Council Forum

Students’ Council meets every second Tuesday in the Council Chambers in University Hall at 6pm. Council meetings are open to all students. The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, 28 October.

In case you haven’t heard, Council is still fully equipped with food and open to any and all students. Two and a half hours of political chit-chat is definitely worth a cookie or two. So if you’re at all interested in student politics, swing by, fill your belly, and get your democracy on.

Question Period
Vice President (Student Life) Kristen Flath was asked if any progress was made in her goal to get rid of styrofoam containers in SUB. She explained that it is taking a long time, but the SU is currently in the process of determining a suitable alternative, and estimating the cost to both students and businesses.

President Janelle Morin responded to a question regarding a recently unattributed comment to the SU from the Intercamp, Grant MacEwan’s student newspaper. The article, which detailed a raise recently voted in for MacEwan’s executive, included a quote explaining that the U of A SU was currently reviewing their pay salary. Morin said that to her knowledge, there was no such review in place and that no one among the executive was the source of information.

Carry on
Bill 5 was up for discussion in light of the recent reduction to councillor numbers. With the implications it has on by-election numbers, it passed in second reading. The required number of councillors needed before resorting to a by-election was downsized from 30 to 23.

Bill 4, brought forward by Board of Governors representative Michael Janz, was withdrawn unanimously. The decision came as the result of Janz’s presentation to Council, which also took place on Tuesday night. Janz proposed that Council create a councillor job description which details the same guidelines for councillor attendance as the bill.

Bear Scat is no more
On the recommendation of Bear Scat creator Steve Kirkham, the SU executive has made the decision to discontinue Bear Scat. With the Bear Tracks upgrade set to go live on 17 November, Bear Scat will no longer be available as of 16 November.

Kirkham has been working with both Administrative Information Systems (AIS) and the SU throughout the upgrade process. Both he and the SU agree that with the advent of popular Bear Scat features such as the improved colour grid, watch list, and grade notification, Bear Tracks will be able to meet the needs of students.

As Vice President (Academic) John Braga explained, this was the outcome the SU hoped for.

“It is a decision that Bear Scat’s functionality will allow for it to passively fade,” he said, adding that the SU will continue to be involved in the upgrade as they work with the Registrar’s office and AIS.

Kirkham concurred with Braga, explaining that through his position as a technical consultant with AIS, he is confident that the upgrade will successfully replace Bear Scat.

“It was one of my goals to see if we could get Bear Tracks, within all the limitations we do because we’re using PeopleSoft, if it would be possible to get it to the point where Bear Scat would just naturally become obsolete,” he said.

“It was a lot of hard work, and although we might not be a hundred per cent of the way there, it’s my opinion that the next version of Bear Tracks has reached a sufficient level of functionality and ease of use,” he added.

When the new Bear Tracks goes live, Kirkham will remain on as a casual employee of the University to assist with the initial stages of the launch.

This decision will also mean that Vice President (Operations and Finance) Steven Dollansky won’t have to worry about acquiring additional funds.

“We budgeted to fund Bear Scat until the end of October. If we had made the decision that we need to support Bear Scat further, we would have to look into contingency reserves, special projects funds, those sorts of things to cover it,” he explained.