WLUSU board update

The Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union board of directors held their second meeting of the school year last Friday at 2:30, which lasted until about 6:00 p.m.

The meeting began with a motion from director Andrew Fryer to talk about the potential bad press WLUSU may have received from a recent Cord article concerning Charity Ball. While the issue was addressed briefly, it was motioned to be moved to the “other business” portion of the meeting.

One of the other issues brought to the table was the poor service on campus, particularly at Wilf’s. WLUSU president Laura Sheridan noted that WLUSU realizes that some students are unhappy with the current state of the service, and insisted that the matter is being reviewed and that more servers may be added to lunch and dinner shifts.

The meeting progressed to a presentation about the financial snapshots of periods one through four, which revealed that the union is $230,000 under-budget thus far, yet management explained that period five should even out many of the payments.

These snapshots appeared to be fairly ambiguous and were the cause of much questioning and discussion among the board members. Many directors were confused over many of the numbers and needed specific explanations for most.

At around 3:45 p.m. the meeting moved to an in-camera session, which was pushed forward on the agenda. The session was scheduled for 25 minutes; however, it lasted for about an hour.

Board chair Saad Aslam attributed this to the fact that it was the board’s first in-camera session and they were simply inexperienced and therefore posed many questions.

Following the in-camera session the board elected directors to sit on different committees, listed below.

BCC Realignment

Kayla Smith, Greg Evans
Ends Policies Development
Kyle Hocking, Andrew Fryer, Jackie Dobson
Environmental Sustainability Policy Development
Jordan Hyde, Emily Harason, Chris Oberle
Ownership Linkage Development
Laura Allen, Michael Onabolu, Stephanie Francis
Elections Policy Review
Michael Onabolu, Peter Hanna, Chris Oberle

*All committees will have one Brantford Campus Councillor sitting on it, who is TBD

iTeach fee reviewed

WLUSU has been in contact with the Laurier administration at both the Waterloo and Brantford campuses, as well as the administration at Nipissing University regarding the illegal iTeach fee that was charged to Brantford students in the concurrent education program this year.

“The students’ union was creating a statement that a letter was made and sent out on the 7th of October… and it highlighted the problems with this fee and where it was illegal and also recommended steps moving forward,” said WLUSU president Laura Sheridan.

“[The letter] reiterated that the students’ union wanted to be active and involved in the decision process.”

Nipissing is also in contact with WLUSU and is now investigating the complications involved with joint programs between different institutions, as is the case with Nipissing and Laurier Brantford, in hopes that these types of problems can be avoided in the future.

— Andrea Millet