CSU Councillor Resigns Over Conflict of Interest

Ramy Khoriaty Steps Down For Violating Union Standing Regulations

NewsAndrew Brennan — Published February 5, 2013

Less than an hour before a hearing to decide his fate, Concordia Student Union councillor Ramy Khoriaty resigned Monday evening for being in conflict with the union’s standing regulations.

“The standing regulations are the standing regulations, and we can’t [have an] example of breaching the regulations,” said Khoriaty to the CSU judicial board, which met to decide his case on Monday.

Last week, The Link reported that Khoriaty, who represented engineering and computer science students on council, was found to have broken CSU standing regulation section 225c, which states a person holding office “is disqualified from holding or taking office if he or she becomes an employee of the Student Union after taking office.”

He was temporarily employed by the CSU to help direct Orientation Week last fall.

Khoriaty maintained this week that he did not know at the time that he was in conflict with CSU policy. He was vetted internally by CSU General Manager Michele Dumais in mid-August, but she did not catch the issue with the standing regulation.

No normative procedure exists for hiring CSU employees, and union policy does not include a formal definition for whether short-term contracts constitute employment.

Saying it was ”extremely concerned with the hiring procedure of CSU employees for temporary positions,” the CSU judicial board recommended in its ruling for council to codify kinds of employment contracts and to frame what is a union employee in the regulations.

When asked about the regular hiring process, CSU VP Internal and Clubs Nadine Atallah told the JB that executives on hiring committees follow convention from past executives and the CSU office manager, Yu Yu Hui.

“So just so I am absolutely clear, the hiring process at the CSU is largely determined by word of mouth and one employee?” asked JB member Nick Sweet.

“Pretty much,” responded Atallah. “The institutional knowledge is very much with Yu Hui.”

The board also formally reprimanded the committee that hired Khoriaty and recommended all members of council review CSU bylaws and standing regulations to ensure “such violations do not occur again in the future.”