On Dec. 2, AMS Assembly convened to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 and EDII feedback from the equity townhall meeting in November.
President’s report
AMS President Zaid Kasim’s provided a recap of the Senate meeting that took place on Nov. 30.
“The Student Senate caucus brought forward a list of questions in regard to COVID-19 to the Senate,” Kasim said.
“We dug a bit deeper and brought up the real systemic issue beyond COVID-19, which is the inconsistency of academic delivery amongst students across departments and faculties.”
Kasim felt the response from Senate was “inappropriate.”
“The response we got regarding those inconsistencies was that it’s the profs’ decision […] In my opinion, I think I share the opinion of the Student Senate caucus, it was a very inappropriate response to the quality of our education,” he said.
“I do want to have it noted that […] the University has become lazy and self-satisfied with their academic prestige.”
According to Kasim, the AMS will be meeting with Professor Jordan Morelli to discuss the support faculties should provide for students.
Vice-President (Operations) and Vice-President (University Affairs) reports
Tiana Wong, Vice-President (Operations), announced she has been engaged in conversations with Kingston Transit to discuss re-establishing Queen’s student bus passes.
Due to the pandemic, the Bus-it program wasn’t assessed as a mandatory student fee this year. After several consultations, Wong said students have expressed the need for the bus pass.
Wong added that she will be working to reinstate the program in time for the Winter referendum.
Vice-President (University Affairs) Ryan Sieg delivered updates from the university regarding a project to update the SOLUS Student Centre.
Sieg said Queen’s will be re-vamping SOLUS to increase accessibility. Currently, the project is seeking student feedback.
“If you have any kind of feedback with your own source of experience or could do any outreach within your respective societies about gathering any of that information, then I can pass it along to the people who are working on it,” Sieg said, referring to fellow Assembly members.
Other motions
Brian Seo, AMS commissioner of clubs, deliberated current events sanctioning policy.
“We found at the beginning of the year with very flying guidelines that we had with various university initiatives, and AMS guidelines we had to keep up with […] Student-led groups were intentionally trying to de-ratify from the AMS through clubs policy in order to have unsanctioned events off-campus,” Seo said.
Seo said student clubs that tried to de-ratify for this purpose will be banned from ratifying with the AMS for two academic years. Clubs will also be de-ratified if they host unsanctioned events off-campus.
Sieg added that this policy is in place to keep students safe.
Assembly approved changes to Clubs Policy and passed the motion.
Assembly also approved amendments to the Elections and Referenda policies.
Laura Devenny, AMS Secretariat, said the Electoral Office has decided to split policies on referendum and student elections as the AMS is the “largest conveyor” of student-wide referendums on campus.
Devenny explained the original manual for elections and referendum is “unclear” and makes it “hard to distinguish the policies.”
“I would say some of the biggest adjustments that we’ve made is clarifying the scope of leave of absences, conflicts of interest, as well as endorsements,” Devenny explained.
AMS Equity Policy and Procedures
Social Issues Commissioner Samara Lijiam presented the new AMS Equity Policy and Procedures, a topic briefly discussed during November’s Equity Townhall.
According to Lijiam, the policy is broken into five sections: transparency, academics, accommodations, accessibility, and resources and allocation.
“We’re constantly reviewing the mandated trainings that we have and adding to them to make sure that we’re getting as relevant and extensive trainings as possible,” Lijiam said.
The new policy aims to improve the internal culture of the AMS and ensure AMS employee and volunteer policies are “inclusive and equitable.”
Lijiam added the policy will cover learning and academics, with the aim of facilitating safer classroom environments by addressing harassment and discrimination.
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