Listening to the media forum, I started thinking about council and attendance. The common refrain is that council is overpopulated with résumé builders who just don't show up to meetings. I think attendance has something to do with timing of meetings and the business considered at those meetings. Consider the following table of data.
| Meeting date | Business | Actual | Possible | % Attend | Guests | Total at meeting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11-May | Committee positions; referendum report; councillor and executive reports |
19 | 24 | 79% | 2 | 21 |
| 8-Jun | Executive reports; Finkelstein talk; UPASS; legal expenses; council clothing; councillor reports; |
19 | 27 | 70% | 7 | 26 |
| 13-Jul | Finkelstein funding; SASAC committee; executive reports; operating budget |
22 | 27 | 81% | 30 | 52 |
| 10-Aug | Procedure for funding events; clubs procedure; councillor reports; committee reports |
17 | 26 | 65% | 9 | 26 |
| 21-Sep | Autonomy policy; committee appointments; executive reports and strategic plans; councillor reports; structural budget problems report; |
24 | 30 | 80% | 9 | 33 |
| 19-Oct | GO budget | 17 | 30 | 57% | 7 | 24 |
| 9-Nov | GZ/Tim Hortons; election procedure; arts endowment fund; GO budget; funding municipal candidates; executive reports; committee reports |
25 | 30 | 83% | 24 | 49 |
| 7-Dec | Committee positions; executive reports | 12 | 32 | 38% | 7 | 19 |
| 12-Dec | Committee positions; executive reports | 20 | 32 | 63% | 3 | 23 |
| 11-Jan | Removal of councillors; addition to the board; committee positions; committee reports; CASA presentation; OUSA presentation; executive reports |
20 | 27 | 74% | 11 | 31 |
Interestingly, the best attended meetings are the meetings where councillors and others were aware of important issues that would be discussed at the meeting, namely Finkelstein and Ground Zero. These meetings also drew many non-councillors.
This chart illustrates the trend fairly well. Too, it suggests that meetings held at the end of the first week of classes are better attended than meetings held before classes begin.
Consider, however, that every council meeting except the special meeting in December was held on a Sunday. Why? Does any other committee on campus meet regularly on Sundays? Regular meetings on Sunday are mental. Council meetings should be at 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month, except exam months. There would be nine council meetings instead of twelve. Holding meetings in the evening would free up executives, Feds employees, and councillors from their day jobs and wouldn't cut into their weekends, which are often used for recreation, relaxation, travel, worship, etc.
But the meeting time is not the most significant factor. The fact of the matter is that Students' Council generally doesn't talk about very important issues. If you take away councillor and executive reports, committee appointments and internal procedure, not much is left on the agenda for most meetings. Finkelstein, the operating budget and Ground Zero are important issues (although the budget is stretching it a bit). Garrett Saunders' presentation is important. Discussions about municipal elections are important.
Students' Council needs to talk about better things. Here are some ideas:
- Presentation from Off Campus Housing. Listen. Discuss. Send recommendations to OCH.
- Presentation from Student Society execs (COPS). Listen. Discuss issues.
- Termly survey of students. I've talked about this before. Survey students, discuss the results of the survey and communicate them to UW.
- Presentation from unknown groups (StudentFORCE, for example). Seek out people who are doing neat stuff and invite them to present to council.
- Course and professor evaluations. Make it a priority. Stop focusing on getting them online and start focusing on making the surveys better.
- Co-op updates: number of students with and without work, etc. Invite CECS to present. One problem with having a separate council for co-op is that regular students don't participate in discussions about co-op. Sometimes, this means that we miss interesting ideas from a fresh perspective.
- Club presentations. Invite clubs to give ten minute presentations about what they do and how it benefits students.
Anyway, just a few ideas about how Students' Council could be improved. Hopefully, this blog entry at least calls the common refrain of résumé-building-go-for-nothing-councillors into question.
Two other things that I forgot to mention: Students' Council should be comprised of two reps from each faculty, plus six students-at-large and the elected executive (total of 22 people). An executive committee of council should be the board of directors of the corporation. It would be comprised of the executive and five councillors.
re: holding meetings on Tuesday
How does this allow councillors on co-op to attend meetings?
re: possible count for each meeting
It should be clear that those are voting members of council, not the total membership of council. Also, how many non-voting members are even aware that they are members. I’ve heard from one society president that they were not invited upon being elected as their president, I’m sure most aren’t aware.
Jesse,
I don’t know if you listened to the entire recording of the media forum, but in the Councillor section I discussed using the committees for what they’re meant for, rather than them being a formality.
By delegating more of the work that most people don’t care about to a small group that actually do (BP&P) the legwork can be done by people who want to be there, and can take BPP arguments out of our Council meetings. This has worked with IFC but again… what have they done lately? If the reports we have heard at Council are any indication Clubs have received no funding and have been inactive for a long time (obviously they haven’t, but where are the reports to Council?) I can’t remember the last time that IFC reported their business.
I didn’t come up with this example but if we see Faculty Socs as the Provincial Government of FedS then the COPS authority should be drastically increased. With the current trend in Federation governing being the de-centralization of authority, we should follow the lead of the First Ministers of Canada by making COPS a legitimate body of both authority and deliberation. We need to give our Soc Presidents the respect they deserve as the leaders of their constituencies rather than just a sounding board of ideas every now and then. “Big Chill” is an initiative of COPS; look at the effect that it once had at bringing all students from all faculties together.
My suggestions:
1. Leave the work that interests a few to the few, with the few reporting to the whole regularly. Leave it to the whole to decide issues that affect the entire UG student population.
2. Give our Soc President’s the respect they deserve.
On a personal note, I have a class Tuesday nights, I could not make Tuesday Council meetings. How would we accomodate class timetables? I think thats the real reason why we have meetings on weekends. Also, I agree entirely with making Council a smaller, more efficient body.
You make a good suggestion concerning presentations at the beginning, and I’m guessing you got the inspiration from Senate. I took the same inspiration and implemented that while I was president of MathSoc; we had short 5-10 minute presentations at the beginning of many meetings, from Counselling Services, the Dean, and others. There are lots of interesting people and groups on campus and I think Feds Council would learn a lot from listening for the first few minutes. The only worry is that people would should up late, but hopefully they’ll be better behaved than that.
You make a good suggestion concerning presentations at the beginning, and I’m guessing you got the inspiration from Senate. I took the same inspiration and implemented that while I was president of MathSoc; we had short 5-10 minute presentations at the beginning of many meetings, from Counselling Services, the Dean, and others. There are lots of interesting people and groups on campus and I think Feds Council would learn a lot from listening for the first few minutes. The only worry is that people would should up late, but hopefully they’ll be better behaved than that.
Anonymous Guy: At least the evening meeting is after hours for most co-op students. I’m less concerned about accommodating co-op students who have to travel to meetings than I am about accommodating students who are in the area and do other things on the weekend. Some sort of tele- or video-conferencing would be a good solution to the distance problem.
Paul: Work in committees is good. As you say, that’s what they are there for. I agree that COPS should be given more authority (perhaps a budget, too, with funds from Feds and from each society).
Douglas: Yeah, I got the idea from Senate. I’m glad to hear that you implemented it at MathSoc.