The University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union accused Mark Overton, Dean of Student Affairs, of doctoring minutes from a Quality Service to Students meeting held in February earlier this year. Members of QSS, a council of students and administrators that seek to improve non-academic services, received minutes from the February meeting that deemed the Mississauga Academy of Medicine students eligible to receive the U-Pass.
Since MAM students are en- rolled at the St. George campus, they do not pay membership fees to the UTMSU. The only other way to gain access to the U-Pass would be through approval by QSS and then the University Affairs Board. The amended fees statement was passed at a UAB meeting in March, the final step to legitimize changes or additions to a non-academic fee.
The UTMSU compared the original document from the February meeting to the altered financial statement passed through the UAB and confirmed that a motion was not put forward at QSS to allow the MAM students access to the U-Pass.
UTMSU executives met with administrators three times in May to dispute the altered statement. Each time, the administration insisted that the fee had passed through QSS in February. Finally, on June 14, the UTMSU submitted a letter—signed by 13 students that were in attendance at the February meeting—stating that university protocol was not followed. Overton credits the discrepancy to a tracking error on his part. Overton issued a statement recommending that the U-Pass service fee for MAM be revoked and ensuring members that he will “implement a version numbering system” to prevent tracking errors in the future.
UTMSU has since offered to extend the U-Pass to the MAM students for the duration of this academic year, ending in April. To permanently obtain access to the U-Pass, the Medical Society, based at St. George, can hold a referendum to include the MAM students as members of the UTMSU. UTMSU maintains that they will not support a campus service fee that is provided to full-time undergraduate students that are not members.
