Thursday’s SSMU Council prepared for the General Assembly (GA) next week, reviewed the success of Homecoming, and voted to create a referendum on the renewal of the fee for the Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students Society (SACOMSS).
Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan, a QPIRG board member and former SSMU VP external, addressed Council as a guest speaker, and urged councillors to remember their responsibility to “be open to dialogue [and] open to meeting with students.”
He expressed disappointment that QPIRG’s Board of Directors had not been included in talks surrounding the motion to reconsider QPIRG’s fee, which was ruled out of order and removed from Council’s agenda before the meeting.
The Board of Directors is looking to be on the agenda at the next Council meeting, and hopes to converse with councillors about the relationship and history between QPIRG and SSMU.
In his executive report, President Zach Newburgh discussed a plan, in conjunction with Mobilization McGill, for a three-day boycott leading up to a rally outside Wednesday’s Senate meeting, where “we want to make as much noise as possible.”
Newburgh also explained that SSMU has been waiting since June for McGill Legal Services to provide the lease for the University Centre (Shatner Building) and SSMU’s Memorandum of Agreement with the University, but that the documents should be available soon.
Arts Councillor Todd Plummer raised the possibility of an equity complaint against one of the proposed GA motions, which calls for the construction of a stripper’s pole in the Gert’s bar renovation plans.
Other GA approved motions called a SSMU-organized fundraiser to help alleviate the Arts Undergraduate Society’s recent financial losses, the institution of a seven-member Board of Directors in order to help SSMU maintain its liquor license, turn down the volume in Gert’s, and mandate that SSMU use Copi-EUS for large batch printing jobs.
In the latest in a long tradition of satirical GA motions, one calls on SSMU to change its name to the “Student’s Society of The Educational Institute Roughly Bounded by Peel, Penfield, University, Sherbrooke, and Mac Campus” for the duration of 2010.
A notice of motion regarding the addition of a Council representative for interfaculty Arts and Science students, after extensive debate, was not approved for the GA.
A motion regarding the renewal of SACOMSS’s $0.75 fee, endorsed by Anushay Khan, VP Clubs and Services, passed easily, and will be brought forth to students as a referendum question during the fall referendum period.