Challenging the Chair

(Originally posted on http://www.kj360.ca)
Or “appeal” from the chair’s decision.

It’s a motion brought forth by a member of a committee or legislature designed to challenge a decision made by the Chairperson of said committee.

At yesterday’s BOA meeting, during the debate on what to do with the Social Science and Engineering BOA Elections debacle, BOA Director for SS Kyle Simunovic proposed an amendment that would “close” the nomination period for the upcoming re-elections. This would mean that no new candidates would be allowed to enter the race (something I agree with). BOA Chair Federico, ruled the amendment out of order, due to the rules of our By-Elections as stated in the constitution. The problem is that these are not legitimate by-elections, but rather re-elections. This is why the Chair’s decision was quickly appealed. In the end, Federico declared the ruling upheld, since the appeal/challenge had not received 2/3 of the vote.

However, it has since been realized that you only need a majority vote to overturn the decision of the chair! The easiest place to show you all this, is on the wiki page for the motion. As you can see, “Majority in negative required to reverse chair’s decision.”

So the lesson to be learned from this, is that BOA Chair Federico Carvajal needs to stop bullying the Board into doing what he wants them to. Anyone who has attended a few meetings will know what I am talking about. We need absolutely noultimatums coming from the mouth of the Chair. The Chair is not there to defend the President from questioning before any questions are even answered. The Chair is not their to be snarky and rude with Board members.

A change has to happen.

UPDATE: As pointed out when this point was originally posted. The SFUO Constitution sets the threshold at 2/3 of votes to overturn the decision of the chair. However, as before, I feel my criticism of the Chairs action is still warranted as it has to do more with overall actions and is not limited to this one occurrence.