On October 30, AMS Council met to discuss a recommendation from the Executive Performance and Accountability (EPA) Committee and hear a presentation on AMS bursaries.
Former Interim AMS President Ben Du led the meeting as speaker of council despite Board of Governors student representative Kamil Kanji’s October 10 appointment to the position.
Du also chaired Council’s October 25 special meeting, which discussed “the appropriate procedure for investigations of the executive.”
The only public investigation into an AMS executive is into the executive performance of VP Academic and University Affairs Drédyn Fontana because of "poor performance" and other concerns. AMS Council passed a motion on October 9 for the EPA Committee to consider Fontana's performance.
Council approved a motion to amend its agenda to postpone the hearing of a sustainability update and to include bursary approval motions.
Before the agenda was finalized, however, Fontana proposed a further amendment to include an in-camera EPA session with the four AMS VPs, excluding AMS President Christian ‘CK’ Kyle.
“We often have EPA sessions with … the president, but we don't have any EPA sessions with only the VPs,” Fontana said. “The spirit of the motion is … for the VPs to be able to speak candidly with Council without the presence of the president.”
Councillor Abeer Amir seconded the motion, but Councillor and EPA Committee chair Riley Huntley said EPA committee already had its meeting for the month and wasn’t prepared to ask questions.
Huntley also said Council should focus on expected discussions because “there’s [an] ongoing investigation and other discussions that are already planned to take place.”
VP External Ayesha Irfan said she understood Huntley’s perspective but also expressed wanting an in-camera meeting.
“This is us as an executive team seeking the opportunity to speak to Council, really about executive performance,” she said. “I can promise … it won't be a waste of your time.”
Fontana also said he didn’t believe the only function of EPA was to prepare questions and said executives should be able to “share their feedback and concerns about other … executives.”
Du called a vote, which, as per Section III of AMS Code, required a majority of eligible voters to pass. He specified abstentions would count against Fontana's proposed amendment.
As made public during the meeting, the motion failed with 11 in favour, 5 abstentions and 7 opposed. All four VPs voted in favour of the motion.
Awards presentation
Council then proceeded to hear a presentation from UBC Development and Alumni Engagement (DAE) Senior Director of Awards Daniel Galpin on the impact of AMS bursaries.
Since the first endowment established in the 1920s, Galpin said almost 180,000 different awards have been provided to students with the sum of those awards totalling $326 million.
Galpin also said the DAE has raised $41 million towards its new initiative of raising $100 million for needs-based student awards, and that the recommendation for the initiative came from UBC’s Student Affordability Taskforce.
After Galpin’s presentation, a majority of Council approved transferring $30,000 from the interest generated by the AMS Special Bursary Fund and $488,000 from the AMS Financial Assistance Fund to UBC’s financial aid office in order to fund bursaries for AMS members and UBC Vancouver students, respectively.
EPA Committee recommendation
Next, Huntley moved a motion to move Council into an in-camera discussion concerning the slated recommendation from EPA committee. Councillors Dylan Evan and Cameron Taylor seconded and thirded the motion.
Before Council transitioned to the in-camera session, Fontana asked whether conflicts of interest (COIs) would be declared and if those who declared such conflicts would be permitted to participate in discussion.
Du confirmed declarations of COIs would be made in-camera to “protect confidential information” and that those who declared conflicts would not be allowed to participate.
CK told The Ubyssey no motion regarding the EPA agenda item was brought up by the end of the multi-hour in-camera meeting.
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