The Board of Governors (BoG) is the third of UBC’s governing bodies (the first two are Senate and the AMS). Essentially, the BoG handles the business of running a university, which includes overseeing UBC’s management, administration, property and revenue, among other things.
The BoG handles issues that are often impactful on the desires and needs of UBC students, such as whether or not to sustainably invest with the Sustainable Future Fund, changes in both domestic and international tuition, and UBC’s sexual assault policy.
Of the 21 members, 11 are appointed for two-year terms, eight are elected to serve for one-year terms and two members automatically sit on the Board — the president of UBC (currently Santa Ono) and the Chancellor (currently Lindsay Gordon). The current chair of the Board is Stuart Belkin. The appointed members are often notable presences in BC, usually for career reasons. Once elected, their mandate is to act in the university’s best interests.
Of the eight elected members, three are faculty, three are students and two are employees, made up of a mixture of Vancouver and Okanagan campus representatives.
The Board meets five times a year, in February, April, June, September and December. Since they handle a variety of issues — many of which are complicated in their respective fields — most of the work is tabled to committees. Each of these committees has meetings as well, and the schedule and agendas for all meetings can be found online. Not all meetings are open to the public — some are held in-camera, and transparency issues have been big in the BoG’s past — but with the proposed amendments to Policy 93, the Board is working to be more open.
While BoG meetings can be tedious, the issues presented are important to know since they can affect students so much. The Ubyssey live-tweets every meeting through the @UbysseyNews twitter.