At last night's AMS Council meeting, the new executives and councillors met for the first time to dissolve the Ad-Hoc Governance Review Committee and appoint a councillor to the CiTR Board of Directors.
Here's what you might've missed.
Dissolved and restored
Councillors voted to dissolve the Ad-Hoc Governance Review Committee, which was created in 2016 to review council and create an annual report of recommended changes to the AMS constitution, bylaws, policies and code changes.
AMS President Esmé Decker said that "basic tasks of the governance review committee can go back to the Governance Committee, so that they have something to do this year."
Council also briefly mentioned the Oversight Committee will be brought back and is now called the Executive Performance and Accountability (EPA) committee. This comes after last year’s report from the Governance Review Committee, which found there were few consequences for ineffective executives. The EPA committee will be tasked with keeping the executives accountable.
Appointments
Council voted to suspend all committee appointments until the next meeting on May 17. However, they still voted to elect a councillor to sit on the CiTR board of directors.
Discussion around the appointment arose when Arts Councillor Anna Shubina pointed out that the AMS code states that appointees must be Canadian citizens.
Speaker Max Holmes said a wording was sent out to "suspend Code section 2 article 15, requiring CiTR appointees to be Canadian citizens."
The code was suspended with unanimous consent.
Engineering Councillor Karisma Jutla pointed out that the CiTR constitution also states that the AMS appointees be Canadian citizens. She asked if AMS could suspend this.
Clerk of Council Sheldon Goldfarb said the constitution "define[s] Canadian citizen to include permanent residents."
There was no further discussion of this issue. Shubina was appointed to the CiTR Board of Directors.
2023-24 Goals
Decker gave remarks and updates about the new executives. She said the executives have spent the last week going through orientation and getting setup.
"Basically, our main vision or mission for ourselves other than the strategic plan... is to get things done and really build student connections up again," said Decker.
She added that many student groups and communities have been rebuilding since COVID-19, and she believes this year the AMS could reestablish those connections.
Decker said she also hopes to improve the student experience by bettering affordability, student life and "having more events together."
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