By Jess Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 16, 2013
The Student Union Society (SUS) makes decisions every day regarding the direction to take SUS and its members, but where do these decisions come from?
In the summer, SUS made the move to allow students to apply to be on a range of sub-committees responsible for developing new ideas and opportunities for the entire student body. Included in the list are the finance committee, transit committee, advocacy committee, and others.
The committees discuss different projects, then bring them to the bi-weekly SUS board meetings to be approved or denied. Previously, new SUS projects were discussed at these board meetings, which are recorded and open to the public. But now much of the discussion is happening at the sub-committee level, detailed in reports that are distributed internally prior to the board meetings.
SUS president Shane Potter explains that the committee reports and meeting minutes are available to anyone who asks, but they must be requested as they are not yet available on the website.
“Before, the committee meetings weren’t even published at the board level, so now … we’ve made it so the committee chairs are sending reports,” Potter says. ”They’re reporting on what they’re doing, and they’re also submitting minutes to the board for the public level.”
Beyond that, Potter suggests asking committee chairs for details about what goes on in subcommittee meetings. Otherwise, he assures that the information should, and will, be accessible online – eventually.
“Anything that’s at the board level, which includes the committee minutes and reports, should be accessible so that any student could go online and read them,” he stated.
Potter cannot currently offer an estimate of when USS will begin posting minutes to the website.
Minutes from regular board meetings also have yet to be posted to the new SUS website on a regular basis. SUS cites difficulties adapting to the redesign.
