Carleton University’s Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) announced election results in a virtual meeting on April 29. Votes were also held to amend the Organizational Review Committee’s mandate and close Mike’s Place each summer term.
Graduate students elected Milan Sanghani, a student in Carleton’s masters’ of entrepreneurship in technology and innovation management program, as GSA president. Sanghani won with about 29 per cent of votes.
Navyashree Krishnareddy, another member of Sanghani’s electoral slate, Diverse and United, will fill the role of vice-president (external).
Members of the Team Action slate filled the three remaining executive positons. Evans Boadi was elected vice-president (finance), Faith Achile was elected vice-president (operations) and Hande Uz Özcan was elected vice-president (academic).
According to the election report presented by Chief Electoral Officer Stojanche Gjorcheski, 19 per cent of eligible voters participated in the election, with 891 graduate students casting their virtual ballots April 13 and 14.
The 19 per cent voter turnout is a more than three per cent increase from last year, when 742 graduate students voted in the election.
Council also voted to appoint nominees Hayat El Fazani, Mason Rodney, Cassandra Szabo and vice-president (external) Reza Sohrabi as external directors for the upcoming year.
Newly elected GSA executives and appointed external directors will serve from May 1 to April 30, 2023.
Council voted to amend the Organizational Review Committee mandate to increase transparency, accountability and clarity on the roles of GSA executives. The amended mandate includes the addition of two new sections and one new subsection.
Vice-president (operations) Rae Landriau noted the current mandate does not go into enough detail on transparency and accountability standards. Landriau added this motivated the committee to “dig a little deeper” and create a motion that can serve as a relevant guideline to resolve future issues.
The newly added Section 3.4 addresses potential concerns about executives who fail to uphold their role on the council. This section will promote internal and external transparency in the resolution process, according to Landriau.
Subsection 3.4.1 ensures GSA members can request to speak with an Organizational Review Committee member without a GSA executive present; preserving anonymity when raising a concern.
“We wanted to add some extra protection for staff members so that if there is an issue, they are able to have a space to address the concerns,” Landriau said. “We don’t want [the GSA] to be a toxic work environment where people are seeing things going a little sour and are afraid to report it.”
Section 3.5 will ensure GSA executive job descriptions are reviewed periodically so that tasks can be divided equally and roles reflect the needs of the student body.
“It’s really important that we’re keeping up with the times and making sure that we’re reflective of what organizational needs actually are,” Landriau said.
Council also voted to start closing Mike’s Place every summer term to make up for the financial losses the student pub has been facing.
According to the Mike’s Place annual report, the on-campus pub has been operating at a deficit since 2014. This deficit increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021, however, plans to permanently close the pub faced backlash from graduate students at Carleton.
Newly appointed Mike’s Place Ad-Hoc Review Committee member and vice-president (finance) Hemant Gupta said the pub’s annual summer losses, due to a limited number of graduate students on campus during the summer term, are between $30,000 and $40,000.
Gupta said the annual summer closure will make Mike’s Place “sustainable for the longer run.”
Mike’s Place employees will now work under a new eight-month renewable contract to accommodate the annual closures.
Featured image from Screengrab.
