“We shouldn’t tell people how to campaign, it should be their idea,” she said. “You should campaign however you want…I like the idea [of class talks], but I don’t think it should be mandatory.”
Redmond and the acting chair, Maya Sinclair, reminded the board that every director of the BOD must do class talks twice a year, and this had passed at the Winter General Assembly.
Traviss raised a concern of being able to speak two languages, but not including English or French.
“There are certain candidates who can run for executive positions without speaking English and French if they speak an Indigenous language, so what’s the policy there?” he asked. “I could do a class talk in Mohawk, but there’s a total of 1900 people in the entire world who would know what I’m saying.”
There was further discussion around the extent of the bilingualism for candidates — class talks must be conducted in both an English-instructed and a French-instructed class.
Daprato and Muzschyka moved a substitution that would allow the chief elections officer (CEO) and the elections committee to approve some exceptions. This was passed.
Muzschyka moved an amendment to the elections code that would require candidates to submit volunteer lists to the CEO at the beginning of their campaigns.
Social sciences director Max Christie disagreed with the amendment, as it creates additional paperwork on behalf of the candidates, and allows the potential to create more opportunity for election fraud which it was intended to combat.
Daprato moved a sub-amendment that would ensure that the CEO does not need to approve the volunteer list, but just receive it for reference.
In conclusion, the overall motion passes with nine members in favour, and one against.
Motion E — Elections Timeline
This motion, which was moved by Ly and seconded by Traviss, formally outlined a schedule for the Fall semester by-elections.
The motion passed unanimously with no debate. The election timeline is available on the UOSU website.
Motion G — Committee Agenda Submission
Moved by Muzschyka and seconded by Thorp, the objective of the motion was to ensure committee members submit agenda items four days in advance of the committee meeting to each committee’s chair. Any agenda items that miss this deadline will only be included if the majority of the committee members approve of its discussion.
Muzschyka explained that this motion will allow any director who isn’t part of a committee member to still submit motions to the committee chairs.
Redmond disagreed with the motion, saying that it would turn all the committees into “mini-board meetings”. Traviss felt as though the motion might lead to burnout, suggesting that union members can just tell committee members if they wish something to be discussed at a committee meeting.
Thorp clarified that even if motions are approved to be discussed, committee members still have to be moved and seconded. “The point is that the committee has to consider [the motions].”
Christie argued that committees under the union’s current constitution have too much power. “A lot of policy that can’t even be debated until committees sign off on it has just led to more red tape, more delays, and has led lots of committees being turned into small, little fiefdoms…” he said. Traviss disagrees with everything Christie said.
In conclusion, the motion failed.
Motion H — Policy Review
Moved by Daprato, the goal of the motion is to adopt GEN-POL-3, GEN-POL-15, and GEN-POL-16, as a replacement for the clubs code, which Daprato believes is too long and needs specification.
Thorp moved an amendment that would include consumer electronic devices or furniture in the capital expenses would be exempted from funding applications. This passed.
Christie moved an amendment that would increase the funding upper limit that clubs can be approved for, from $3000 to $6000. This failed.
Thorp moved an additional amendment that would remove the specific formatting that requires title pages for club constitutions. This was adopted.
Dalphy moved an amendment that would strike a passage of the pass. This failed.
After further discussion of all three policies, the main passes.
Motion for the Juice Bar
Moved by former operations commissioner Broughton and seconded by Traviss, the objective of the motion is to approve the financials needed to place a bid on the lease for a Juice Bar, as well as any necessary equipment.
After an in-camera session, the motion passed.
Following the updates from the executive committee — primarily pertaining to their 101 Week commitments and activities — the board meeting finally adjourned at 7:09 p.m. Only six hours!
Correction: This article was updated on Sept. 5, 1:22 p.m. to say Motion H passed. The original version said that the motion failed.
