The Martlet

The UVic Students’ Society (UVSS) Annual General Meeting (AGM) briefly reached quorum on Oct. 15, but the students required for a full meeting didn’t stick around long enough to get much done.

The B.C. Society Act sets quorum for AGMs at 0.6 per cent, which currently works out to 100 students at UVic. According to the UVSS constitution, without quorum, the only matters of business that can be dealt with at a general meeting are reports from the UVSS Board of Directors and UVSS committees, adoption of the budget and approval of the audit.

During the UVSS AGM on Oct.15, quorum was a conundrum.

At first, the meeting’s chair, Shamus Reid, chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students B.C. (CFS-BC), said that quorum had not been reached and therefore they could not proceed with the full proposed agenda. The parts of the meeting that would be missed included discussing and voting on the special resolutions put forward by the UVSS’ ad hoc committee on electoral reform.

Soon after Reid began, Director-at-Large James Coccola interrupted.

“We’re at quorum,” he said.

Reid argued that it was too late.

“Unfortunately, once that half-hour window’s closed, we can’t declare it a quorate meeting,” he said, referring to the common UVSS practice of allowing a half-hour window after a meeting is set to officially meet quorum.

UVic student José Barrios challenged the chair, saying that there was one minute left when quorum was reached.

Reid suggested that, before voting on the challenge, there should be a head count to make sure there was quorum. After a few counts with disparaging results, an audience member suggested that the doors be closed and people in the crowd count themselves off aloud; between the audience and the board, the result was 103 people present.

The challenge was voted on and Reid’s decision was overturned.

Reid noted, however, that if the special resolutions were passed, they may be challenged because of the meeting’s start time.

“It’s been previous practice for the UVic Students’ Society to allow that half-hour window [to achieve quorum],” he said. “It isn’t provided for in the Society Act, or in the bylaws ... so even that half-hour window leaves the meeting itself up to dispute.”

Before the special resolutions could be discussed, however, it was announced that quorum had been lost. A re-count showed 94 members remaining in the room.

“It’s always disappointing when the UVSS AGM doesn’t make quorum,” said UVSS Chairperson Veronica Harrison after the AGM. “The UVSS worked very hard to achieve quorum this year, more so than previous years.”

UVSS Finance Director Edward Pullman sat on the ad hoc committee on electoral reform that proposed many of the special resolutions. He was disappointed that students didn’t get to participate in voting on the special resolutions, but he sees a silver lining in the situation.

“Ultimately, I think this is an opportunity for the board to compare the current system we’ve come up with with other student unions of similar sizes and go back and have a sober second thought,” he said.

Pullman thinks more can be done to make the proposed changes more “fair, efficient and effective.”

Some students believe that the quorum at the AGM was intentionally jepoardized so the special resolutions would not be voted on.

“It seemed like Shamus Reid was intentionally trying to delay the meeting to lose quorum,” said fourth-year Political Science student Matt Ostergard. “It’s impossible to know for sure, but if anyone was trying to purposely delay a meeting, they’d do well to learn from Shamus.”

Ostergard also said that Reid may have had “an agenda contrary to the interests of UVic students.”

Pullman, however, believes that Reid did a good job of chairing the meeting and that accusations to the contrary are “preposterous.”

“If people had attended other general meetings, they would see that the chair conducts themselves in a way that is accessible to the audience,” he said. “Regardless if we had 120 people, if we had 100 people, if we had 80 people, I think Shamus would have conducted the meeting in the same way.”

Still, Ostergard thinks that things need to change in the future.

“Next time, we need a more effective and unbiased chair,” he said. “Either Shamus Reid was ineffective and slow or he was intentionally delaying the meeting. Either option is unacceptable.”