Just 44 minutes into the Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) first council meeting in more than four months, CUSA vice-president (finance) Karim Khamisa and vice-president (internal) Ariel Norman stormed out of the room Jan. 6.
“I will not sit here in this council and be disciplined by this council who thinks they have a majority,” Khamisa said before leaving with Norman and 11 councillors.
Khamisa rose from his chair after CUSA public affairs councillor Michael De Luca recommended a motion that CUSA launch a “corporate compliance ratification committee” to look into alleged violations of the Ontario Corporations Act made by trustees Khamisa and Norman as far back as the summer of 2011.
“Throughout the summer, in many instances they refused to provide [me] with documents, recorded meetings that never took place . . . and on and on and on,” De Luca told councillors.
De Luca said he didn’t criticize CUSA president Obed Okyere, the other trustee, because to his knowledge, “[Okyere] hasn’t violated CUSA’s statute and he hasn’t violated CUSA’s bylaw.”
De Luca said Khamisa and Norman violated bylaws, such as not keeping records or minutes of various trustee meetings that took place before and during the longstanding legal dispute between CUSA executives and a group of councillors.
Khamisa and Norman staunchly refuted De Luca’s claims, calling the motion to create a corporate compliance committee “petty” and “incredibly insincere.”
CUSA is made up of two separate entities: CUSA and CUSA Inc. CUSA is the democratically elected council, while CUSA Inc. oversees business operations. CUSA councillors sit as members on CUSA Inc.
During much of the legal dispute that paralyzed CUSA council for almost four months, CUSA Inc. trustees Norman, Okyere and Khamisa were left in charge.
After the 13 CUSA members left, the remaining members elected five councillors to the corporate compliance committee, after determining that 50 per cent of members were present.
Norman re-entered the meeting to protest that two-thirds of council had to be present to conduct business, but Okyere and the other members initially determined that a two-thirds quorum was only needed to commence the meeting, not to conduct business.
After creating a five-person corporate compliance committee composed primarily with members from the plaintiffs’ side in the recently resolved legal dispute, the council took a 10-minute recess.
After the recess, councillors later discovered they did not in fact have enough members present to elect the corporate compliance committee.
“It’s our first order of business at the next meeting,” De Luca said.
It’s uncertain whether CUSA will be able to work together in the next meeting.
“In the settlement, we were supposed to release each other from everything that happened in this legal case,” Norman said. “It’s supposed to be a fresh start.”
Khamisa and Norman insist that this “fresh start” absolves them from any inquiry by any new CUSA-appointed corporate body.
“The settlement solely dealt with the resolutions of the matters on [CUSA] council,” De Luca said.
Norman and Khamisa and the councillors from the plaintiffs’ side of the legal dispute both accuse each other of trying to keep the details of the dispute settlement private.
Also on the Jan. 6 meeting agenda was a motion to approve a full budget for the remainder of the year, but after members requested more time to review the motion it was tabled to the next corporate meeting. It has not yet been scheduled and is at least 10 days away.
Norman and De Luca recently traded barbs on the Charlatan’s radio show, airing 11 a.m. Tuesdays on 93.1 CKCU FM.
Listen to the Jan. 10 podcast here.
