The 2008-09 Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) council will long be remembered for its near cancellation of Carleton’s annual Shinerama fundraiser — a scandal that sprung from a misinformed council motion and made international headlines.
Most members on this year’s council were elected on the promise to clean up CUSA’s act. Yet only a few months into their term in office, the organization still appears to lack the necessary checks and balances of a credible democratic body.
CUSA’s constitutional board is ostensibly an oversight committee that fulfi lls this task. But in August a complaint was filed against the board itself for violating its own procedure during a previous decision.
The complaint was made to and adjudicated by none other than the very same constitutional board that was being challenged. The board rejected the challenge. An oversight committee should not have the power to rule on the validity of its own actions. That is a clear conflict of interest. It prevents the board from being held accountable for its decisions, defeating the entire purpose of an oversight committee and destroying any credibile transparency.
An even more serious transgression occurred at the last CUSA council meeting. A motion was passed to clarify the bylaws that regulate how a member can be removed from council. One of the motion’s clauses limits the number of times a councillor may be recalled by petition to once per term.
The reasoning behind this — to reduce the number of costly recall referendums — is simply ludicrous. Petitions rarely go to a referendum and a scenario in which one councillor faces numerous referendums is absolutely unprecedented. The motion, at best, is ambiguously worded. At worst, it creates a dangerous loophole that could potentially be abused to grant councillors immunity from recall by petition.
CUSA needs to stop setting itself up for disaster, and start holding itself accountable for its actions. Until this happens, it’s only a matter of time before another CUSA gaff blows up into a scandal of Shineramagate proportions.