2013-2014 AFSA (and AFEF) Constitutional Reform Briefing: Why is a referendum needed?
- With the changes we are looking to make as a possible uWaterloo commerce society, it is ideal to start a referendum to ensure the constitution is altered such that everything will flow as planned with such a re-organization within FEDs
- After having directors and executives of the organization to travel from coast to coast this past year and discovering best practies among other commerce societies and business associations alike from over 30 business schools accross Canada this past year, it has become apparent to the AFSA Board of Directors that AFSA is responsible for a large amount of deliverables. The Board would like to ensure the viability for innovation and intrapreneurship, and also maintaining quality events and services currently offered by AFSA. Thus the board has determined that adding an additional Executive position would be in the best interests of the portfolios of the current and future Executive positions, post referendum. It has begun to be burdensome on Executives to add to the current portfolios for the current number of executives in recent years, and thus incorporating a new position would be in the best interests of seeing the organization continue to blossom and grow
- AFSA currently lacks a strong conference subsidy and conference engagement and/or participation/representation program like Sprott’s Sprott Competes or John Molson’s JMCC (John Molson Competition Committee)
- Currently the office of Vice President, External Relations, has to deal with corporate, internal, and external relations (not to mention conferences); it is beginning hard to manage all three as AFSA looks to steadily increase sponsorship over the next few years and improve its connections within and outside the university (such as other clubs/groups on campus and relationships with other business school student associations)
Changes? The referendum will…
- Amend the constitution for members; adding SAF Members, who are the current member base (SAF students) and Associate members, who would be non-SAF students choosing to become a member
- Amend the constitution for financial policy; allowing that each year, that SAF members vote for a set of AFSA services/events/offerings for which they will restrict from the SAF members
- Re-establish endowment fund governance best practices by re-establishing the AFEF Board, which will be differentiable from the AFSA Board, adding seats for the SAF Director, the Alumni Association, and a recent alumnus
- Rename the office of Vice President, External Relations to Corporate Relations [“for the purpose of focusing on relationships of a corporate nature that involve monetary or in-kind sponsorship for the organizations and/or its affiliates”]
- Create a new office of Vice President, External Relations [“for the purpose of building and maintaining relationships with organizations off and on campus with primary focus towards other business and commerce student associations across Canada and clubs and other societies internal to the University of Waterloo, and will also deal with managing a conference engagement and participation system which will rival similar programs run across the country; this portfolio will also deal with the conference subsidy program”]
- Create one new elected AFSA Director, and also creates the explicit right for one Board of Director to be an alumnus who has graduated within the past 3 years; this will also create efficiencies with the young alumnus seat on the AFEF Board
- Remove Vice President, Finance, as the automatic replacement to the President. BoD will now have the authority to appoint an “Exec Vice President” that would take over the President’s duties where the President cannot perform them
All in all, a vote for a yes on the referendum will be a vote for more of your money being spent towards you, the students, and to allow for AFSA to take the lead in improving the business student experience at uWaterloo.
Click below for more information on splitting the VP External Portfolio.