On Sunday night, students received an e-mail from AMS President James Macmillan regarding the AMS Annual General Meeting and Annual Corporate General Meeting.
Not only did the e-mail not include the day the two meetings would be happening, but it also included instructions on how students could put forward a motion to be debated if they happened to be able to travel back in time to submit their motion by the deadline of the day before.
This e-mail was followed by a “Correction and Clarification” e-mail days later, which informed students of the meeting place and time of the meetings. At that point, students only had one day’s notice.
Although the date for accepting motions was extended, there’s no reason why students should have been given such late notice in the first place.
It seems as if Macmillan and the AMS Commission of Internal Affairs simply assumed average students would be too busy or apathetic to care. But that wasn’t the case when the AMS needed students to the Queen’s Centre motion.
Two years ago, when the AMS needed student in order to the Queen’s Centre motion, they embarked on a lengthy and expensive advertising campaign, complete with full-spread ments in the Journal weeks in advance and gigantic posters and banners around campus, to get their message out. The result was a packed Grant Hall full of ionate students on both sides of the debate. This year, in contrast, there wasn’t even quorum. Of the required 100 students, only 65 were in attendance. The AMS’s cavalier “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” attitude smacks of complacency and elitism and is an affront to the democratic processes of our student government.
The AGM is one of the only times during the school year when students can come forward, vote, and have a say in what their student government does. With so few opportunities for students to really engage with the student government, it’s unfortunate that the AMS treated the meetings so flippantly.
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