In keeping with the events of the previous year’s fall meeting of its members, the October 17th Semi-Annual General Meeting of the Trent Central Student Association struggled for around a quarter of an hour to meet quorum.

In order for the Association to be able to vote on policy, the meeting required a total of 20 undergraduate attendees.

As with the previous year’s meeting, the only major item on the agenda beside the approval of the Winter 2024 SAGM meeting’s minutes was the appointment of an auditor to review the Association’s financial statements for the end of their fiscal year.

Despite the 5:00 posted start time, students continued to trickle in for the next several minutes thereafter.

Eight minutes into the meeting, Association Resource Manager, Wendy Walker, announced that the meeting had 17 Association members in attendance, and was 3 away from quorum.

She added to participants that “if you have any friends who are interested in winning our draw of 1 of 10 $25 Trent cash prizes, have them join our meeting and then we can get started very soon.”

At approximately 5:16, the twentieth requisite member joined, and the meeting was declared to have met quorum.

At this point, Association Chair, Rob Monico, presented the Land Acknowledgement and Chair’s Remarks, the latter of which took approximately in full.

The earlier period spent waiting for the meeting to reach quorum had afforded me plenty of time to read (and reread) the agenda package, and I was able to duly note a typo in the spelling of Hiawatha First Nation.

Perusal of previous Association meeting minutes seems to indicate that this misspelling has been included in meeting agendas dating back to at least January 2023.

I suppose, given the semi-annual nature of the Association’s SAGMs (as the name implies, of course), this typographical error will have to wait six months to be addressed in the approval of minutes at the Winter 2025 SAGM.

In the present meeting, however, the minutes of the Association’s 2024 Winter SAGM were duly carried, providing great reading for policy wonks when they are posted in short order to the Association’s site.

At 5:27 the motion to approve Baker Tilley Peterborough to review the financial documents of the Association for the fiscal year ending August 31, 2024, was carried.

The meeting adjourned at 5:29.

Despite the meeting having officially adjourned, the Zoom call remained open for an additional ten minutes while Association Resource Manager Walker announced the winners of the ten $25 Trent cash prizes.

“I really appreciate you coming to these meetings,” Walker concluded at 5:39. “I know they're not always the most exciting, but they are really important.”