Did WLUSU get the best deal for students?

What is perhaps most troublesome about the sale of the Terrace food court is not that there are several more full-time positions being laid off than are being publicized, which there are, nor that the ones who were immediately laid off were given no notice, which they weren’t, nor that student managers are not being guaranteed their positions, which they aren’t.

What is most troubling to me is the way in which this sale was negotiated, by whom on our behalf it was negotiated, and most importantly when it was negotiated.

The idea to sell the Terrace was conceived well before Nick Gibson’s election and had already been discussed at length and in great seriousness by high-level Wilfrid Laurier University Student Union (WLUSU) management before February.

This is not to say he does not deserve flak from opponents of the sale. He did have the opportunity to stop this deal at any time and chose not to.

Talks and negotiations with Aramark were well underway before May 1, when WLUSU’s new board of directors had not yet taken their seats. With negotiations and talks with Aramark underway, this decision should have come to the 2010-11 board of directors. A deliberate and conscious decision seems to have been made to wait to bring the decision to the new and less experienced board, as the chances of the sale being approved improved significantly in front of the new group of directors.

The deliberate hiding of information and corporate negotiations from a corporation’s board of directors is both ethically and legally questionable.

Perhaps I’m just angry because, as I’ve already been told, I’m going through WLUSU withdrawal and miss being important. I regretfully must admit, however, that WLUSU’s board of directors has simply been a rubber stamp for some time now and its members, myself included, haven’t been important for years.