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CESAR appoints new executives at general members meeting

By Sierra Bein

An impromptu executive election took place at an unofficial General Members’ Meeting (GMM) for the Continuing Education Students’ Association at Ryerson (CESAR).

The meeting took place a week after former CESAR president, Shinae Kim, resigned from her position. Members are still unclear about what prompted Kim’s resignation.

Recently, two full-time CESAR staff members had been locked out from work since Sept. 30. The lockout ended Feb. 19 when the Ontario Labour Board demanded that CESAR notify their employees to go back to work and receive back-pay.

“I went home Friday morning, Shinae calls me. She has resigned,” said Leticia Msowoya, part-time CESAR staff member. “I never got the reason.”

Msowoya has been affected by the lockout but says that the volunteer staff has been excellent in trying to get operations back up and running.

This was the first gathering since the end of the lockout, but not all members were given proper notice of the meeting.

“Not a lot of CESAR students were informed about this meeting,” said CESAR member, Zumar Fatima.

A meeting cannot be held officially without giving a week’s notice prior to the day of the meeting.

However, the motion was brought forward by Denise Hammond to vote for interim leaders during the GMM. Janet Rodriguez seconded the motion. Both women are also CESAR members.

“Since we just found out about the meeting today we should send out an email to people who are CESAR students to let them know we are having the election,” said Fatima.

There were five executive positions open for voting. It is still unclear as to why all the former executives vacated their positions. Themselves or another member nominated candidates. If a position received more than one nomination, they went on to three minute speeches followed by an anonymous vote. Should a candidate remain uncontested, they would be put forth to the position immediately. Hamid Osman served as the chair and counted the votes for the election.

The following are the positions that were filled with new interim leaders:

  • Director of membership and communications: Denise Hammond.
  • Director of finance and services: Abdullah Idroos.
  • Director of academic and policy: Dwayne Anderson (uncontested).
  • Director of events coordinator: Samson Romero.
  • Director of campaigns & equity: Janet Rodriguez.

There was no official talk of who the next president will be, replacing Kim. The next official general meeting will take place in March.

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