As the school year comes to an end, The Charlatan reviewed Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) council meeting minutes for attendance, resignations, and notable motions.
Early on in June 2015, council passed a motion to amend the conference and discretionary fund committee by renaming it the CUSA student initiative fund.
The proposal pushed for the fund to become more easily accessible and to expand what students can apply for in order to receive money for projects and initiatives, according to CUSA president Fahd Alhattab.
During the same meeting, council also voted unanimously to pass a motion to create a new tuition and ancillary ad-hoc committee.
Humanities councillor Sean Illman-White put forward the motion, saying the committee would focus its research on rising tuition costs, so as to produce a report at the end of the year proposing how CUSA should respond to this issue.
Despite being the chair of the committee, Illman-White resigned from council in February 2016, leaving the future of the committee up in the air.
“The ad-hoc committee has not met since September. [It] has kind of fizzled out,” Alhattab said.
However, Alhattab added that with the changes the Liberal government has proposed recently, he sees an opportunity for council to revisit the ad-hoc committee to give it a new direction.
During September’s council meeting, Alhattab introduced a motion to create the Student Union Building committee. Alhattab cited a lack of dedicated student space on campus as the main reason behind creating a student union building on campus.
“This will really put Carleton on the map—and CUSA—in order to serve our students in more than many ways,” Alhatttab told council at the time.
The meeting also featured the resignation of then-journalism councillor Peter Russell, who stated power struggles were part of the reason why he was resigning.
Russell said council “shows how the power can sometimes bring out the worst in us and sometimes gets to people’s heads, sometimes we let our own ambitions get ahead of the students.”
Alhattab said having councillors resign is not uncommon, adding he thinks an average of two to three resigning out of the 34 council members is “not bad.”
“Students lives’ change,” he said. “You know, some of them are leaving, some of them leave town, some of them have health issues to deal with, some of them realize that they took on the position and it’s not something they want, they want to focus on something else.”
In December 2015, council passed a motion to amend the electoral policy by implementing ranked voting for councillor positions. Under this system, voters would be able to rank the candidates based on preference.
“I think it is important to consider this a pilot project, but we should definitely look at this further into the next elections,” said Matthew Pelletier, the public affairs and policy management councillor.
At the same time, council unanimously approved the decision to have John Davids fill the vacant seat of special student councillor. Special students are those who are taking undergraduate courses, but aren’t registered in a degree program.
The seat had been vacant for almost three months—since September 2015—after previous councillor William Lafrance left the position.
“The special student seat is always difficult to fill,” Alhattab said.
Council is made up of 34 members, with six of them being the executive. Additionally, the Graduate Students’ Association and the Rideau River Residence Association each have one representative on council.
Of the 26 councillors, only eight, or about 30 per cent, attended every meeting. On average, 31 members attended council each session.
From May 2015 to January 2016, one meeting was held where every member was in attendance.
