Engineering Students’ Society sees constitutional amendments, executive expansion at AGM
By Derek Baker, March 11 2019 —
Next year’s Engineering Students’ Society (ESS) executive council will consist of nine positions after members voted to increase its size by two at the March 7 annual general meeting.
An approved constitutional amendment split the role of ESS vice-president operations and finance into two executive positions for its respective components. A new position, vice-president corporate relations, was also added.
Citing the removal of the ESS mandatory membership fee and its accompanying challenges, ESS vice-president external Miriam Dietz said the amendment to add a VP corporate relations recognizes that a large portion of the society’s income now must come from sponsorships.
“Having a VP role that is in charge of reaching out is something that is going to hopefully assist in this,” Dietz said.
ESS members voted against a motion that would make the VP finance and VP corporate relations positions appointed rather than elected.
The ESS executive council also presented on the society’s successes and areas for improvement over the year.
Vice-president student life Ewan May highlighted the success of events like Frosh Week, the sold-out Nurses and Engineers social evening and the annual Car Smash. Despite having less frequent events, May said this year’s ESS events were larger and better.
“The Car Smash raised double the money than we did last year. We had great community involvement,” May said. “We went the whole nine yards — snapchat filter and donations from everyone.”
Vice-president external Deitz highlighted the growth of the Schulich Engineering Competition, which had about 150 participants this year. Winners of the 2018 Schulich Engineering Competition went on to compete and represent the U of C at the 2019 Western Engineering Competition, hosted at the University of Manitoba this year.
Other constitutional amendments that passed include a mission statement and mandate for the society and granting the ESS board of directors the ability to revoke membership via extraordinary resolution if a member violates conduct guidelines on a case-by-case basis.
Additionally, the definition of voting members for ESS elections was revised to include all U of C engineering undergraduates, following the removal of the mandatory ESS membership fee that automatically made all engineering students ESS members.
The University of Calgary stopped collecting ESS membership fees from engineering students in Fall 2018. The $10-per-semester levy had been in place since 2006 following a student vote in favour of the fee.