Carleton’s Board of Governors (BoG) tabled a motion to remove executives and employees of student associations and unions from the board due to conflicts of interest at their June 25 meeting.
“What the changes are doing is to clarify the eligibility criteria for governors to exclude individuals who are executives, officers, or employees of a union at the university or association at the university,” said Steven Levitt, the board’s general counsel, at the meeting.
If the motion is passed, the presidents of the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) and the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) will no longer be eligible to represent their respective student bodies on the BoG.
The current CUSA and GSA presidents, Fahd Alhattab and Michael Bueckert, released a joint letter prior to the meeting opposing the revisions.
“We’ve made our position very clear. We’re disappointed and alarmed at the decision that’s being put forward,” Alhattab said.
Levitt said the motion was tabled because presidents of student associations on campus have a different set of legal duties and goals from the BoG, and being on the board puts them in an “irreconcilable” conflict of interest.
Julie Caldwell, the university secretary, said in an email statement that “the proposed changes would increase the opportunity for students from both associations to be free from any inherent conflict of interests.”
Former CUSA president Folarin Odunayo said he disagreed that being on the board as a CUSA representative constituted a conflict of interest.
“It’s really only once or twice that our interests may be different from the BoG’s . . . The majority of the time, as a student leader and as a student association, our interests are exactly the same—the benefit of Carleton University,” he said.
Bueckert said he also disagreed with Levitt’s statement.
“While conflicts do exist, there are already policies in place to deal with them . . . it seems unnecessary, there’s no particular conflict of interest that we have,” Bueckert said.
Root Gorelick, a faculty representative on the BoG, said he sees hypocrisy in the proposed revisions to the bylaws and no reason for the changes to be made.
“I think this is utterly hypocritical because they are not applying [the same principles] to external board members . . . For instance, there have been a bunch of architects and builders on the board,” he said.
Gorelick said these members properly recuse themselves when the board talks about construction projects that would put them in a conflict of interest.
The vote on the changes will be held over email until June 30, which is the end of the current BoG term. However, a couple of board members said they were upset over the decision to not hold the vote in person at the meeting.
“It stops the possibility of there being any amendments while the voting happens,” Bueckert said.
He said he is also concerned that the vote is being held over email to ensure it passes, and that it lacks accountability.
Voting over email allows board members who did not hear the debate to still vote on the revisions. Gorelick said he believes this could count as vote-rigging.
“When the board met on Thursday . . . a lot of the external board members were on vacation so they couldn’t make it,” Gorelick said. “The board knows they needed two thirds of the vote and at the last minute they find that a huge number of members who will vote in favour of this are no-shows.”
Christina Muehlberger, former GSA president, said she is concerned about online voting because of her previous experience when casting an electronic vote on the board.
“I know last time there was an online vote over the tuition framework working group report. Several board members did not receive that email and were not able to vote on that,” she said.
If the revisions to the board’s bylaws are passed, the university would run the elections for undergraduate and graduate student representatives. As it is now, only members of CUSA and the GSA are able to vote for the representatives.
“I do not think an election run by the university for these positions makes it any more democratic, and if anything those elections should be run by the student associations, which have a much higher turnout,” Muehlberger said.
She added she was elected president of the GSA in a university-run election by only 84 votes.
Levitt said Carleton is in a unique position by allowing student association executives to serve on the BoG, and said most universities have a “patchwork” of bylaws against it.
However, Gorelick said this motion may restrict engaged students from making a difference.
“The most active people are trying to find any way they can to make a difference . . . The people who are really engaged are foreclosed from being on the board and that just sucks,” Gorelick said.
