The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) council held an emergency meeting on Monday to pass a motion that would allow the current council chair to represent CUSA in court against disqualified CUSA representative Ashley Courchene.
The motion passed, allowing Shawn Humphrey to represent council.
The motion arose after Ashley Courchene filed for an injunction to prevent incumbent vice-president (student services) Frena Hailekiros from assuming the position, leaving the role empty until further legal action is taken.
Courchene, vice-president (student services) candidate for the Change slate, received the most votes during this year’s CUSA election, but was then disqualified by the CUSA electoral board, along with the entire Change slate. The disqualification was later repealed by the electoral board after appeals from the Change slate, only to have the Your Carleton team appeal the decision once more to the Constitutional Board. The Board upheld the initial disqualification, and rejected further appeals by the Change slate.
Both sides first appeared in court on April 29, initially with CUSA president Fahd Alhattab present. Alhattab said the judge made it clear that they could not proceed until all the proper respondents in the case were present.
CUSA, Alhattab said, is made up of two bodies: the association, which is composed of anyone who pays fees, and the corporation, which is made up of the board of trustees and all of council.
While the injunction names CUSA Inc. as a respondent, Alhattab says the corporation doesn’t actually have anything to do with the election process, meaning that the association would need to appear in court.
The problem, he said, is that legally, the association is not considered to be a person.
“The judge needs to make a ruling onto a person,” said Alhattab. “So we need to personify it.”
As a result, the association needed to name an independent representative to appear in court on its behalf.
Given the short notice, council agreed that Humphrey would be their best choice for representation, since he is not a member of the corporation.
Humphrey will not have to speak in court, Alhattab said, but will simply serve to represent council.
During the meeting, councillors raised the question of whether or not Humphrey should represent council in court, given that council is due to elect a new council chair at the next meeting.
Callum Pryor-Byrne, a proxy for engineering and design councillor Julia Dalphy, proposed an amendment to the motion that would allow Humphrey to represent council only until a new council chair is elected for 2016-17.
Additionally, councillors questioned whether or not it was a conflict of interest for Humphrey to represent council, given his position as an administrative co-ordinator with CUSA’s Bill Ellis Centre for Mature and Part-time Students (BECAMPS).
At this point in the meeting, Alhattab stepped out to call CUSA’s lawyer to clarify this point.
While the lawyer acknowledged that there was some conflict of interest present, Alhattab said, the lawyer felt that Humphrey “… appears to have the least amount of apparent conflict of interest.”
If the motion hadn’t passed, all 34 councillors would have been required to appear in court – a costly, lengthy and inefficient process. The judge also said that requiring all 34 councillors to communicate with lawyers individually would further complicate the case.
The case is set to resume in court on May 3 at 1:30 p.m.
