News brief: KSA made regulation changes without proper notice, executive director says

The Kwantlen Student Association did not meet regulation notice requirements when it deleted and updated all of its regulations via a secret ballot on Oct. 9.

During a council meeting on Dec. 5, KSA Executive Director Timothii Ragavan said the association did not meet the rules regarding the notification of the regulation changes.

According to the KSA bylaws, council can alter the regulations if it provides 14 days’ notice and the existing and proposed revisions.

“Because we didn’t meet the requirements for the notification of regulations, I have asked our IT coordinator, Ling [Yan], to return the regulations [on the KSA’s website to the version] prior to the Oct. 9 meeting, allowing council to make a decision as well as the membership,” Ragavan said.

Some of these changes included changing the mileage reimbursement rate for personal automobile travel by staff or councillors, condensing the KSA’s mission, vision, and values statement, and fixing grammatical errors and inconsistencies.

“I noticed that the regulation changes were proposed, but not ahead of time. I also do realize that there were a lot of regulations put forward,” Ragavan said.

“I recommend that council look back at those recommendations and allow the membership an adequate amount of time to review the regulations as well.”

He added that if councillors would like to go ahead with these changes, they are welcome to put forward a motion to post them on the KSA website. No councillor moved to make the change.

Council also failed to vote on three regulation changes to election procedures. The motions have been delayed for the third time and are on the docket for the Dec. 12 council meeting.

The motions were first proposed at the Nov. 14 council meeting, then pushed to the Nov. 21 meeting, and later bumped to this meeting.

The election procedure changes proposed were to remove student clubs from the slating provision, reinstate residency requirements for campus representative candidates, and correct a typo.

The motion was recommended by the governance committee, however committee chair Anmol Bansal was not at the Dec. 5 meeting. Any councillor can move to vote on a motion, but none did.

All remaining six members of the governance committee — Rohit Uppal, Shawinderdeep Singh, Jagjivan Sran, Akashdeep Singh, Gurdit Singh, and Harkamal Singh — were at the council meeting, but did not move the motion.

Ten of 16 councillors attended the meeting, which began 19 minutes after it was scheduled.

The next KSA council meeting, which is expected to be the last one of the year, is scheduled for Dec. 12 at 1:00 pm. Interested students can email info@kusa.ca to join the meeting.