Disqualified medicine rep candidate wins appeal, student experience defined at Nov. 21 SLC
By Tina Shaygan, November 23 2017 —
The Nov. 21 meeting of the Students’ Legislative Council began with another discussion on the definition of the student experience. Students’ Union president Branden Cave said he used the feedback from SLC members in last week’s meeting to draft a new document to more clearly define the term.
Cave said the document defining student experience is meant to be “aspirational.” He also said that “respect from university administration and leaders” has been added as an integral part of the student experience after last week’s feedback from SLC members. After minor amendments, the resolution passed unanimously.
Cave then provided an update on the Nov. 9 meeting of the President’s Consultative Task Force. He said the task force primarily discussed the SU health and dental plan with SU vice-president operations and finance Ryan Wallace. Cave added that the comments from the task force emphasized the importance of dental and vision care. Other concerns raised by the task force included odour issues in the kinesiology atrium, exam scheduling and academic black markets.
Science representative Omar Mansoor provided an update on Nominations Committee on behalf of Wallace, who was not present at the meeting. Mansoor said Nominations Committee has reached a consensus for an appointment to the vacant arts representative and veterinary medicine representative position and will bring its recommendation forward to SLC on Dec. 5.
Faculty representative updates included working on Quality Money applications, planning a Pet Therapy event for professional faculties students and attending meetings for faculty clubs such as the Faculty of Arts Students’ Association and the Engineering Students’ Society.
Faculty of Science representative Kayla Huggard added that she put in a formal IT request for a D2L page for science representatives.
During announcement period, Cave said that the SU Appeals and Review Board decided that disqualified medicine representative candidate Jarin Thundathil violated SU election policy by overspending. However, they also found that the chief returning officers exceeded their role in disqualifying Thundathil.
Thundathil won the position of medicine representative in SU byelection by 70 per cent of the votes but was disqualified for overspending. Thundathil spent almost $225 on his campaign where the limit was $150 and runner-up Jameson Dundas was announced the winner with 17 per cent of the vote. Overspending is listed as a minor violation in the SU election policy but the CROs disqualified him based on policy clause specifying that “repeated and willful violation of election policies and procedures” is a major violation. Thundathil appealed the CRO ruling based on unclear policy.
Business representative Lucas Ocampo said during announcement period that he has recently been informed that clubs can set up booths during events such as Pack the Jack and asked faculty representatives to bring this information forward to clubs. Vice-president academic Tina Miller also added that the Academic Advisor tool has been launched in place of Degree Navigator on myUofC.
The next meeting of SLC is on Tuesday, Nov. 28 at 6:30 p.m. in the MacHall Executive Council Chambers.