The University of Toronto Mississauga Student Union’s minutes for their board meeting have been absent from their website for the entirety of the academic year.
As of press time, the last posted board meeting minutes on the UTMSU website was on February 15th, 2017.
The UTMSU hosts monthly board meetings in order to present to the board of directors the work their executive team has done or plan on doing. The recorded minutes for those meetings are typically approved at the next board meeting and posted to the UTMSU website to encourage transparency.
Former 2016-2017 UTMSU president Nour Alideeb told The Medium in an email on November 29 of 2016 that the minutes for board meetings need to be approved at the next board meeting before they can be posted online.
The board meetings are also meant to be open for any paying student to attend. This academic year, none of the meetings were advertised or promoted for by the current executive team.
According to the UTMSU bylaws, “The Board of Directors shall meet no less than once per calendar month during their term in office, the Executive Committee is responsible for presenting a schedule of meetings for approval at the beginning of each session, notice of meetings including date, time and place, shall be given no less than fourteen (14) days to the Board of Directors.”
The bylaws also state that there are three types of Board of Director meetings: scheduled meetings, joint meetings, and emergency meetings.
The Medium asked on March 15th for the date and location of the next board meeting and was told that dates have not yet been established. The Medium was not referred to the joint board meeting being held at St. George on that same day.
Vice-president internal Vikko Qu, who is taking over the UTMSU presidential duties while Salma Fakhry is on a leave of absence, did not respond to The Medium’s request for comment.
Executive director Munib Sajjad also did not respond to The Medium’s request for comment, regarding the lack of minutes and announcement of meetings.
