Council Watch — Late additions
Ryan Bromsgrove
Opinion Editor
Feb 15, 2012
Something good happened on Students’ Council this week. Fed up with consistently seeing items on the late additions rather than the main agenda with no plausible justification, Law Councillor Scott Nicol decided that enough was enough. Rather than allow a motion about the SU Food Policy make it onto the main agenda without a fight, he led the effort to prevent discussion of the item during that council session — which will hopefully serve to prompt councillors to be more considerate about deadlines in the future.
It’d be easy to characterize Nicol’s arguments as a petty attempt to enforce bureaucracy over getting things done. But he was right to criticize the ongoing practice of councillors using the late additions deadline as they would an essay extension merely because they “dropped the ball.”
The Food Policy appears to be an uncontroversial motion that probably would pass first reading without all that much debate, so the frustration that must accompany having to wait another two weeks is understandable. That said, it’s as good a time as any to get the message to councillors that this shit has got to stop.
Councillors must submit items for the main agenda by 8 a.m. on the Friday before the Tuesday meeting, with the document compiled and available for reading later that day. This gives them all adequate time to check them over, consider how they will approach each vote, discuss their thoughts with other councillors and consult members of their faculty for input.
When it comes to the late additions, there are no specific rules, but the precedent this year has been that items have been accepted up until early afternoon on the Tuesday of a council meeting, and the document goes online a few hours later. This drastically reduces the amount of time available to give each item the consideration it requires, and should really only be used when a vote has to happen and only when there is a compelling excuse as to why it’s late. Too often this year the late additions have been abused as a means of having a few extra days to get material in, while depriving the rest of council the ability to come prepared for discussion.
It may seem petty, impractical and a waste of time to have prevented the Food Policy making it on the main agenda, but this is one time when enforcement of the rules set right their exploitation. Students’ Council as a whole recognized and worked to correct one of its deficiencies. Those who didn’t like how things turned out are welcome to meet the deadline next time.
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