On Wednesday, Jan. 15, the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) met in the Thomson House ballroom for its first meeting of the semester, commencing with an announcement advertising seven new positions that are open for election, including Secretary General, Deputy Secretary General, and External Affairs. They also mentioned the annual referendum, which will review the student services fee. The fee is currently $200 CAD per year per student, but the referendum proposes a percentage increase.
Secretary General Sheheryar Ahmed announced an interest among PGSS executives to host a town hall in the near future, offering to conduct the event after the February council meeting. Ahmed continued to describe the importance of hosting town halls.
“This will be an opportunity to submit discussion topics and devote more time to them than is available at council meetings typically, and we won’t be following the same structure [….] We’ll just have much more time to address those kinds of concerns in an open forum,” Ahmed said. “It’s a really positive democratic experience. Hopefully we can start doing this every year.”
Ahmed then went on to introduce a series of motions to dissolve inherited organizations within PGSS, claiming these committees are unfulfilled and stifle the administrative process. The motions would remove the Policy Structure and Advisory Committee, the Student Rights and Advocacy Committee, and the Governance Committee. He also shared that the Funding Working Group would be dissolved and reconstituted as a standing committee of council.
The Governance Committee is responsible for addressing any legislative changes that the council wants to pass and is composed of three people who do not hold titled positions in PGSS. The issue with this, Ahmed noted, is that it is difficult to staff each year, as most active members of PGSS hold titled positions and therefore cannot work on the Governance Committee.
Ahmed stated that, as chair of the committee, the Secretary General can fulfill the responsibilities of the Policy and Structure Advisory Committee without the specified seven members, claiming that the existence of a committee to fulfill these tasks only duplicates work being done.
The Student Rights and Advocacy Committee used to be chaired by the Students’ Rights and Advocacy Commissioner, a position that was dissolved two years ago and replaced with the Funding and Supervision Commissioner. However, despite the chaired position no longer existing, the Student Rights and Advocacy Committee was never formally dissolved.
As the meeting progressed, Internal Affairs Officer Naga Thovinakere echoed previous concerns from a governance standpoint, sharing worries with other council members who felt the dissolution of committees may not be the correct solution.
“My understanding with the role of the Governance Committee is it’s supposed to check and balance,” Thovinakere said. “I have a sense that the solution that we’re moving towards might not be the right one. Just because it has been vacant and redundant and inactive, might not be the actual reason to dissolve a committee. It exists for a reason.”
Debate over the dissolution continued, and University Affairs Officer Amina Bourai defended the proposal to dissolve the committees.
“I would be the first person to say if I saw something that was unfair, if something would alter the democracy of the society,” Bourai said. “But […] we have the [General Assembly (GA)], we have council, we have special GAs, we have executive meetings, commissioner meetings, senate. We have meetings with students all the time, with issues that they bring up.”
In the end, Motions 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4, all concerned with the dissolutions, were carried with 25, 27, and 22 votes, respectively.
Moment of the Meeting
PGSS announced a series of initiatives in the following weeks to spread awareness on Academic Bullying from Jan. 26 to Jan. 30, during which graduate students can stop by the Thomson House to spin a trivia wheel on academic bullying in exchange for a free cookie.
Soundbite
“I think maybe a potential solution would be to sort of merge some committees and then increase the numbers to not overburden the existing committees that seem to do the work [….] Then maybe we can look at a better resolution to incorporate what the other students’ concerns are […] that is probably enlarging some of the committees.” — Financial Affairs Officer, Mandy Lokko
