Did you know that if you're a Trent student reading this, you are the owner of Arthur?

That's right, aside from being the best (and your favourite) paper of record, this humble rag is also your property!

Well, at least in part.

Despite having no share capital, Arthur is collectively owned and funded in large part by a levy collected from her membership, the undergraduate students of Trent University.

This is exciting news because it measn that if you’re an undergraduate student enrolled in more than 1.5 credits, you’re a levy fee paying member of Arthur (thank you), and have an important role to play in how this organization functions!

As long as you're a levy-paying undergrad who is up to date on their levy payments, you have the right to vote and add your name to the speakers list at our AGM.

You therefore have a choice in how Arthur works and how she spends your money, and we—her humble Board and Editors—want you to exercise this right!

"But how can I make my voice heard and get involved with Arthur?" You might well be asking yourself.

Well, self, we're glad you asked!

Arthur is holding its Annual General Meeting (AGM) from 5:00-7:00 PM on Wednesday November 20th in the John at Sadleir House (751 George Street North) and we want YOU to come out and vote!

Except if you're a George Brown nursing student. Or at Trent Durham. Or a community member. We're sorry.

For some reason neither of those programs pay into our levy, nor do non-Trent students, and therefore you're not officially members and co-owners of Arthur, and therefore cannot vote :(

However, we would still love to have you at our AGM, and if you are interested in contributing to local, independent, and radical student journalism, our board has been working on something which might just pique your interest...

We'll tell you those specifics a little bit later, but for now we'd like to tell you a little more about what's actually involved in an Annual General Meeting.

All not-for-profit corporations (a thing which Arthur is) have to hold AGMs to stay accountable to their members. Arthur Members attending the AGM will get to hear what the editors have been up to for the past year, how their spending Arthur's money, and also have the opportunity to grill the editors about both of these things.

The AGM is also when the Arthur membership elects people to the Arthur Board of Directors. Even more exciting news: Those undergraduate students who are eligible to vote are also eligible to run for a seat on the Arthur Board of Directors!

Directors play a crucial role in the administration of the newspaper and oversee the Editors to ensure that they are remaining accountable to the membership and operating the paper in accordance with the by-laws and the best interests of the students who fund us.

If you are interested in gaining experience or learning more about non-profit governance and administration, then this is the role for you!

If you are interested in running for a Board position, email editors@trentarthur.ca and board@trentarthur.ca with a brief manifesto expressing your interest in joining the Board. Or you can simply nominate yourself from the floor at the meeting when the time comes, we're not to bothered either way!

On top of that, members will get to vote on new motions presented for their consideration. Like many not-for-profits, we've had to update our By-Laws this year, and need our membership's approval to formalize them.

Party to that, remember those non-members we talked about earlier? One of our new By-Laws would offer more ways to get involved through Community Memberships. Now you too can pay $14.30 to be a 1/10,000th co-owner of an abbrasive student publication!

Aside from bragging rights, giving us this pittance also affords you the same privileges as all other levy paying members, namely: voting and speaker's rights at our AGM, the right to run for our Board of Directors, and the knowledge that you are in some way contributing to the freedom and autonomy of the press.

Even if you don't care about any of those things, we'd still like to invite you to become an Arthur member. We're like one big happy family, only with more financial documents and less casual homophobia at dinners!

No matter your relationship to Arthur, we'd love to have you at our AGM. We're not even above plying you with food, as Wednesday evening will be catered by our friends at the Seasoned Spoon!

You’ll also get to hang out with journalists, which as we all know is everyone’s favourite passtime.

All in all, this Wednesday promises to be a very fun and fulfilling time, filled with joy, falafel, and policy jokes that are funny to us and three other people!

If you haven’t already, you can register your student card for access to Sadleir House by going to their website. We recommend you do for reasons beyond attending our AGM, because it’s an awesome community space full of radical ideas and cool people.

We hope to see you there.

Hopefully this goes better than the U.S. election.

Love,

Your humble stewards of Arthur

David King, Board President

Abbigale Kernya, Co-Editor-in-Chief

Evan Robins, Co-Editor-in-Chief