Bylaws changed at marathon council meeting
By Michal Tellos
News
Editor
November 18, 2009
Last week’s UWSA council meeting ran over four hours in length, and most of that time was devoted to discussing changes to a few bylaws.
As Patrick Lalonde, chair of internal policy committee explains, this is just a step in a multi-month process.
Bylaw changes involves a multi-month process as prescribed within our Constitution. First, we had to ask permission from UWSA Council to change the policies, which we received. Second, we had to develop and approve our changes in principle in committee, which we did. Third, we had to get approval in principle for the changes from UWSA council in order to forward them to UWSA legal counsel for review,” he said.
This permission was granted by council at the most recent meeting, and if it passes legal counsel’s review, it will then return to council once again for a final approval on Dec. 3, which Lalonde is confident about due to “overwhelming initial support by council.”
He encourages any students to attend the meeting for final approval.
Bylaws that are being changed will affect a few areas.
First, certain bylaws have been amended in order to properly recognize the Schulich school of medicine and dentistry as a faculty represented by the UWSA, thereby giving them a voting seat at the table. This was seen necessary to accomplish before the spring’s UWSA general election.
Secondly, the seat distribution formula for council has been altered in order to make it more equitable by making it closer to representation by population.
Thirdly, rules regarding special constituency representation – including first-year, international, and residence representatives – have been changed in order to give them a vote at UWSA council as well.
Lalonde believes it is crucial to update UWSA policy at least annually for a few reasons, both of which simply reflect the nature of policy.
“Policy by its very nature can never be made absolutely perfect. However, we as an organization should continuously strive to make sure these policies are as close to perfection as we can make them in order to benefit the organization and the students we represent,” he said.
“Policy needs to be changed to reflect the times. A policy may take, for example, 20 years, 10 years, or one month to become outdated, but when it does, that policy is definitely something we need to look at and begin to change,” he added.
For information on the UWSA’s bylaws, please feel free to visit uwsa.ca. |
