On Wednesday night AMS Council met to fill committee seats and hear updates from the executive offices.
Here's what you might have missed.
Rinse and repeat
After nearly three hours of voting, all the committee seats, except for one, were filled with the necessary councillors and student-at-large members. No councillor was appointed to the Student Legal Fund Society board, and the decision was postponed until the next meeting.
Most of the committee appointments end in September.
President Esmé Decker also mentioned changes and improvements being made to the policies for committee appointments.
The policies "haven't quite been implemented yet, so we'll look into how that looks for the fall," said Decker.
Executive updates
Council heard updates from the Executive Offices.
VP Academic and University Affairs Kamil Kanji and VP Finance Abhi Mishra were absent from the meeting and sent in written updates. Councillors had no questions for these two offices.
VP Admin Ian Caguiat said his office is working on opening applications for new clubs in June and starting a bylaw review in July.
His office is conducting an audit of the permanent art collection, which means they "have a list of the permanent art collection and ... need to make sure that they're present in the vault."
Caguiat also mentioned the operations committee had updated the Operations Committee policy manual. Changes include clubs being required to follow AMS bylaws, club elections must be held at reasonable times and be advertised 7 days in advance and the removal of Section 9, the AMS COVID-19 Response Policy.
VP External Tina Tong updated Council with 3 recommendations her office plans to make to the BC Government at their presentation on May 30. This includes expanding the BC Access Grant by increasing the maximum amount, having annual funding for sexualized violence prevention offices at post-secondary institutions and establishing a non-repayable food security grant program for post-secondary students from low and middle-income backgrounds.
Law Councillor Aki Kamoshida asked Tong whether consultation would be done regarding housing in the city.
Tong said the consultation is usually focused on advocacy from past years.
However, she also said housing is "a really important issue that I'm going to work on throughout this year … we also do have a Federal Budget Consultation coming up, so that is definitely a recommendation that I can make in that one."
Decker said her office is working on creating a constituency guide for the first time since 2017.
The President's Office is also onboarding two new staff members, which is the new managing director Justin Lieu and an equity and inclusion specialist, which Decker noted would be the AMS's "first-ever permanent staff for EDI."
Indigenous Councillor Koda Tootoosis asked if there are other opportunities for students who applied to committees but were not appointed to get involved in the AMS.
Decker said, "looking at how many people are showing interest…that's something that we want to honour in some ways…there are many different ways to volunteer in the AMS … hopefully those students can connect with the AMS. We would love their energy."