ASFA VP Communications and Outreach Impeached

Megha Sandhu Found Morally Responsible for Not Fulfilling Her Mandate

NewsVince Morello — Published October 24, 2016

Sandhu was charged, and morally responsible for a failure to meet her duties. The charges include absenteeism—not being physically present at meetings—being unavailable to respond to messages, not contributing to her communications and external committee, and general negligence of her duties.

Tu-Anh Nguyen, a councillor for the Modern Chinese Language Student Association, was the main complainant and brought up the motion for impeachment. Nguyen said that Sandhu has not been present at the ASFA regular council meetings in September and October, and that Sandhu’s availability for committee meetings were very limited. She also said that ASFA member associations did not receive documents on time and emails were not responded on time.

“I just wanted to say that this is in no way personal. It’s strictly professional,” Nguyen said. “I just find that for students to be able to [accomplish] their duties correctly, we need people who are really serious about their jobs and that they take proactive steps if they cannot fulfill any of their duties.”

Sandhu was not present at the meeting, however after being reached through telephone by acting chair, Jason Poirier Lavoie, who also sits on the Oversight Committee of the Political Science Student Association, she asked for an extension of the trial.

“By extenuating personal circumstances, familial and otherwise, they didn’t have the opportunity to check their correspondences,” said Lavoie based on the discussion he had with Sandhu over the phone. “They would like to be here to argue for themselves but they cannot because they have not prepared for it.”

A motion to postpone the impeachment vote lost 7-5. Nguyen was one of those trying to postpone the trial.

“I was hoping she would be present here to giver her side of the story,” Nguyen said. “She actually did show some signs that she wanted to address this. That’s why I wanted to postpone it even though i was the one who called the impeachment.”

Sandhu was also charged on harming objectives, such as ASFA’s reputation, and harming the community by not carrying out her mandate as part of ASFA, but the charges were dismissed.

The Link reached out to Megha Sandhu but she could not be reached for comment before press time.

With files from Josh Fischlin.