Turning bylaws that ‘suck’ into something sweet

SAMRU’s Annual General Meeting announces new bylaws to make exec team more efficient

Dayla Brown
News Editor

Left to Right: Murray Cunningham, Marcy Fogal, Erik Queenan and Derek Havens, panel of the SAMRU AGM, announced new bylaw changes on Nov. 13 at The Hub.
Photo: Kaity Brown

The Hub was filled with students on Nov. 13 as people expectantly waited to hear what bylaws were changing for SAMRU. Old bylaws were scrapped, with President of SAMRU, Erik Queenan saying old bylaws made no sense.

“We spent time with a lawyer to make sure everything was perfect,” says Marcy Fogal, Executive Director of SAMRU.

Perfect does near about cover it. The team in making headway on the Imagine Canada Standards system which strives for excellence in a Student Executive team featuring anything from efficient communications to problem solving and more.

Some of the highlights included their newly released “Strategic Plan” which prioritizes: constructive relationships professionally and personally between both SAMRU executives and the student body, a vibrant student centre through dedicated student services and responsiveness through listening to, learning from and communicating with student and stakeholders.

New bylaws would include the executive team of SAMRU being paid positions and the executive team being exempt from setting up AGMs.

An event is to be hosted in December, date to be released, to determine if the executive team would still be able to vote on student initiatives if their positions because paid positions.

Freeing up the executive team from having to generate an AGM would allow the team to serve and advocate for students more and focus on their day-to-day tasks — since so much time is designated towards creating the event.

“A large portion of our day-to-day tasks is answering emails,” says Erik Queenan, President of SAMRU, “it takes time to be able to sit down and respond to people.”

According to Queenan, the old bylaws weren’t altogether adjusted, they were just scrapped.

“If you see that we have new bylaws altogether, and you’re wondering about it, the old ones just sucked,” says Queenan, “they were a bunch of bylaws thrown together for the sake of having them. These new ones are much better and actually work.”

The AGM ran a lot more smoothly that last year’s; it appears that the shift of the AGM from the SAMRU Exec’s has paid off for the dream team.

Last year’s disgruntled students either stayed home, were happy with these new changes or were just too hungry for pizza to ask any incriminating questions. Either way, hardly any questions were asked and in the end, and no revisions were made.

In an article published by The Reflector last year, by Jesse Beaudin, bylaw changes in 2013 saw two main points of debate: a proposal to create a fifth position within the Executive Committee, and that the president of SAMRU could be elected among the Executive Committee.

Those who brought up revisions had their concerns addressed and then retracted their amendment proposals. All in all, the AGM ran on practically record-timing.

With only one student opposing the bylaw changes, claiming he didn’t have enough time to read through all the changes, despite their availability 21 days prior to the AGM and several advertisements throughout that time, the bylaws went through with resounding approval. Their new bylaws can be found on the SAMRU website at: http://www.samru.ca/governance/bylaws/