On September 23, Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) President Ava Liu publicly announced the resignation of VP Internal Affairs Leila Alfaro. Alfaro resigned from her position because she will be away for the Winter 2015 semester. Her decision to resign was made official last week.
“When I decided to run for AUS, I was planning on doing the whole year-term,” stated Alfaro in an email to The Daily. “Being away for the Winter 2015 semester only occurred as a tangible possibility toward the end of August. At that time, I had a discussion with the AUS President in order to notify her about this possibility and to ensure that I would have enough time to make a decision on whether I would stay at McGill and complete my year or whether I would leave earlier. The rest of the AUS executive became aware of my situation at the beginning of the semester.”
Alfaro’s decision to leave AUS marks the second resignation that AUS has faced this year, following the August resignation of VP Finance Kateryn Kim, who left her position for personal and family reasons.
Despite the two resignations, Liu believes that she has handled them well, in comparison to resignations from previous years.
“I have acted very swiftly in order to deal with them to have someone in place and to make sure that someone is always running. Because I try to keep an operational mandate intact, so our operations in the AUS [Executive] have been very, very preserved, very intact throughout all of these processes, especially to, I think previous resignations,” Liu told The Daily.
“In terms of the exec team as a whole, I think everyone is adjusting into it in their own way,” she added.
The VP Internal’s replacement process will be discussed and decided upon at the next AUS Council meeting on October 1. According to Liu, a motion to hold by-elections will be put forward at this meeting.
“If that motion passes, we will hold a by-election, with the dates to be determined at Council. They’ve [actually] already been drafted, but Council will approve of the dates,” she said.
Alfaro will remain in the position of VP Internal until a new person has been elected.