KSA Executives seek to reform roles

Executives of the Kwantlen Student Association have sought to tweak their roles since their annual general meeting in March. However, current KSA bylaws state that quorum for general meetings is 200 people, and as they’ve had trouble meeting quorum in the past they’re looking for a way to make the changes without it. The most noticeable change would be the introduction of a “University Affairs” role.

“If you saw our bylaw changes from our last AGM, you might see that there are a lot of sections that are crossed out,” says Tanvir Singh, vice-president of student services at the KSA. “Essentially, VP Services has always been doing traditionally a university affairs role. A lot of other student associations use the term ‘VP Academics,’ ‘VP Internal,’ ‘VP University Relations,’[but] we decided to use ‘university affairs’ to encompass all those roles together.”

The KSA sought to make several changes to their bylaws during their Mar. 30 annual general meeting, but were unable to get 200 students in the room, the minimum required to make bylaw changes.

However, Singh suggests that there might be ways to make changes to their roles without a bylaw change.

“Traditionally, my role has been doing a lot of the university affairs stuff,” says Singh. “It’s not strictly said in the bylaws who does university affairs, and even then, just because VP Services is directly in charge of certain things, doesn’t mean VP Services can’t delegate to VP Finance. At the end, I’m in charge of things, and it’s my responsibility to get it done, but if I delegate it to the VP Finance, if that’s the way we want to do things, then our bylaws allow for it as well.”

Other student associations have similar roles. Simon Fraser Student Society has a vice-president of university relations, and UBC’s Alma Mater Society has a vice-president of academic and university affairs role.

Singh and Rawan Ali, the KSA’s vice-president of finance, still need to go to the governance committee to make these changes. As of June 30, the executive committee are still in discussions.

“Up till then, we can conduct ourselves in whatever matter as we see fit, as long as the work gets done and we have people that our responsible to do it,” says Singh.