Carleton administration is in the process of determining whether they will accept the auditor’s report submitted by the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) and transfer over student fees, said Carleton president Roseann Runte, Oct. 18.
The alternative is to withhold them for the second straight year.
If administration approves the audit, they’re required to release about $2 million in student fees on a monthly basis starting Oct. 31, said CUSA president Obed Okyere, citing the association’s fee agreement with administration.
“Right now, we are looking at the situation very carefully and no decision has been made,” Runte said.
The audit was put together by third-party auditors and approved by CUSA Inc.’s board of directors and trustees, comprised of Okyere, vice-president (internal) Ariel Norman and vice-president (finance) Karim Khamisa.
Under normal circumstances, the audit would have been passed by council as well. Due to the ongoing legal conflict, however, council business has been suspended.
The audit was submitted to administration Oct. 15, as stipulated in CUSA’s fee agreement with administration, Khamisa said.
The agreement was signed last year after the university withheld CUSA fees during a disagreement over CUSA’s auditing procedures.
With the Oct. 31 deadline approaching, administration has raised concerns about “good governance and democratic representation” among CUSA’s management, Runte said.
“We are watching the situation with a great deal of concern and we have offered the students mediation,” Runte said. “We are very hopeful that they will all come back together and begin working as they should.”
Any administrative concerns have been adequately addressed and CUSA has fulfilled all agreements made with the university, Khamisa said.
“CUSA is an autonomous organization,” Khamisa said. “It appreciates the efforts that the administration is putting forward and we’re working with our members to decide how to move forward.”
The audit was “passed appropriately,” he said, adding he doesn’t foresee any issues.
The issue of concern for the university is the balance of student autonomy and protection, Runte said. The administration is carefully weighing students’ interests in their decision, she said, and working to provide a positive learning environment at Carleton.
“We are responsible to make it so that students learn inside and outside the class, and so they understand democracy and good governance,” Runte said.
“On the other hand, we also do not want to . . . interfere in student affairs. So we look at it with a great deal of difficulty, because there’s the moral thing of being helpful, and then there’s the legal thing: that we can’t tell a corporation what to do.”
