The Insiders
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Jan
7
The Quest for Admissions Fairness
Posted by: Neal Yonson | January 7, 2010 | 3 Comments
Earlier this week we posted about a new Senate admissons policy, J-50. While it represents a small step in the quest for fairness in the admissions process, there is still a great deal more going on behind the scenes that is also more controversial.
Indeed, while J-50 received widespread support from Senate, there were some concerns with it. As an example, even if the curriculum of another Canadian province results in those students being over- or under-represented at UBC, Senate may not be able to actually address it. Sonia Purewal, who sat on the working group said “Until data is available on all provinces, there is still going to be differential treatment for a subset of students as some students will not get any grade adjustment whereas others will… Despite this, we can’t ignore information that warrants attention. We have to begin the process to create a fair admissions practice.”
Senator and debater extraordinaire Joshua Sealy-Harrington also raised the point that if there was an international jurisdiction where grades had to be adjusted downwards, it may work against the university’s diversity goals.
Downward adjustments in general are something that makes everyone nervous. The rational argument goes that to achieve fairness you have to be willing to do both upward and downward adjustments. The obvious problem that gets in the way is that the optics of lowering students’ grades is horrible. Regardless of how justified it may be, the politics will always get in the way.
To see an example of this, you don’t need to look far. The Senate working group that was working on J-50 was also examining a much hotter issue: adjusting grades of incoming BC students based on which high school they come from.
Read more
Jan
6
AMS Council: January 6, 2010
Posted by: Neal Yonson | January 6, 2010 | Comments Off on AMS Council: January 6, 2010
New year, renewed enthusiasm. Highlights:
- January is Sexual Assault Awareness Month
- Cheap rooms at Whistler Lodge during the Olympics
- 6 referenda for sure, with possibly more on the way
Jan
6
GSS Elections: Nominations Now Open!
Posted by: Neal Yonson | January 6, 2010 | 2 Comments
AMS elections aren’t the only game in town right now. The GSS is also gearing up now for their executive elections this month.
Are you graduate student? Are you interested in helping your fellow graduate students and representing them at the University, Government, and public level? If so…
The Graduate Student Society (GSS) of UBC-Vancouver is now accepting nominations for various Executive positions and a seat on the UBC-Vancouver Senate. The GSS serves 9,750 Master’s and Ph.D. students at UBC-Vancouver, providing academic, professional, social, and recreational services to our members, and acts as steward of the Thea Koerner House Graduate Student Centre. The nomination period closes at Noon on January 19th, 2010.
Available positions include:
President
Vice-President, Academic and External
Vice-President, Administration
Vice-President, Finance
Vice-President, Services
UBC SenatorDescriptions for these positions can be found at: http://gss.ubc.ca/wpmu/election/position-descriptions/
Nomination forms can be picked up at the GSS office in the Thea Korner Graduate Student Centre (6371 Crescent Rd.) or downloaded from the elections website: http://gss.ubc.ca/wpmu/election/.
An on-campus debate will be held January 25th, at 5pm in Thea’s Lounge in the Graduate Student Centre. There will also be an off-campus debate on January 26th, at noon in the Diamond Family Lecture Theatre in the BC Cancer Research Centre (675 West 10th Avenue, by Heather).
Respectfully,
Glen Bremner
Chief Electoral Officer, GSS 2010 Elections
elections@gss.ubc.ca
Like the AMS, GSS Executives are paid for their work, $13,000 for President and $10,000 for VPs.
Jan
5
Impeachment Petitions Being Circulated, Plus Riders
Posted by: Alex Lougheed | January 5, 2010 | 5 Comments
A copy of the petition currently being circulated made it’s way into my hands. There are six questions being asked:
1. The removal of Blake Frederick
2. The removal of Tim Chu
3. Creation of a $5.00 “Engagement Levy”
4. A code change to implement slates
5. Indexing all non-indexed AMS fees to CPI
6. Amending the bylaws to separate the director and officer status of executives (so Council can effectively impeach).
Questions 1, 2 and 6 were expected. Although questions 1 and 2 will come in to effect once another executive would be elected, its only real effects will be to bring out angry mobs to express their moral outrage, hopefully driving turnout through the roof for question 6, which would fix the problems we covered earlier.
Jan
5
AMS Council Preview: Jan 6, 2009
Posted by: Neal Yonson | January 5, 2010 | Comments Off on AMS Council Preview: Jan 6, 2009
Now that VFM is back up and running, and there is a renewed interest in the AMS, this is a great time to engage with your student society!
The first council meeting of this term will take place this Wednesday, at 6 pm in SUB 206. Everyone is welcome to attend, and dinner is provided.
Get the Full Document Package Here.
Jan
4
Senate Enacts New Admissions Policy: Alberta Students get 2% Bump
Posted by: Neal Yonson | January 4, 2010 | 6 Comments
Like all of the students whose studies it governs, the UBC Vancouver Senate found itself busy during the last exam period. At their meeting on Dec 16, Senate approved a new admissions policy, J-50, which allows the Senate Admissions Committee to adjust the admissions averages of incoming high school students based on where they originate from.
In practice, all this policy does in the near term is add 2% to the entrance average of anyone coming from Alberta. However, the policy is written broadly that it would allow the Senate Admissions Committee to introduce these types of adjustments for any jurisdiction outside of BC/Yukon at any point in the future. Which, in reality, is only formalizing certain admissions practices that have been happening out of necessity for a long time.
Read more
Dec
22
Province Announces Review of Society Act
Posted by: Alex Lougheed | December 22, 2009 | Comments Off on Province Announces Review of Society Act
For the first major time since 1977, the Province will be conducting a review of the Society Act.
The Society Act is the legislation which the AMS exists under. There are similar acts in BC law which deal with other forms of incorporated bodies, such as businesses and cooperatives. Societies are incorporated not-for-profit bodies.
From the press release, the review is being framed around two questions. First, if the corporate model is the best for societies, and second, the extent that societies are regulated.
This is timely as the recent legal opinion on the Society Act and AMS bylaws makes Students’ Council impotent, unable to keep the AMS executive accountable.
The AMS is one of the largest societies in BC and is one of the only ones with mandatory membership, and hence mandatory fees.
The deadline for submissions is April 1st, 2010.
Press release
Government website
Dec
16
VFM Mania
Posted by: Neal Yonson | December 16, 2009 | Comments Off on VFM Mania
Mark Latham, who initiated and personally financed the first two Voter Funded Media (VFM) contests at UBC in 2007 and 2008, is back, cementing his place as the patron saint of UBC independent media. Yesterday he unveiled a second VFM contest to be run around the same time as the AMS elections time, with an extra $2,000 of his own money thrown into the pot.
The full details can be found here: http://votermedia.org/ubc2010
Vote here: http://votermedia.org/communities/82-ubc-ams
There are a lot of differences between the new contest and the currently existing one. We caught up with Mark Latham yesterday and discussed the new contest and some of the ways it differs from the existing contest.
No Entry Fee – This is meant to help more people get on board. The $150 entry fee in the regular contest might be enough to scare off some competitors who are unsure of whether they’d like to fully commit to the competition or are unsure of how well they’ll do. Ideally, a budding media outlet will be able to enter the continuous VFM and earn some funding which can go towards the entry fee for the bigger competition. If not, they are able to give it a shot without putting themselves in the hole.
Voting Structure Voting in the one-time contest means you get only one vote. While some may weigh their decision on the culmination of coverage throughout the whole contest period, it’s also possible that it reflects a person’s feelings only at that particular point in time.
With continuous VFM, you can vote as often as you like, with the caveat that the new votes replace your previous ones. At the same time, voting repeatedly is encouraged, because the older the vote is, the less weight it is given. By voting regularly, your recorded opinion of the VFM candidates is up-to-date, and counts fully. With that said, voting every half an hour is probably counter-productive. Mark envisions that the ideal voting frequency would be about once a week.
Voting is also open to anyone, anywhere, which is meant to acknowledge that people not within the sphere of having voting privileges in AMS elections may also take an interest in what is happening at UBC and the coverage provided by the VFM entrants (for all the UBC admin out there, please vote for us). It’s not meant so that you can simply get as many people as possible on facebook to vote for you.
Why the new VFM? Apparently impressionable young university students are a good way to test drive new ideas (who’da thunk?) While the new continuous VFM works on the same basic premise as the one-time VFM, that media is rewarded based on voters’ preferences, as evidenced in the voting discussion above the mechanics of the continuous VFM are completely new. There needs to be a trial of these new ideas.
While politics is the most obvious example of where people vote en masse, Mark’s work with VFM is not the only place it might be applicable. In fact, the whole idea around VFM arose out of a different area altogether: corporations. The big idea has to do with finding new, better ways to keep investors informed and for shareholders to be better educated when making proxy voting decisions with their shares. Mark even sits on the SEC Investor Advisory Committee, as a representative for individual investors (as opposed to large institutional ones. In short: the AMS is a little place where he can test his ideas and see them at work, though he has much, much bigger ideas in mind.
One of the things continuous VFM aims to address is having media that are active all the time. This is something we wholeheartedly support. One needs only look back one month to be able to count on one hand the number of active media sources on campus. The #amsUNfail brought a number of dormant blogs back to life, but in the absence of such an event, it’s likely they would have remained that way until the VFM contest started once again.
A heartfelt thanks to Mark for setting up this new contest, and to all readers, please vote for us! While we blog because we are genuinely interested in what’s going on at UBC, a little extra spending money certainly helps.
Dec
10
GSS Needs a Sober Second Thought
Posted by: Neal Yonson | December 10, 2009 | 1 Comment
It is with great sadness that we report the GSS has stopped the service of free beer at their council meetings. This motion was passed this evening:
WHEREAS provision of drink tickets will facilitate further socializing of Council members at Koerner’s Pub, encourage shorter meetings, and encourage Councillor attendance until the completion of Council meeting agendas;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT alcohol is no longer served during Council meetings;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT at the end of each meeting, members and guests will receive two drink tickets, each redeemable in exchange for any single drink at Koerner’s Pub during the remainder of the evening of that Council meeting.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the President should bring the issue back to Council within 3 months.
This is supposed to be in place for only three months, but whether or not it will be reconsidered at that time remains unclear.
Free beer was possibly the only thing that made GSS meetings tolerable. That, and Dave Tompkins, who is also now gone. Ye both shall be missed.
Dec
9
Dishing on Davis’s Legal Opinion
Posted by: Neal Yonson | December 9, 2009 | Comments Off on Dishing on Davis’s Legal Opinion
It is safe to say that the last AMS Council meeting did not unfold quite the way anyone expected it to. Blake and Tim still hold their positions, were censured, asked to catalogue their activities on an hourly basis, and are now required to go to executive committee to make any decisions that could affect the AMS’s reputation. The motions that were passed (and more importantly, the ones that were not passed) stem almost exclusively as a result of a legal opinion from Davis LLP, legal counsel for the AMS, regarding the removal of executives.
Despite the importance of this document, I suspect very few outside the council/media circles have given it more than a passing glance, but I think it’s important to know what it’s all about. With that, and keeping in mind that I AM NOT A LAWYER, here is the short version of what the legal opinion says (everything is paraphrased):
The first section is the AMS’s questions.
Q1: Can Council remove an executive? If not, can Council keep them as councilors, while removing them from their executive positions?
A1: Council cannot remove them. As per the Society Act, they can only be removed through a general meeting or referendum. Their positions as councilors and executives are inseparable and therefore you cannot remove someone from one position without removing them from the other.
Q2: If Council can’t remove them, what else can they do?
A2: Potential actions include censure, additional oversight over their actions, removing the President as chair.
Q3: Are AMS executives considered employees of the AMS?
A3: Maybe. A definitive answer could only be obtained through the courts, or by changing the AMS Code and Bylaws.
NOTE: Q4 – Q7 are based on the assumption that executives are considered AMS employees.
Q4: If an executive is removed from office can that person sue the AMS for wrongful dismissal?
A4: Yes. The courts would then decide the outcome.
Q5: What can the AMS do to avoid a wrongful dismissal lawsuit?
A5: Amend Code and Bylaws. However, this would only affect future employees, not current ones.
Q6: Would it be acceptable for the AMS to change the duties that an executive is supposed to perform?
A6: Minor tweaks are ok. Anything major could invite a lawsuit.
Q7: Does failing to follow AMS Code qualify as an appropriate justification for firing an employee?
A7: Most likely yes.
Q8: Assuming executives are not employees, could Council take away an executive’s ability to directly supervise other AMS employees?
A8: That would probably be acceptable.
Q9: If Council were to take away an executive’s ability to oversee AMS employees, what are the possible legal consequences?
A9: If executives are not considered employees, there would be no consequences. If executives are considered employees, they would be able to take the AMS to court, where a decision would be rendered.
There are then a few sections of unsolicited legal advice. Unsolicited meaning that unlike the information above, this is not directly in response to any question posed by the AMS.
Background Facts in essence this lays out the case against Blake and Tim in a lawyerly fashion.
Governance Issues tackles the issue of the AMS Bylaws, and comes to the conclusion that removing an officer from his/her position but leaving that person as a director of the society is not currently possible under AMS Bylaws. (This is in addition to it not being possible under the Society Act.)
This section also contemplates removal of executive through the courts, but notes that this is not a feasible route. It then suggests censure, along with a suggested wording for the resolution. A resolution is then described which would place limits on an executive making “reputational decisions” for the AMS. Both the censure and “reputational decisions” motions made it into the meeting. The last section is where Davis suggests ways in which to change the AMS Bylaws. One interesting idea is the insertion of a clause that could automatically disqualify a councilor from being part of the executive committee upon Council finding wrongdoing with an executive’s actions.
Employment Issues first provides some background on the terms of employment for executives then examines the issue of whether or not executives are AMS employees. As they also stated in the questions above, there is no definitive answer to that question. The opinion is given that if an executive was terminated, withholding information from council could be considered reasonable grounds for dismissal. They also conclude that stripping an executive of core powers and responsibilities would be a relatively low-risk proposal.
The overall summary of the document is that while changing the Bylaws can bring clarity to some issues, the Society Act still reigns. The only way to remove directors is through a referendum or general meeting. This puts the AMS in an extremely difficult situation, since these are unwieldly for the size of the society’s membership. In the event of executive misbehaviour in the future, there will be little recourse to discipline that person. The only true solution to this problem will likely lie in changing the Society Act or receiving some sort of exemption from it. This is certainly something that should be looked into.
While the legal opinion from Davis LLP is just that, an opinion, there is also some interesting case law cited in which the issue has come up of a society’s bylaws being inconsistent with the Society Act. The main one revolves arond the Sagnam Educational and Cultural Society. This case was decided in 1990; at the time, this society’s bylaws allowed for directors to be removed by special resolutions of the board. The general story is that there were two opposing factions hoping to take control of this Society. When the leader of one side won the presidency, he then used special resolutions of the board (as per bylaws) to remove directors who had opposed him. Ultimately, the judge found the bylaws to be inconsistent with the Society Act, and reinstated the directors who had been removed, saying that only a vote of the membership could remove directors.
The judge’s reasoning behind it was thus: “The purpose of the [Society] Act is to regulate the affairs of those societies that seek its benefit by incorporation under its provisions. The members are entitled to that protection, and one of the ways in which they are protected is by ensuring that the directors who are elected by the members can only be removed by the members.”
Thank you very much to the person who passed along the Sagnam decision, who probably does not want to be mentioned by name.
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