Hey everyone,

This is my second term SRA meeting Summaries & Personal Commentary. I apologize for the delay, I have been caught up with school work and other MSU projects in the past few months.

*Once again these reports are based on my interpretations, opinion and “imperfect” knowledge of what is going on. I have done my best to clarify a few things after and before SRA meetings during regular MSU office hours but nevertheless apologize in advance for any factual or interpretative inaccuracies or errors.*

Most of the Reports mentioned here but not discussed can be found here: https://www.msumcmaster.ca/studentGo…/documents.htm

Starting with SRA 9M January 10th

This meeting was overshadowed by the recall motion against the SRA House Leader Mr Casey Park. I am obviously not allowed to get into the details of what happened with that but some the details (withing allowable limits) were posted by SRA Health Science Mr. Matt Tenenbaum here. So with that settled I will go over the rest of the meeting.

The main item on the agenda was to remove the proposed Constitution changes/amendments from the presidential elections. The reason for that was that SRA members by default of having voted “for” the submission of the referendum were in a “biased” position hence were ineligible to have approved the elections committee rules and hence the entire election was in jeopardy. Therefore we had to remove it from the presidential elections. One of its key features were that instead of just SRA members ALL MSU members would have been allowed to run for VP Admin this March(right now now non SRA members can only run for VP Ed and VP Finance).

The next item was a presentation on twitter by SRA Health Science representative Matt Tenenbaum. He basically said that twitter is a great tool to inform our constituents of what we are doing especially if we use the #McSU hashtag that appears on the twitter feed on the MSU website. I would say that there hasn’t been alot of progress from SRA members in aftermath of the presentation. For me personally not having a blackberry etc means I have to use my laptop, I also find the 140 character limit very awkward to express myself. Hence my updates haven’t been that frequent.

The next presentation was by SRA Eng Matt Wright concerned with how the MSU is bascially lagging behind in terms of communications and we fail to use Twitter, Facebook groups and even a functional & intuitive MSU website. This is especially concerning for me personally and I agreed with most of it because communication from the MSU is something I am a critic of as well especially with a very well funded PR Department.

Mr Tiwari (MSU President) replied that one of the initiatives he has for improving this is integration of MacID onto the MSU website/Listserv newsletter. Hence in the proposal I know he will be submitting this week to the CIO of UTS if approved the service will be opt out and ALL MSU members will automatically start getting MSU emails. Mr Wright also said he is working to get ELM tab for MSU.

Next was a apology by the president in regards to an incident at 1280 (exact statement can be found in the minutes).

After that QSCC presented, Macgreen presented and talked about bottle reduction, retrofitting your home with cleaner energy alternatives and working with Sustainability office as some of the projects they are working on. External affairs presented and so did University Affairs (talked about the release of Quality of Education assessment).

Next was a report by VP Finance, it wasn’t a very optimistic one. 1280 had low alcohol margins and by that time of the year had already accrued a $77k loss. Day Care wasn’t doing well and Dental Plan premiums had gone above the collected fee (a situation they are NOW remedying by increasing the fee in future). Underground and Compass were showing positive results, the minutes have more detail. He also mentioned an electronic P.O system going up later in the year to solve the communication issues between departments.

The meeting moved into the recall motion. After it they approved a lobbying policy to lobby the administration to relocate the Mac’s from Thode(Since they were not useful for science/engineering programs compatibility wise)

Also sponsorship was awarded to great concrete toboggan race and an engineering conference.

Lastly a few MSU members were elected to awards committees(average of 2 candidates per position).

SRA 9N January 24th.

The meeting started with a 30 minute delegation from the Undergraduate Senators of McMaster. Senators essentially are the students elected to the university governing bodies and sit on various subcommittees dealing with anything from convocations to grade appeals. They presented in detail as to who they are and what they do. One of the bigger issues senators face is that they have much lower visibility and hence communication then even SRA representatives as well as steeper learning curve and lack of support & continuity from outgoing senators. It is something they are hoping to work on.

There was then a call for SRA year end assessments and why they are important by Joe Finkle(humanities) & Dan Boccaccio(socsci). They can be found here: https://www.msumcmaster.ca/studentGo…assessment.htm

They also requested that ALL SRA members report in 2 minutes what they have accomplished so far during information period

Marmor, PAC(Posters & Advertisment), SCSN(Student Community Support network), SHEC, SWHAT, MacCyle, Teaching awards committee, First Year Council & Executive board, Commerce caucus, Vice President Education, Art & Science Caucus, Engineering, Science & Health Science Caucuses all presented.

Next up in info period there was nothing controversial except my personal rather long speech on a concern that I and my constituents had inregards to the Silhouette publishing a 3/4th of the page court sketch concerning the Toronto 18 case and how a few parts of the article didn’t report both sides of the fact and how my research in the field of stereotyping/fundamentalism had shown that the way the article was presented was highly likely to cause friction and contributed not that much to the article itself. I also stated that the Sil would be better off reporting issues that really concern students like Budget & Program Cuts at Senate level and the recent regressive CPI increase. The draft minutes however were inaccurate in stating what I had to say and I would instead suggest reading the draft edits by the bylaws commissioner here.

Also the Quality of Education assessment was reported to have over 500 responses, the committee is analyzing them as of writing.

In question period the controversy revolved around the apparent refusal of the VP Finance Mr Caterine to answer any questions about the PST Audit:

A few members including SRA humanities dillon Letich asked Mr Caterine “What should we tell our constituents”. He asked them to read the EB minutes(Which weren’t up) and that he will not answer at the spot and if anyone has any questions they can visit his office hours or read a report he will publish next Thursday in the Sil. The report is as following:

Here is the exchange at the meeting by him
- Dillon-Leitch – If student comes up to me and asks about the PST audit, what should I say to them about this? Until the minutes are up what should I say?
- Caterine – I can prepare small document and send it to everyone. I don’t know the status of the minutes of EB. You can direct the students to my office or suggest to them to come talk to me. Minutes should be up at this EB meeting.

After this it was the usual array of elections to committees and uncontroversial policy amendments.

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As for the PST audit, I have tried my best to inquire personally what exactly happened, I still don’t understand most of it however the VP Finance has assured me that this is an “internal” issue and that the SRA should trust him and the MSU full time staff and the auditors to handle it. They are appealing it at the moment about the time period when interest started being charged but to my best knowledge the MSU will still be required to pay around $50k of Interest.

Here is a rough idea of what happened:

So every fee or revenue we collect, we need to pay PST tax on it like all businesses. Somewhere along the line 6-7 years ago when the current business manager John McGowan came into the job in the transition there was a failure in communication and somehow the procedure for the PST account was missed out. In other words the Health Plan fee should have been kept in a bank account divided into two areas, the first for paying out claims and the second for PST remittance. However that was not done and the entire lump sum the MSU collects at the start of the year was bunched together. Hence they failed to pay PST for 6-7 years. I am still unaware of how the buisness manager, VP Finances over the years and most importantly the Professional auditing firm Deloitte who go through our account missed the fact that PST was not coming out from the health plan at all. Hence the Health Plan piled up an apparently impressive accrued funds, however in actuality those funds were the money that was supposed to be paid out to PST. Similarly one is supposed to pay the government PST for spillage which they didn’t do for 1280/Quarters Accounts, hence a certain amount was charged from there too. Right now that is all I have been told and anything beyond that as in: Whose specific fault is it, How did professional auditors missed it etc are beyond the thin line of “HR” and hence I haven’t been able to find an answer for them. For me as an accounting noob I found it incomprehensible that the accounting firm managed to miss it, to my theory an auditor must have a rule book of acceptable practices that must say somewhere inthere: “All accumulated funds should have PST remittance”. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.

SRA 9O February 7th

The usual reports from Services, Bylaws & Procedures, EFRT, Exec Board.

MSU President Mr Tiwari was next and after his report he was questioned/requested to put his reports up online because of recent activity on MacInsiders where a user asked for documents/information on what he has done in the last few months. I suggested that at the meeting and in a subsequent email to the assembly that it would be easier for SRA members to link their constituents any information presented at meetings if they upload it to the document section(Which hasn’t always been the case) of the SRA website.

He was questioned about the rumoured “Liberal Arts” building and he stated that the proposals for the building are in place and the only thing holding them back is a lack of funding. Which is something Dr Peter George has been working on. They are also planning to renovate Arts Quad buildings.

Kin, humanities, SocSci and Nursing caucuses presented. Their reports are on the documents page.

The VP Finance had an updatet on the PST audit: “We met with Deloitte regarding the PST audit. We discovered some errors and where they lay and what the next steps would be. Also, the tax commodities specialist sat down with the Comptroller.” He also stated that the P.O System would be in the place over the summer.

I would also suggest reading VP ED Chris Martins Info Update on page 5 regarding budget cuts and “Task force on teaching and learning”

Matt Wright(Eng) had an update on his meeting about ELM while I had an update on my meeting with the Chief Information Officer of McMaster John Kierney and our discussions on Google Apps and Cloud Computing & the Overall IT Infrastructure of McMaster. One thing of note is that Mr Wright’s statement says that Google Apps is in contravention of FIPPA, that claim has subsequently been disproven by a couple of sources including personally by a journalist who has worked with it before in the sense that Emails are not covered under FIPPA act.

The Controversial aspect of this period however was a long statement by SRA Humanities Mr Dillon Letich concerning his disappointment with the VP Finance’s refusal to answer questions about the PST audit and with the President Mr Tiwari about his lack of preparation and professionalism. He also mentioned the claim that according to a few eyewitness reports(Which was later covered by the Sil in the next week here) Mr Tiwari was allegedly associated with or helping out President Elect Mary Koziol’s campaign. He also mentioned his disappointment at the incident in december where Mr Tiwari “attempted to assault” a fellow SRA member.

The speech was cut short by the VP admin stating that the Elections committee had dismissed the complaints hence Mr Leitch’s statement is out of order.

Mr Caterine had a further update about the PST audit that I would recommend reading on page 8 some of it is quoted here: “We asked Deloitte why they did not catch the omission and they admitted that the general accounting practices of the MSU had previously been in shambles; however, the MSU has been putting controls in place to correct these problems. Generally our audits are wrapped up in November and the PST payment was just something that we missed.”

There was also a bit of discussion in question period about the lack of advertisement for the 1280 Coffee Lounge and the future of Chip Wagon. There are currently plans to rent out that space to the owner of house of games to run a Halal Food Place. There was a question on the update with the Prayer space issue and the VP Admin commented as he did last meeting that he is currently preoccupied with other things but is looking into it. He also mentioned that the President Mr Tiwari has been working on this issue with PACBIC(An Administration committee for inclusive communities) and a delegation by them has visited the UofT Interfaith center.

The next item was the recommendation by an SRA member for the MSU to Donate $3000 to the Haiti relief fund. A number of clubs on campus had been organizing donation drives and it was the wish of SRA Social Sciences Miss Ali that the Board Of Directors match that donation. The MSU has an explicit policy that it does not give any donations to clubs for any reasons, even humanitarian causes. Therefore they were rejected by the Sponsorship & donations committee and came to the SRA to pass a motion to entitle the BOD to give the money. The Sponsorship & Donations committee had rejected it because of the policy and because they didn’t have enough money. According to the unofficial MSU historian Mr David Moore the last time the SRA had ever donated money was in 2004 in the instance of the Tsunami, the MSU also had an operating profit out of which the money came from.

Hence Mr Tiwari allowed the motion to be changed to $5000 and also said that he is willing to change the wording to ensure that it says that the “MSU Donate”. The Vp finance was concerned that this isn’t really going to get us any good PR and I agreed with most of his point. The rationale being that the MSU provides funds for clubs to have the infrastructure to be able to raise money that IF students want they can contribute to. The MSU giving out $5000 is only coming out of Special Projects funding which wasn’t created to give out humanitarian donations. Essentially we are taking student money and giving it out, hence its not really an “achievement”; especially since its not coming out of our operating budget profit(which the 2004 Tsunami donation came out of because the MSU had a good surplus at that time which it could give out as a non profit organization). To avoid this loophole in the future I have been working on editing the policies that ensure that future donations of any sort ONLY come via the sponsorship budget line till it is exhausted.

Lastly, SRA Engineering Matt Wright wanted to call a MSU Inc meeting for the next meeting to discuss the financial situation and the PST audit. The BOD disagreed and mentioned that it won’t be any different to a regular meeting and the bounds of HR will still apply. The motion was defeated.

SRA 9P February 28th 2010

The meeting started with a guest presentation by one of the senior figures in Sheepdoginc which are the largest distributors for Google Apps Suite in North America. Pursuing Google apps suite was a project /idea brought forward during the last presidential candidate, however irregardless of the loss of the candidate I was supporting I decided to personally pioneer the research into it as part of my broad based policy research into the IT Infrastructure of McMaster. However soon enough Matthew Dillion Leitch(SRA Humanities) joined my collaborative project and due to his efforts was able to arrange the rep from SheepDog to come. The presentation was very well received and managed to answer most of the questions regarding privacy, costs and people seemed impressed by the range of options it provides.

The flurry of reports started with Finance committee whose commissioner promised the MSU’s first Budget Review in 6 years sometime in March. The Maroons reported about increased exec and ww rep application and events turn outs and their efforts to increase attendance for varsity games. First Year Council had not much to report but generally talked about the difficulties they had as a representative body in terms of communication and direction from the MSU upper leadership as a general comment for the assembly. Operations & Exec board reported. The VP Admin report was centered around a debate about the potential issues WW Planners and Reps might face as a result of the FYEO not paying heed to the comments and suggestions of student leaders and their idea to cut the traditional WW in Half and replace the rest with “academic programming”. They have also removed the position of faculty wide WW planner much to the disapproval of the VP Admin as well as tried to lay off the faculty society responsibility to MSU, which was obviously refused. I would suggest any WW Rep or Planner reading this to read the state of affairs here:

The other big thing was the subsequent Policy Motion sponsored by Myself and Mr Dillon Leitch that went through with 29 For 1 Against(Due to procedural concerns) and Two Abstentions that essentially in summary stated that the MSU should Lobby the Administration to research into options for our email client and to possibly replace it with a web based application with added features(calendars, docs etc)

I will have to wait till the draft minutes come out to complete the rest.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to post or email me if you have any questions!

p.s: Excited by what you just read? Want to have your voice heard or pass a motion? The MSU is having a General Assembly on the 17th of March from 4:30-6:30PM! Check out more details here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?ei…9939288&ref=ts

p.p.s: Equally Massive updates for Fall 09 can be found here: http://php.orbiscommunications.com/srablog/?p=105

In solidarity,

Huzaifa Saeed

SRA Social Sciences 09/10