By: Gabrielle McLaren, Editor-in-Chief
Note: The views expressed in the following article are solely my own and do not represent the views or politics of The Peak as a publication or a society.
If I have time or if the agenda sparks my interest I occasionally accompany whichever Peak staff member is attending the SFSS’s Board meeting. It’s nice to see what Board members are working on and later recognize them in the halls, with an idea of who they are and what they believe in. It can also be incredibly frustrating to watch them do things like carry motions that involve society funds without seeing finalized supporting documentation.
Faculty of Education representative Emerly Liu recently brought a motion to the table to allocate $1,500 to the International Women’s Day Young Women in Business gala, noting that more money would be allocated “after we figure out the budget.” The motion was added to the agenda at the start of the meeting and amended again prior to its discussion — a pet peeve of mine since it makes meetings harder to follow for guests (a.k.a. members of the society who deserve to know), but something that’s not technically wrong. One Board member asked a question to better understand where money was coming from, which VP Finance Tawanda Nigel Chitapi and Executive Director Sylvia Ceacero answered. So far, so good.
Enter Faculty of Health Representative Osob Mohamed: “I just want to say that I don’t feel really prepared [ . . . ] at the moment. I have never seen this document unfortunately and they were sent after the Board meeting had started [ . . . ] It’s like 16 pages and it’s pretty text-dense and for that reason I don’t know if this is something that you can bring at another Board meeting when we’ve all had time to read it over — but right now I just don’t have any information to base this decision on.”
Excuse me? A motion was added to the agenda during a meeting, amended during a meeting, and Board members were only given the supporting documentation during the meeting — when they theoretically should have been busy in the meeting listening and interacting with each other instead of doing paperwork and prep. And nobody thought that this was somewhere on the spectrum between silly and downright irresponsible?
VP Student Life Jessica Nguyen responded that the delay was because multiple SFSS staff members were heavily involved in doing due diligence and reviewing the document. Timing is a poor excuse for why Board members were denied the opportunity to inform themselves in turn. I trust the competence of the SFSS’s hardworking staff, but I’m bothered by how OK everybody was to support something without reading the official, finalized paperwork to understand. Or, on the flip side, asking colleagues to support something without giving them the opportunity to come prepared.
Not that many of them seemed to mind, frankly. The motion was carried with three abstensions who asked to be noted in the minutes and who I’ll therefore note here — Osob Mohamed, Shina Kaur, and Fiona Li. President Giovanni HoSang, as chair, did not vote.
I’ll acknowledge that certain Board members — namely Nguyen, Liu, and Chitapi — may have seen the report or drafts of it, by virtue of their positions or involvement with the project. Possibly, Board members spoke to each other about this informally. But this is conjecture on my end, and these things shouldn’t replace a final proposal or memo.
The gala seems like a valuable addition to campus life, worthy of funding. Plus, in the grand scheme of things, $1500 isn’t the end of the world. According to HoSang, pressure to vote on motions without adequate discussion or question periods also characterized the Board’s decision to increase the allowable deficit for Fall Kickoff — which escalated to a six figure deficit.
So what we have here is a pattern of board members voting without giving each other or demanding for themselves the time to consider motions appropriately. This is the equivalent of not doing your readings before class — except this isn’t PHIL 115 that you hate but took for the Q credit. It’s a job that students trusted you could do and are now paying you to do.
If this is how it’s going to be, motions shouldn’t be added to meetings day-of. Going forward, I would like to see sharable forms of supporting documentation and memos given to guests along with the agenda. It’d be nice to have something to follow along and understand how our Board members are voting and why.
