Overhauling the Board

Undergrads Face Reduced BoG Presence in Bylaw Reforms

NewsAdam Kovac — Published September 6, 2011

When the Concordia Board of Governors meets for the first time this school year on Sept. 28, odds are good that when they vote on whether to adopt a series of bylaw changes, they decide to reduce the size of the Board from 40 voting members to 25. They will also likely vote to reduce undergraduate voting representation on the Board from four students to one, an idea that has raised eyebrows despite the otherwise almost unanimous praise for the report issued by the External Governance Review Committee in June, on which the proposed changes are based.

“I think in general, everyone supports moving the Board from 40 people down to 25, but the reality is [undergraduate and graduate students] have 12.5 per cent representation now, and it’s understood that when you move from 40 people down to 25, you’re going to lose people, but proportionally we should still have 12.5 per cent,” said AJ West, one of the undergraduate representatives on the Board.

Concordia Student Union President Lex Gill, who also sits on the Board, echoed West’s frustration at the reduced role undergraduate students are facing. “Effectively this is sending a message that students are inconsequential to university governance,” she said. “[It says] we are taken for granted as meaningful constituents of the university, even though the decisions made at the Board level can most directly impact students.”

Bram Freedman, Concordia’s VP Institutional Relations and Secretary General, insisted that the lowered representation was brought up in discussions, but a decision was made to move forward in the interest of preserving the immediacy of the report.

“The challenge that the committee had was, when the board received the report in June and referred it to the ad hoc committee [on governance] to study and review, the Board gave a pretty strong indication that it wanted to accept the report as much as possible as a whole,” he said. “The difficulty is that once you start cherry-picking recommendations, then the process will take a very long time, and you will get into all sorts of discussions and debates, and I think there was a commitment to move forward.”

Freedman noted that undergrads were not alone in voicing concerns about their representation, as alumni would also face a reduced presence. Pensioners, who currently have a single non-voting observer, would also lose that position under the bylaw changes.

“The challenge is that it’s impossible to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of all of the different constituencies. Everything was a compromise.”

Though undergraduates will only have one voting member, they will also have an alternate member who will have speaking rights, and who can vote if the primary member is not present, as well as be able to vote at the committee level.

“To me, this is a token measure,” said Gill. “It’s meant to sweeten the deal a bit, and in the end I [think neither] students nor their elected representatives find it satisfactory.”

“You clarify roles and responsibilities, and hopefully people’s behavior and attitudes flow from that. Changing words on a page doesn’t change culture.”
–Bram Freedman,VP Institutional Relations and Secretary General

Limit the Leaders

Freedman also discussed some other issues that have dogged the Board of Governors over the past year, and which were also addressed in the EGRC report, which was commissioned following a public uproar in the wake of the dismissal of former Concordia president Judith Woodsworth.

One of the primary complaints regarding the Board was governors staying beyond the two terms limit. In the current bylaws, terms are limited to three years, however, as Freedman pointed out, “There actually were not term limits in the bylaws.”

In the revised bylaws, governors are explicitly limited to three terms of three years each, as opposed to the EGCR’s recommended two terms of four years. Anyone elected to the Chair position, currently held by Peter Kruyt, will not have their prior time on the board counted, and can serve in that position twice, meaning a Chair may be on the board for up to 12 years.

“There were guidelines, a policy adopted by the Board many years ago, that talked about normality and so on,” he explained. “This time, they are formally enshrined in the bylaws.” Another common complaint was that the makeup of the Board did not reflect the community at large. The perception that captains of industry dominated the Board is also addressed in the proposed revisions, which state, “A variety of experience and expertise profiles must be sought in appointing members of the Board of Governors.”

“I know that there’s a perception as to the profile of the external members of the board, but they’re not all people that are in business,” said Freedman. “We already have people with different profiles, but I think that message was received loud and clear.”

Freedman also addressed the most notorious phrase in the EGRC report, which said that there exists a “culture of contempt” at Concordia. He pointed to unprecedented joint meetings of the Senate steering committee and the executive committee of the Board, as well as calls for consultation from the community as examples of an effort to make the administration more inclusive.

“I think its important to clarify that from the university’s perspective, the comment about culture may have dealt with some challenges or difficulties at the governing levels at the university, but we certainly never felt there was a culture problem within the daily life of the 45,000 students, or the 7,000 employees who come to work every day,” he said. “You adjust culture issues at the governing levels, slowly and in phases. The first thing you have to do is work on the structures. That’s this piece. You clarify roles and responsibilities, and hopefully people’s behavior and attitudes flow from that. Changing words on a page doesn’t change culture.”

Before the Board of Governors is able to discuss the proposed changes, the Senate will meet on Sept. 9, where it will debate the recommendations in the EGRC report that pertain to it. Once they have come to their own conclusions, a report will be issued to the Board, though Freedman admitted that should Senate and the Board disagree on the restructuring, the Board will have final say.

This article originally appeared in Volume 32, Issue 02, published September 6, 2011.