Election policies debated at WLUSU board meeting

For the final meeting of this semester, election policies for the upcoming election was the main topic of discussion at the Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union board of directors meeting on Dec. 2, in which many of the directors took the opportunity to strike up a debate.

The pre-election review committee — which was spearheaded by director Chris Oberle — brought forth to the board the proposed changes for the nomination packages and election policies for the WLUSU election in February.

Some of these proposed changes revolved around how candidates could campaign. The first amendment asserted that candidates could not “passively” campaign in the WLUSU offices because of a potential conflict of interest.

Director Ryan Sher asked whether or not the Terrace would follow under the same policy, but since Aramark, as Oberle pointed out, now runs the Terrace, it’s free for any candidate to use.

The more contentious issue discussed at the meeting, however, was the use of social media. Because of issues in the past, the proposed policy stated that campus clubs, which are funded by WLUSU, would not be able to endorse any candidate.

Nick Gibson, president and CEO of WLUSU, felt like this was restrictive, and that type of policy should be under the jurisdiction of campus club vice-president Codi Costello and Gibson himself.

After some discussion, three attempts to amend that policy — most notably to create a distinction between the “club” and the “individual” — ultimately failed and the original policy remained.

Once all the proposed policy changes were discussed, the package was approved by the board.

Visit thecord.ca next week for more on this story.

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