SLC recap byelection, consultative task force before going home for trick-or-treating

By Tina Shaygan, November 1 2017 —

The Oct. 31 meeting of the Students’ Legislative Council began with the swearing in of the recently elected University of Calgary Senate student-at-large Anayat Sidhu. Afterwards, Students’ Union president Branden Cave presented a brief report on the byelection.

According to the report, 1,284 students cast ballots in the byelection, all of them submitted online. Races for Werklund School of Education representative, Cumming School of Medicine representative and Senate student-at-large had a voter turnout of 10.8 per cent, 9.4 per cent and 4.5 per cent, respectively. The total cost of the byelection was $14,109.20. The medicine representative position will remain vacant until the SU processes an appeal from a disqualified candidate.

Vice-president student life Hilary Jahelka was the only executive to provide a verbal report. She said she attended meetings regarding residence meal plan changes, purchased more period products for her free menstrual product program and attended various committee meetings.

Cave provided an update on the Consultative Task Force’s first meeting. According to Cave, the task force discussed accountability of university administration, deferred maintenance on campus and a definition for student experience. The Consultative Task Force meets monthly and the meetings are open to the public.

Faculty representative reports included attending the Haskayne Halloween photo booth by the two business representatives, coordinating pet therapy on Foothills campus by medicine representative Sarah Park and conducting roaming office hours by science representative Kevin Dang. Kinesiology representative Sagar Grewal added that he answered student questions on the faculty’s D2L forum page and law representative Bassam Saifeddine said he reached out the to the Faculty of Law for increasing recruitment of minority students.

After the meeting adjourned, Cave announced the elected official representatives of the month with Sarah Park as the winner for promoting the byelection on the Foothills Campus and Chinmoy Ayachit as the runner-up for his work with various faculty members and outreach efforts via his Facebook page.

In the spirit of Halloween, the executives dressed up as each of the four seasons and Mother Earth. Among faculty representatives, Grewal attended as DJ Khalid and Ayachit as a hippie.

The next SLC meeting is on Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m. in MacHall Executive Council Chambers.