“Before you know it, you end up at Council and it didn’t get done.”
That’s what VP Administration and President-Elect Cole Evans said after a failed vote to censure him at Wednesday night’s AMS Council meeting.
Evans failed to submit his executive goals report on time for presentation to Council and did not inform councillors about this until the meeting was already in session.
Councillor Alex Gonzalez brought forth a motion for censure after Board of Governors representative Max Holmes raised concern that Evans was the only executive out of six (including Student Services Manager Ian Stone) who had not submitted a comprehensive year-end executive goals report.
“I fully believe that if [Evans] had truly been struggling to meet this deadline, he would have no problem alerting Council,” Gonzalez said. “And that is why I’m really struggling to believe this is an honest mistake and that is why I believe that this censure is important.”
The vote held at the end of the meeting failed to meet the two-thirds majority required to pass, with 2 votes in favour and 17 against.
“This is somewhat unprecedented,” said Holmes, who as Board of Governors representative is a non-voting Council member. As such, he stressed after the meeting that he held no opinion during the motion process.
“We’ve not in recent memory really had an executive refuse to send this in without any notice to Council … also understanding that all our executives are under extenuating circumstances and five out of six of them were able to make this submission in.”
A missed deadline
AMS President Chris Hakim said he sent an email out to executives about creating this report on March 9, a month and a half before the report had to be sent to Council. The councillors said that they had no prior notice that this report would not be sent to them.
Evans responded that he was “swamped” with other work and was unable to produce the report on time.
“Sometimes, as we all know, as university students, we’ve all experienced that deadlines are sometimes hard to meet,” he told The Ubyssey after the Council meeting.
Evans admitted that he should have been more “proactive” in informing the board.
“I recognize that the optics of it look like I am disregarding the policy that requires me to submit a final report to council,” he said. “That is not the case. This was not meant to be an action that basically dismisses the importance of reporting on key performance indicators.”
This spoke to a broader theme of submissions to Council not being made on time, which was worrisome to councillors including Katherine Westerlund. She argued that the AMS doesn’t have that much power so procedures like these help Council keep the AMS accountable.
Gonzalez echoed the sentiment, taking issue with the lack of notice.
“There was adequate warning provided of the requirement to present executive goal summaries. There was also adequate time to raise a request for deferral or extension in these exceptional times,” said Gonzalez in a statement after the meeting.
“Neither option was chosen by the executive in question, removing the opportunity for Council to reflect on and provide feedback on the progress of the VP Admin portfolio over the past year.”
Evans said that a lot of executives did have trouble meeting this deadline due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although he was the only one who failed to get it in.
“It is a really inappropriate action and it’s not something that a board should be seeing from someone who’s going to be president in a week," Evans said.
“Radical empathy” vs. accountability
Gonzalez called the action “disappointing from a future president.” Holmes and Westerlund also stressed that the role of Council is to exercise oversight over the execs, a role that was impaired due to the lack of this report.
“All of these people were able to get this thing done. … I disapprove of the fact that it wasn’t able to get done and it was seen as though it didn’t need to be addressed by anybody,” Westerlund said.
But other councillors like Michelle Marcus stressed “compassion” and the importance of understanding the weight of censure.
‘I think compassion should be our first and foremost priority. It’s important to be collectively striving for a supportive culture in this organization,” Marcus said.
Outgoing VP Academic and University Affairs Julia Burnham noted that all of the executives are behind in their work and noted the good work that Evans has done throughout the year.
“We really should practice some radical empathy in these very stressful times, recognizing that folks are trying their best and sometimes they slip up … this was a big thing to miss, but things happen,” Burnham said.
After the meeting, Hakim said in a message to The Ubyssey that he would “look to work with the board to guarantee that executive performance is a top priority and its review is done so effectively.”
Evans said he was “humbled” that the majority of Council that voted against the censure, adding that he regretted his lack of proactivity.
“I would pretty much expect that Council can expect to see this within hours, probably not days at this point.”
This article was updated to clarify that Holmes is a non-voting member of Council and held no opinion about the censure motion. This article was also updated to include results of the vote.