RSU Semi-Annual General Meeting finds new home in TRSM

By Allen Perkins

The Ryerson Students’ Union has looked all over campus for a new location to hold its Semi-Annual General Meeting (SAGM). After weeks of searching, they’ve found a new spot. The days of the Tecumseh Auditorium in the Student Campus Centre as meeting location are over after almost a decade. Room 1-067 in the Ted Rogers School of Management will house the next meeting on Nov. 30, 2015.

Why the change? The old location was big enough and adequate acoustically, but not sufficiently accessible according to the current Students’ Union.

Last year, the meeting lost quorum and was adjourned not long after it started. As RSU President Andrea Bartlett indicated, this could have been due to students’ unfamiliarity with the room’s location.

“What I always found frustrating was that any time I’d attend an SAGM we would always lose quorum and part of me would wonder is that because it’s not in as public of a space?” Bartlett said.

More familiar options for the meeting included the Ted Rogers School of Management, the Sears Atrium and the Mattamy Athletic Centre, but the RSU eventually settled on the TRSM.

“If [we] say come to Tecumseh Lounge, not every student, unless they’re in the RSU student group, is going to know where that is,” Bartlett said.

The RSU hopes a new and better known location will boost attendance to the point where quorum isn’t lost once again.

Ryerson student Angelo Robledo agrees.

“If it’s closer to the Student Learning Centre or the library building, I think there would be a lot more people who know where that is,” he said.

But not all Ryerson students feel this way. Daniel Navaratnarajah doesn’t think the meeting’s location will make a difference.

“Changing the meeting room isn’t going to do anything, people are too busy with work and commuting,” Navaratnarajah said.

Bartlett also spoke of another change to the SAGM, stating that documents distributed to students will be more readable and easier to understand. These will include pie charts, visuals and an overall look she termed more “professional.”