The Student Union Society (SUS) board of directors is the highest governing body of SUS. In addition to discussing matters related to oversight of the society, the board approves changes to policies, the annual operating budget, and project initiatives. They are also responsible for both supporting the SUS executive team and holding them accountable. Executives give a report at the monthly meetings on their activities and the progress of their goal plans. There are currently seven members on the SUS board of directors, which includes the four executives.
At their March board meeting, SUS approved three special resolutions to be presented to students at their upcoming AGM, to be held on April 1 at 1 p.m. in Evered Hall. The items below have not been passed; they will be voted on by students at the AGM. The special resolutions to be voted on are changes to bylaws, changes to the elections policy, and a budget for a forensic audit of SUS’s finances.
Forensic Audit
At SUS’s last AGM, students proposed a forensic audit of SUS’s finances, with a majority voting in favour. According to SUS, the resolution was non-binding because bylaws had been overturned to allow motions from the floor. At the upcoming AGM, Tania Smart, vice president internal, will present a budget of $10,000 but will recommend that students amend it to $0.
“The forensic audit was called for because the students were upset; they felt the student executives weren’t listening to what they wanted, but a forensic audit calls into question the integrity of our financial department rather than the executives because of the way our financial controls are set up,” said Smart, who used to work in SUS’s finance department.
While regular audits verify compliance with a set of rules or the financial performance of an organization, forensic audits search for evidence of fraud or other unethical or illegal activity to be used as evidence in a court of law.
SUS’s financial department is externally audited every year as a matter of course, and has been found to be in accordance with Canadian accounting standards every year since at least 2011.
However, Smart said, the $10,000 budget is being brought forward out of respect for the fact that students voted for a forensic audit.
If the membership votes in favour of the forensic audit with a budget of $10,000, it will be binding, and SUS will have to see the forensic audit completed.
Two budgets will be presented at the AGM: one including the forensic audit, and one not including it.
Bylaw Changes
SUS approved the presentation of a bylaw change allowing general meetings to be held with only 10 students present if the agenda does not include a special resolution. Board members would be able to make presentations, but action items could not be voted on. Previously, the meeting would be cancelled and no business could be conducted.
SUS also approved for presentation a new quorum of 50 voting members for general meetings where special resolutions or amendments to the elections policy are being considered, down from the previous requirement of 100 voting members. According to Smart, SUS has had difficulty meeting quorum in recent years, and the reduction will ensure that bylaw changes can be made when needed. A reduction of the quorum for requisitioned general meetings — meetings called by the student body — from two per cent (around 300) of students to a flat number of 200 will also be presented at the AGM on April 1.
Changes to bylaws regarding the composition of the SUS board were also approved for presentation. These included a wording update, changing the Aboriginal student representative to the Indigenous student representative, and the creation of two new student representative positions: the international student representative, and the accessibility representative.
The international student representative will be an international student responsible for representing the interests of international students at UFV. The accessibility representative will be charged with reporting not only on barriers related to disabilities, but any barriers to education UFV students face, such as food insecurity and lack of public transportation.
Students are currently only supposed to vote for representatives of groups they are a member of, with bylaws allowing all students to vote on positions representing groups whose members can not be determined. SUS does not have a way to determine students’ representative groups, so they have approved a change to the election policy that would allow students to vote for all representatives, regardless of group membership.
Election policy changes
SUS also approved proposed changes to the election policy. The proposed changes are the shortening of the election period from three weeks to two, and to remove the policy that forces candidates to take down their physical posters around campus after the campaign period. Candidates would still not be allowed to post or produce any new campaign material, but would not have to physically remove them from public notice boards on campus.
