First KSA meeting of the new year doesn’t meet quorum

Council and staff members of the Kwantlen Student Association waited until 10:30 am to reach quorum for their Jan. 8 meeting, but the required number of people did not attend.

The council members in attendance were Palwinder Singh, Ripunjot Kaur Brar, Ravinder Pal Singh, Mayur Gupta, Jeremy Law, Dhanwant Singh, Paramjit Singh, and Kiranjeet Kaur Sidhu.

Those missing were Gurdial Dhindsa, Bhumi Patel, Dilraj Virk, Abhay Singh Cheema, Marika Wagner, Simranjit Kaur Dhaliwal, Harmandeep Kaur, Sukmandeep Singh Gill, Kunal Puri, and Armandeep Kaur.

Dhindsa, president of the KSA, was reportedly attending a driving test at the time of the meeting and informed Newsom ahead of time.

However, Dhindsa did not send a proxy in his place. Nor did any of the other council members.

Despite Brar, Vice President of Finance and Operations, calling other councillors during the wait, no further representatives joined.

While waiting and hoping to make quorum, those attending the virtual meeting discussed what they did over the holiday break and debated how the bylaws would need to be adjusted to account for online voting for this year’s election.

“The bylaws say that we can’t make regulations changes between Dec. 31 and the AGM unless there is … resolution by the [council] members,” says Benjamin Newsom, executive director of the KSA.

“There are a number of bylaw requirements [for elections] that may be more difficult to adhere to, especially [in regard to] being on campus, that we may not be able to actually execute,” he says.

Newsom says he was waiting to discuss with KPU what some of these COVID-19 recommendations could be, and so he didn’t have them prepared that day for council to vote on, had they met quorum.

He hoped to have more information for their next meeting about when and how the KSA could potentially be on campus for the election, as well as online.

Speaker of council, Titus Gregory, pointed out that only the Chief Returning Officer of the KSA, Ron Laufer, can set election dates, which are usually in February.

Laufer’s role should have been renewed during the December meeting, says Newsom, and the council will have to appoint him at the next meeting that makes quorum.

The KSA council not meeting quorum did not come as a surprise to Newsom, he says, as attendance tends to be lower this early in the year.

“I mean, they’re electronic meetings. People can pipe in from any place on the planet as long as they have an internet connection,” said Gregory.

“I do not disagree with you,” said Newsom in response.

The date for their next meeting is undecided, as Newsom plans to call councillors to check in about what day most of them could meet on.