By David Dyck
Board does not appoint Pavelich to board, citing conflict of interest
Last week the Simon Fraser Student Society board of directors ratified the general election results. All positions were ratified with the exception of the internal relations officer. While there’s no policy in place that prevents a former staff member from running in an election, policy does prevent a candidate from holding office if they’ve held a staff position within four months of the beginning of their term.
The only candidate who ran for IRO this year, Craig Pavelich, was the web and email assistant and office and volunteer coordinator (replacement) for Out on Campus. He won the election with 1,002 ‘yes’ votes to 310 ‘no’ votes. However, he narrowly missed the four-month buffer period by three days. Pavelich attended the board meeting last Wednesday to appeal to the board to suspend policy.
“I can see the argument for it,” said Pavelich at the board meeting. “I was staff, I’m not going to deny that . . . arguably if I had met the deadline on December 31, that conflict of interest that existed then would still be around on January 3. That two or three day discrepancy is not a huge difference.”
“Policy is there for a reason,” responded SFSS president Jeff McCann at the board meeting. “It deals with conflict of interest between being staff and board management, or vice versa . . . whether the policy is missed by two days or two years.”
Pavelich cited another instance where board had suspended policy earlier this year during the lockout when board members extended their hours in order to continue services in the absence of staff.
The current IRO, Jordan Kohn, voiced concerns that suspending policy in this case could lead to legal problems. If a policy exists, said Kohn, it must be upheld or done away with. He cited the 2010 election when the independent electoral commission disqualified two candidates, both of whom appealed to board. The society was advised by legal council to uphold the IEC’s ruling “otherwise we’re interfering with an independent body,” Kohn remarked.
In the end, the board voted to take the IEC’s recommendation to not appoint Pavelich to the board.
“I’m disappointed with their decision, considering the hypocrisy of the precedence they’ve set already. If the policy is in place to prevent conflict of interest, they’ve already showed disregard for that,” Pavelich told The Peak.
“This is a very strict policy that refers to a very crucial issue in the IRO position especially because of staff relations with that position,” said McCann. The IRO acts as a sort of human resources manager for the society.
There are two things that could happen now that the IRO position is officially vacant. The first option is for a board member to be appointed to the staff liaison position. In this case, “We won’t have an official IRO, but we’ll have an acting one,” said member services officer and president-elect Lorenz Yeung.
The second option is to have an elected forum representative take the position. “Lisa Bouche is the only duly elected forum rep, and only elected forum reps can be appointed through forum to an empty board position . . . If Lisa wants to put her name forward she can, but it requires a two-thirds majority vote on forum to appoint her to that position,” Yeung told The Peak. Bouche would have to abdicate her position on forum in order to take the IRO position.
