The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) began preparations for the 2018 electoral season by ratifying the chief electoral officer (CEO) and deputy electoral officers (DEOs) at a council meeting on Jan. 15.
Council voted almost unanimously to ratify Nada Ibrahim as CEO and Zach Parkkari and Aiden Forsyth as DEOs. Ibrahim has previously served as a DEO for the 2016 and 2017 CUSA elections.
Julia Parsons, a public affairs councillor, asked the three candidates whether any of them had ever openly supported a slate in the past. Forsyth said he had made posts online about slates before, while Parkkari said he had supported a slate in the past, “but not very publicly.” Ibrahim said she has not supported a slate before, because she has always served in the elections office or as a poll clerk during past elections.
Cameron Wales, another public affairs councillor, also directed a question about potential conflicts of interest to Parkkari.
“You have a close relationship with somebody who’s currently on council, who may or may not run again,” Wales said. “In the hypothetical situation where that person were running again, could you describe the measures that you would take to avoid a conflict of interest?”
Parkkari said he would disclose to the CEO and the public his history with the candidate, and not take part in any deliberations regarding any issues involving the candidate.
CUSA president Zameer Masjedee also introduced an emergency meeting motion to amend the bylaw that sets quorum for the council’s human resources committee (HRC).
According to Masjedee, the decision was made not to have any CUSA executives attend the HRC meetings where interviews to select the CEO and DEOs took place. However, CUSA bylaw 13 section 3.1.1 stated that a CUSA executive member must be present at HRC meetings in order for the meeting quorum of three people to officially be met. A meeting cannot officially take place unless quorum is met.
Masjedee said that three people—CUSA general manager Travis Lindgren, CUPE 1281 representative Shawn Humphrey, and a Faculty of Public Affairs councillor—did attend the HRC meetings to interview CEO and DEO candidates and make the recommendation that Ibrahim, Parkkari and Forsyth be hired.
Masjedee proposed a bylaw amendment that would allow for HRC meetings to reach the necessary quorum of three people without a CUSA executive present. The committee’s recommendation would be out of order otherwise, because the meeting didn’t have quorum according to bylaws.
“Everything else for the hiring committee was all by the rules,” Masjedee said. “The only thing is that we didn’t have an executive member there, and that was a choice that we ourselves decided to make because we didn’t want to be on there.”
Masjedee said that there had been controversy in previous years regarding CUSA executives sitting on CEO and DEO hiring committees.
“If anything, [the bylaw amendment] just makes the entire thing a lot more neutral and transparent,” he said.
Wales asked whether or not council could accept the committee’s recommendation when the meeting hadn’t reached quorum according to the bylaw at the time.
Masjedee said council would be accepting the HRC’s recommendation once the bylaw was amended to ensure that the meeting had quorum when it took place.
“The hiring committee didn’t have a decision, there was no decision being made when they were breaking the bylaw,” Masjedee said. “They simply met and they have a recommendation, that right now is coming from a group of people that didn’t have an executive and weren’t at quorum at the time. However, by changing this [bylaw] the recommendation is still the same, but is in order based on the bylaws at the time we are accepting that recommendation.”
No one voted against the emergency motion, while five people abstained. Following the passing of the emergency motion, council voted to ratify the committee’s recommendation to hire Ibrahim, Parkkari, and Forsyth.
Masjedee said the HRC recorded all interviews that took place with the “handful of candidates” for the CEO and DEO positions, and that councillors could listen to the recordings if they were concerned about the hiring process.
“To the best of our ability, we followed all the processes that we could to try and make this as neutral and as fair as a hiring that we could imagine,” he said.
CUSA council will meet again on Jan. 23, and is expected to drop the writ for its 2018 election then.
Photo by Aaron Hemens
