News Brief: 2025-26 KSA council starts its term, attempts to elect executive committee

The Kwantlen Student Association 2025-26 council held the first meeting of its term on April 2 in person at the KSA boardroom on the Kwantlen Polytechnic University Surrey campus and online via Microsoft Teams.

All council members were in attendance: Civic Plaza Rep. Shawinderdeep Singh, Cloverdale Rep. Jobanpreet Singh, Langley Rep. Prabhnoor Singh, Richmond Rep. Akashdeep Singh, Surrey Rep. Prabjot Singh Rana, Students of Colour Rep. Harpal Singh, Students with Disabilities Rep. Bhoomika Seera, International Students Rep. Paramvir Singh, Mature Students Rep. Ashutosh Dhingra, and Women’s Rep. Manmeet Kaur. 

Also in attendance were arts representatives Jagjivan Sran, Gurparv Singh, and Amanpreet Singh, business representatives Gurdit Singh, Ishant Goyal, Aditya Kapoor, Tejas Pathania, and Mohit Kumar, Community and Health Studies Rep. Harmanjot Grewal, and science and horticulture representatives Prabhleen Kaur and Rohit Uppal.

An online meeting attendant under the username Yuvraj Bains identified themselves as James, the queer students representative. Bains was previously a 2024-25 KSA council business representative. 

Speaker of Council Sukhdeep Singh began the meeting by orientating the new council members on the KSA’s bylaws and regulations. He discussed each council members’ responsibilities, which include attending all council meetings, submitting monthly reports, participating in KSA events, promoting services, checking their emails daily, maintaining ethical conduct, avoiding conflicts of interest, engaging with and gathering feedback from students, and participating in strategic planning. 

Sukhdeep also went over the executive committee positions and detailed their responsibilities. 

The KSA’s executive committee is made up of four vice-president (VP) positions. The VP finance and operations is responsible for putting together the KSA’s draft budget, presenting quarterly budget status updates to council, leading performance measures relating to financial management and procedures, and making recommendations to council on how to effectively use student funds, among other duties, according to the KSA’s bylaws. 

The VP university affairs works as a liaison between the KSA and KPU and is responsible for attending KPU senate and board of governor meetings at their discretion, ensuring student representation on committees and task forces, negotiating contracts between the KSA and KPU, and making recommendations to council on academic policies, among other duties.   

The VP student life is responsible for chairing, delivering notice, and preparing agendas for executive committee meetings, representing the KSA, performing other tasks as assigned by the executive committee, and being the primary contact for legal issues excluding those between the KSA, KPU students, and the university.

The VP external affairs works to build relationships and communicate with external organizations on behalf of the KSA and lobby various levels of government, among other duties. 

The council was set to nominate and elect its executive committee during the meeting but ran into conflict with secret ballot procedures. Conducting a secret ballot is necessary for the council to elect a VP when there are multiple nominees. 

A majority of council members joined the meeting virtually, and the KSA doesn’t have any procedures set in its regulations or bylaws on how to conduct a secret ballot online. 

After some debate and two recesses, the student representatives agreed to send their votes to either Executive Director Timothii Ragavan or Advocacy Coordinator John O’Brian via email, as some council members had concerns about trusting Ragavan with all of the votes. 

“There have been previous concerns raised about the [executive director], Timothii Ragavan, so it would make more sense to send our secret ballots to John [O’Brian], as he has a lot of experience regarding the elections,” Pathania said. 

For the VP finance and operations position, Manmeet was nominated by Kapoor. She was the only nominee for the position, so the council did not need to proceed with a secret ballot and instead took to a two-thirds majority vote. Council members voted unanimously, and Manmeet was elected as VP finance and operations. 

Nominating and electing the VP university affairs was next on the agenda. Kapoor nominated Pathania for the position and Shawinderdeep nominated Goyal. Due to time constraints, the nominees could not finish their speeches or the question-and-answer session, and the council could not proceed with the election. 

The over three-hour-long meeting adjourned at 2:18 pm. The next KSA council meeting is scheduled for April 11 at 1:00 pm. Interested students can email info@kusa.ca to join the meeting.