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RSU Annual General Meeting cut short

By Alanna Rizza and Sarah Krichel 

The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) Annual General Meeting (AGM) was cut short Wednesday night after losing quorum.

There were only two motions passed before the meeting was adjourned and all other motions were pushed to the RSU’s next Board of Directors meeting on April 26.

RSU by-laws require 100 voting members in the room for quorum to be met.

“It’s really disappointing obviously there’s so many things brought forward by the membership that is really crucial,” said RSU president Andrea Bartlett.

The first motion brought forth was a restructuring in the way the RSU funds student groups. This included a four-bracket system to determine how much funding student groups receive based on the numbers of events a group organizes per semester, as well as the size of their membership.

Several students brought forth concerns surrounding the proposed four-bracket system, including Martin Fox, RU Connected’s vice-president education candidate in this year’s RSU election, who called it “superficial.” After some debate, an amendment was made for the motion to exclude the four-bracket system and the motion for the RSU to reevaluate how student group funding is distributed did pass.

The second motion passed was a push for the RSU to lobby the university for additional resources and funding for competitive athletic clubs who are not currently financially supported by Ryerson’s athletics department.

“I think a lot of groups and individuals who were here for a lot of previous motions around athletics felt defeated when their motion was defeated,” Bartlett said.

Currently, the RSU does not fund athletics. The topic of considering these clubs as additional “student groups” with an athletic-specific classification was debated. This would allow the RSU to decide whether or not they would be able to fund competitive clubs on a case-by-case basis. This debate eventually did not carry, and the motion was passed with no additional financial responsibilities on the RSU.

After the athletics motion, the meeting lost quorum.

Among the motions that were not passed was a call for the RSU executives to review its relationship with the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).

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