By: Yelin Gemma Lee, News Writer
Council elects new member for oversight committee on executive officers
Council asked for nominations of non-executive members to fill a vacant spot on the oversight committee on executive officers.
According to the SFSS policies, the committee oversees the executive officers’ work, and holds them accountable to their duties.
Mathematics representative Ben Tischler and environmental science representative Chloe Homenuke nominated themselves for the position. Before the vote, council members had an opportunity to advocate for one of these candidates.
“I’ve worked really closely with him on the accessibility course practices campaign. And even though Ben joined relatively late to all the other members on it, after he joined the productivity increased,” said software systems representative Shashank Thanalapati in support of Tischler. “The knowledge he brought to the table in all our meetings was something that the other four of us had no clue about.”
Vice-president student services Matthew Provost spoke in favour of Homenuke prior to the vote.
“I have a really big privilege of having Chloe on external and community affairs and they’ve shown nothing but really good work [ . . . ] providing really good feedback and ideas around how they want to support,” said Provost.
Homenukes was appointed with 23 votes from council representatives.
Council moves motion to make changes to SFSS COVID-19 in-person event guidelines
Vice-president internal and organizational development Corbett Gildersleve brought up the SFSS’ current guidelines for in-person events on campus to discuss with Council. Currently, events are restricted to 25 people following a guideline from this past summer.
The motion called for SFSS to amend in-person event restrictions to align with the current provincial health orders, as well as “review and make changes to the in-person booking guidelines” for spaces in the SUB to accommodate for these changes. Specific capacities were not established.
“The SUB has been open for a couple months now, we’ve had a few updates to the provincial health orders [ . . . ] and students have asked us if these restrictions could be loosened,” said Gildersleve.
He said some of these guidelines were due to operational constraints of smaller rooms and getting familiar with the SUB’s online booking system for use of space. However, he believes the SFSS in-person event guidelines need to be updated to align more effectively with the current event restrictions provided by the public health order.
According to the current provincial health orders, in-person event restrictions require proof of vaccination for over 50 guests and masks are required.
SFSS president Gabe Liosis spoke in favour of loosening restrictions now that the vaccine card is being implemented and cases are lower. He emphasized the importance of providing messaging for students to host events safely.
“I think heading into this direction, we need to put out some pretty strong communication and messaging around how to have safe events and really provide as much support to student groups as possible to make sure that these events don’t get out of hand,” said Liosis.
The motion passed unanimously.
