UNBSU chief returning officer Matt Poirier attended Sunday night’s council meeting to give a report on the UNBSU’s recent general elections.
According to Poirier, the nomination period was extended for some positions that had no candidates, including faculty reps for Renaissance College and Law, a Residence student rep and more. Residence rep is among three other positions that remain unfilled.
Although there was originally no one running for Renaissance College rep, it ended up being the most contested position said Poirier, with four candidates vying to represent their faculty. Poirier also noted that Renaissance College was the faculty with the highest voter turnout at 85 per cent.
Although there were no major issues, Poirier reported that ITS still encountered minor difficulties with the voting on students’ eServices. “I’ve said this a million times but they didn’t get the accents,” said Poirier. ITS also refrained from adding a question mark to the failed Brunswickan plebiscite question.
A plebiscite question that ran earlier in the semester was labeled ‘Student Union Election Feb 2018’ despite having no correlation, resulting in the actual elections link getting labeled ‘Student Union Election Feb 2018-2.’
Poirier speculated the 19.9 per cent voter turnout, which was lower than last year’s, could be due to the number of uncontested candidates, including three executive positions: president, vice-president internal and vice-president student life.
No questions asked from ‘complacent crowd’ during policy and advancement committee presentation
Vice-president finance Grayson Bearisto and Councillor Seshu Iyengar are two members of the UNBSU policy and advancement committee who gave a report on their activities to council Sunday night.
Members of the committee initiated a bylaw review at the beginning of the semester that has finally been completed. The bylaws were changed to reflect gender neutral language, which was brought to the committee’s attention by LGBTQ+ councillor Jackie Toner.
Grammatical improvements were also made to the bylaws, and the committee added in the process used to vote in the interim vice-president advocacy earlier in the year, as well as a rule outlining terms of engagement for council committees.
These changes were met by council with no inquiry or comment, inciting Iyengar’s remark of a “complacent crowd.”
Little was mentioned about the presentation council received from president Eddy Campbell and vice-president academic George MacLean before the break on the results of the tuition review, which proposed different tuition fees for different programs in a fee model change that would affect incoming students starting in 2019-2020.
Vice-president advocacy Haley MacIsaac confirmed at the end of the meeting that there will be time to discuss the presentation’s content, which was recently released university-wide, at next week’s council meeting.