By: Hannah Fraser, News Writer
On May 15, The Peak attended the bi-weekly Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) Council meeting via Zoom. The meeting involved committee elections and an announcement that Council meetings would be offered hybrid-style for better engagement among councillors.
Elections for committee positions
Elections were held to appoint councillors to the accessibility committee, equity and sustainability committee, Vancouver campus committee, and an “SFSS restructuring working group.”
While 11 other committee elections were supposed to take place, these elections were postponed to the following meeting as some nominated councillors hadn’t yet completed their mandatory membership forms. The elections that took place automatically assigned councillors onto the committees without a need for voting. There are a certain number of seats available on each committee, and because no extra nominations were called, each seat was filled with no need for a formal election. The elections that took place are as follows:
The accessibility committee monitors how the Student Society Accessibility Fund is spent, recommending changes to policy relating to accessibility. Sam Killawee, vice-president internal and organizational development, nominated Rishu Bagga, vice-president university and academic affairs, to the committee, which Bagga accepted. Bagga then nominated Ariana Shamsuddin, molecular biology and biochemistry representative, to which she accepted. No other nominations were brought forward, so Bagga and Shamsuddin automatically joined the committee.
The equity and sustainability committee works to “dismantle intersecting forms of systemic oppression” by platforming “historically-excluded students in the community at SFU.” Self-nominations came from Grayson Barke, environmental science representative, Jasleen Dhami, gender, sexuality, and women’s studies representative, and Maryam Niaz, biomedical physiology kinesiology representative. Chloë Arneson, vice-president equity and sustainability, also nominated Bagga. Barke, Dhami, Niaz, and Bagga all automatically joined the committee.
One representative from each constituency group, such as SFU350, a group representing climate justice issues, and the Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG), an independent student society representing social justice issues are also automatically part of this committee. Emmanuel Anthony-Onuigbo, Students of Caribbean and African Ancestry (SOCA) representative, retracted his self-nomination due to automatic membership. Since SOCA is a constituency group, Anthony-Onuigbo was already a member of the committee.
The Vancouver campus committee focuses on “issues affecting students at the Vancouver Campus,” giving Council “formal recommendations and reports” around campus engagement. Chitransh Motwani, vice-president events and student affairs, Pranay Ratan, data science representative, and Arneson all self-nominated and joined the committee.
Councillors were also nominated for a “working group,” made for the SFSS to “review and modernize its current model to improve the structure of its organization and serve the student body more efficiently.” Meha Sidhu, the business administration representative, and Landy Liu, the chemistry representative, both joined the working group as nominated by Killawee. Shoron Alam, health science representative, self-nominated and also joined the committee.
