Following the departure of VP external Andrew Stahl, SUS seeks to fill vacant positions
According to a press release posted online on Sept. 4, vice president external of UFV’s Student Union Society (SUS) Andrew Stahl has resigned from his position effective Sept. 1.
Stahl was only recently elected to the position following April’s general election, and ran on a platform with promises including improvements to SUS’s shuttle service and the reinstatement of student emergency funding. According to the press release, Stahl stepped down due to “personal circumstances.”
Speaking with The Cascade via videoconference, Duncan Herd, SUS VP internal, and Jessica Levesque, president, said Stahl’s departure is felt at SUS but will not have a severe impact on the organization’s day-to-day operations while a replacement is sought. “All of our internal programming, our services, [and] our plans for this year’s AGM will be left untouched and continuing as planned,” said Herd.
Levesque added: “The biggest impact of his absence is our participation in the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations and Alliance of British Columbia Students. Fortunately, Andrew and I are the primary and secondary delegates, so I’m able to pick up where he left off.”
SUS held an in-camera meeting Friday to call a by-election in order to fill the vacant VP position, as well as all other currently vacant positions on the board of directors. Those positions include Aboriginal representative, school of graduate studies representative, and representatives for the faculties of applied and technical studies and continuing studies. According to Herd, SUS plans to rename the Aboriginal representative position to “Indigenous representative” in the near future but has not done so yet.
Levesque and Herd also said that the upcoming by-election requires SUS to temporarily suspend some sections of its electoral oversight rules due to COVID-19, as was done during April’s general election.
These suspensions are intended to address the health risks raised by policies such as the requirement for in-person voting stations on each campus, which will not be offered due to the ongoing pandemic.
“There’s really no safe way to kind of conduct a keyboard and computer being used by multiple students within a short time frame,” said Herd. “Anything that requires an in-person presence, we will be suspending.” He added that in-person campaigning materials, such as posters, will be allowed but not encouraged due to how few students will be on campus to see them.
The suspensions went into effect following Friday’s meeting, and Herd later said via email that the specific policies SUS has suspended include section 8.0 of the electoral oversight policy, and sections 4.4.7 and 5.2.2 of the electoral oversight procedure. Those policies relate to requirements for in-person polling, candidate Q&As on campus, and on-campus posters, respectively.
Nominations for all positions opened on Sept. 14, and will remain open until Sept. 24.
