Compromise-The UTSU Board Reform Meeting

Last Wednesday three students, Ryan Gomes, Natalie Petra, and Nish Chankar hosted a meeting to work towards developing a new structure for the UTSU Board of Directors. This was necessary because of recent structural changes to the student union.

Last year the UTSU began taking steps to transition to an organizational structure under the new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (CNCA). The old structure which apportioned seats for election to various colleges and faculties would no longer be tenable without a number of tweaks. Meanwhile many of the colleges and faculties have been deeply dissatisfied by the corruption within the UTSU and have held referenda resulting in which students expressed their desire to leave the union.

The CFS Party controlled UTSU executive saw an opportunity and acted to push through a new self-serving structure. They would create "constituency directors", elected by UofT at wide with portfolio's focusing on different campus groups. The idea was quite clever; opposition to a gay or a female students constituency director would make the opponent look hostile to those groups rather than a constitutional structure. This would allow the CFS Party to eliminate the dissenting groups' directorships under the pretense of social justice.

The plan almost worked however, at the UTSU annual general meeting this October, the CFS  Party's opponents managed to deny their opponents the 2/3 majority necessary to make the changes. Thus the justification for the recent meeting.

After hours of discussions with stake holders such as UTSU execs Yolen Bollo-Kamara, Cameron Wathey, and Najiba Ali Sardar, the group came up with a new plan. The so called "Hybrid Proposal" would in effect allow for some college and professional faculty representation while also creating a significant number of equity/other directorships.

The students at the meeting deserve a lot of credit for coming up with a framework acceptable to many hostile parties. Nonetheless the Hybrid Model represents a setback for opponents of the current CFS controlled union. It is likely that once the new system is hammered out, representatives from the dissenting bodies would make up a smaller proportion of the board than under the previous model. By comparison failure to pass a new structure would leave the Union in legal limbo-an unfortunate situation but still one of the few options on the table that might force the UofT administration to overcome their qualms and take meaningful steps towards fee diversion. Despite all the effort, the CFS Party's opponents should not accept any deal that would dilute college and faculty representation on the Board.