The September 15th meeting of the Trent Central Student Association’s Board of Directors came to a seemingly uneven start as Board Chair Rob Monico wrangled the Association’s first meeting of the school year to order.

Nearly the first ten minutes of the meeting were devoted to going over the meeting’s procedure. The Association, Monico explained, had not had time in their summer training period to undertake training in Robert’s Rules of Order. 

This of course raises certain questions as to how the Association had been devoting their time in the interim. Despite this being the first meeting of the academic year with the Association’s new executive, executives have functionally been in their roles since the Association’s Spring General Election, which were approved at their March 25th board meeting.

Following a lengthy procedural introduction and role call, in which now-former Traill College Commissioner Aidan Cooke’s was the only surprise resignation announced, the agenda proceeded to the land and labour acknowledgement before Monico again took the floor to deliver his Chair’s remarks.

In his address, Monico noted that while the Association’s aim is “reaching the root of the issues that are approaching [sic] students on campus and trying to make their lives the best that we all possibly can,” he “expect[s] disagreement,” and indeed encourages it with the provison that “one of [his] goals for this year is to not call security.”

Monico was quick to clarify that he has not, as of yet, ever had to call security before.

The meeting’s agenda was unanimously approved upon the closing of Monico’s Chair’s remarks, with an amendment submitted by TCSA Interim President, Riya Jaykar, for the board to discuss the contribution of $10,000 to the Trent Computer Science Association’s “HackTrent” hack-a-thon. 

Following the approval of the March 25th minutes, which passed unanimously, Association Executives presented their reports to the board.

Association VP Health & Wellness, Kyra Myderwyk, reported a successful launch to O-Week programming, sharing that the Association’s annual “Sexy Bingo” event, for which they partnered with Consent at Trent and Health Services, maxed out capacity for Wenjack Theatre with more than 300 first-years in attendance.

Myderwyk also met with Trent President and Vice-Chancellor Cathy Bruce, and administrators Marilyn Burns and Lawrence Lam to advocate for undergraduate students’ ever-changing needs.

“A lot of the things that we talked about focused on mental health needs and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that we're still seeing on students today,” Myderwyk relayed. “But the majority of our conversation centered around food insecurity and the financial stress that students are facing right now.”

“We talked a lot about centralizing the support systems on campus right now and making them more accessible for students who need them,” she continued, highlighting tentative plans to create a central food pantry in the soon-to-be-built Gidigaa Migizi College, integrating and ultimately replacing the Association’s current “One Stop Chop.”

“Right now there's a lot of different food pantries across campus,” Myderwyk explained. “If we could combine all those resources into one big pantry to meet a greater amount of needs…that would be really amazing.”

Myderwyk added that she was talking to administrators about “the rising tuition cost for international students, the housing crisis, and how these are impacting specifically international students.”

When asked by Arthur whether the federal cap on the number of international study permits had been part of her discussions with administration, Myderwyk replied that Trent “didn't see a substantial decline in the amount of international visas that we were offered,” and instead experienced “a huge decrease in domestic student enrollment because large universities like Queens and Western, who previously would have gotten a lot of international visas, had their numbers substantially cut.”

Myderwyk says one of the things she hopes to negotiate with administration is fixed four-year tuition for international students, so that students coming to Canada “know the amount that they're going to be paying for the next four years.”

Currently, international student tuition is subject to annual re-evaluation by Trent’s Board of Governors, who determine undergraduate tuition based on Provincially-prescribed parameters.

President Jaykar then delivered her report, highlighting the success of the Associaiton’s summer programming slate, and the high turnout for their movie screenings, student union trivia, and student-subsidized trip to a Toronto Blue Jays game, where attendees were also gifted a custom Trent x Toronto Blue Jays tumbler.

Jaykar also confirmed to Arthur that she intends to run in the Association’s upcoming by-election to officially retain her position as President.

VP University and College affairs, Iyiola Alade, spoke again to the success of the Association’s Orientation Week programming, and highlighted the enthusiasm for the “AfroBeats and Paint” event.

Alade also shared details from the Senate Executive Committee of proposed details for new graduate and undergraduate degrees, whose tuition is intended to be cheaper than equivalent programs at other Canadian universities.

According to Alade, the Senate was considering an increase to the tuition of these proposed programs, so “[he] had to remind the Senate of why a lot of students do come to Trent, one of the reasons being that Trent is significantly cheaper than other universities.”

He also added that he is lobbying administrators to keep certain academic facilities on campus, including Bata library, open 24-hours-a-day under a card access model, so as better accommodate students with late-night study habits or who are waiting for early-morning exams.

Alade said the Senate were, to his surprise, “very accommodating with that request,” and he’s hopeful to have the change implemented for Winter exams.

VP Campaigns & Equity, Anshika Gaur, was not in attendance at Sunday’s meeting. Her report was presented in absentia by Association Resource Manager, Wendy Walker.

Gaur’s submitted report outlined many of the same points as her fellow executives’, with a few supplementary details on the Association’s programming for Peterborough Pride. The Association will once again march in the Peterborough Pride parade, as well as host a “Pride Picnic” on campus for students. 

Arthur reached out to Gaur for comment on whether the Association was planning to attend the counter-demonstration for the transphobic “Millions March for Kids” rally—at which they were notably absent last year—or whether they planned to allocate supplementary resources to trans students who might be affected by the demonstration.

As of publication, Arthur has not received a statement in reply.

With the executive reports exhausted, the next item on the agenda was the approval of the Association’s fall elections schedule.

At this point, however, several members of the board excused themselves, prompting Monico to ask Walker whether or not the meeting still had quorum.

After confirmation that they had not lost the ability to approve motions, Walker presented the election schedule, which was unanimously approved. 

In her Association Resource Manager update later in the meeting, Walker would also inform the Board that she had received a request from Enactus Trent to become a recognized levy group. 

“They are basically requesting to petition to create a $1.00 levy fee to support the activities of their clubs and then hoping to become a levy group,” Walker said. “They’ll be starting petitioning on campus this week, because I've given them approval.”

According to the Association’s By-Laws, as noted in its policy book, “All referenda concerning Levy Group Fees shall coincide with the Spring General Elections of the Association.”

The nomination period for TCSA Fall By-elections closes September 27th, with campaigning to run from the 30th until October 18th.

At this point, one hour deep and barely halfway through the issues agenda, the motion was presented for members to be presented and approve the Association’s strategic plan. 

Now, I would love to tell you some of the key points from said strategic plan for this year, though regrettably I cannot in this article, as that item was discussed in a nearly half-hour closed session. 

I resigned myself instead to typing this out while sat in a breakout room titled “Pulic” to contemplate what exactly about a union’s yearly operations could be so sensitive as to necessitate its being approved under the cover of digital darkness.

Upon returning to the main session, Chair Monico clarified that the motion had been moved into Closed Session because Directors had “not had the chance to review” the Association’s Strategic plan, and that “it didn't make sense to discuss a pending document when this meeting was open to the public and have the public comment on a potential draft document if there's any need for a big change.”

After divying up the board members’ various committe appointments, another member of the board vacated the meeting, once again prompting another quorum recount.

With the meeting now bearing down on two hours (and this article some two-thousand words) it was now that some of the items which might wind up being most consequential to many students were presented for discussion. 

Firstly, a motion was presented to revise the Association’s grocery assistance funding allocation per student from $100.00 per student, per semester, to $150.00. The proposal also included an increase to $200.00 per student, per semester for students with dependents, up from the existing $150.00 stipend. 

In response to a question from Arthur as to whether the Association would also increase the total amount of funding available to students, Association General Manager, Tracy Milne, indicated that the Association is “looking at adding about $4000 to what is provided or given out.”

In reality, however, this increase will only translate to a $2,000 increase to the budget line in question.

“Of the $10,000 was put aside, about $8,300 was paid out to approximately 87 students,” Milne explained. The $4,000 figure, then, does not represent a gross increase so much as a net increase when factored in with the $1,700 surplus the fund failed to spend last year.

Milne added that this budget line is intended for “all food security programming, including Punch-a-Lunch, the pantry, and the free breakfasts.”

Further, the Association is apparently losing access to much of the Food Security funding that was at their disposal the previous year, as the campus Starbucks location is unable to provide the Association with its usual contribution of a percentage of its retail proceeds owing to “major expenses with regards to equipment that had to be replaced.”

Milne says that is going to mean “either reducing overall some of [the Association’s] food security programming, like the free breakfasts, or we're going to see if we can reallocate some funding that we under-spent last year.”

Following the approval of the changes to Grocery Assistance funding, VP Myderwyk presented a motion for the creation of a $20,000 annual parking bursary.

“I think [the parking pass] creates a barrier to accessible education,” Myderwyk said. The funding line will reimburse $150.00 of the $450.00 annual parking pass (or $75.00 of the per-semester pass) and is open to applications from all undergraduates who provide proof of having bought a parking pass, with the exception of the month-long tier.

General Manager Milne interjected to add that this money would be sourced from a $50,000 surplus the Association ran on its transit budget line last year, with the remainder hoped to be devoted to a tentative capital project that includes the proposed renovation of the current bus loop.

Arthur then asked VP Myderwyk whether she was concerned that a subsidized parking pass would incentivize more people to drive to campus, exacerbating the strain on the already-overburdened parking facilities available to students.

“I think we need to recognize that students are driving to campus,” she replied. “I absolutely can empathize with the issue of trying to find a space to park on campus but this is more just to help kind of offset that cost.”

“Trent does limit the amount available so that we're not having, you know, an insane parking crisis,” Myderwyk added. “We have done a lot to try and make sure that we're not impacting the parking issue on campus by encouraging more students to park or to drive. It's more just to help students who are driving anyways be able to afford the substantial cost.”

When asked the rationale behind dedicating a larger sum of money to the parking bursary than other student support budget lines—such as the Grocery Assistance Program which had been discussed immediately before—Myderwyk said that the decision stemmed from “talking with students and recognizing that a lot of students are driving to campus because they don't have any other option.”

“Whether you know it's a physical accessibility reason, or they live too far away to get a bus, or students with mental or physical health issues who struggle to take the bus,” Myderwyk said that for those who’d prefer to drive, the “substantial cost” of the parking permit constitutes an “accessibility issue.”

The motion was ultimately carried

The decision to fund a parking bursary for students who drive comes as the City of Peterborough stares down the barrel of a tentative 5% tax rate increase; a sum which would see cuts across the board for municipal services, more likely than not including transit.

Peterborough public transit has been notoriously subject to service interruptions for the last several years, with the transit budget in 2023 having threatened to exhaust itself in October of that year because of the City’s refusal to increase funding to match inflation.

It’s hard to imagine students with the privilege of access to an automobile being those facing the greatest transportation accessibility barriers for campus without the City threatening to gut an already deficient transit service, let alone as the possibility of another cut-rate budget looms. 

The Association’s financial decisions, however, seem to speak to a priority of cheapening parking on campus despite them not seeming to make commensurate contributions to the bus service on which thousands of students are reliant.

The TCSA approved a new transit contract with the City at Sunday’s board meeting in addition to the parking bursary, the terms and figures of which are, according to Tracy Milne, “quite similar to the one that [they] had just gone out of.”

The contract compels the Association to contribute a percentage of the $3 million-odd transit levy it collects, between a mandatory minimum contribution of 87%, or a maximum of 93%, and allows the Association to open discussions with the City about adjusting said contribution level “as soon as students with the TCSA say, ‘Hey, there's been a drop in the service level’,” according to Milne.

She was also keen to stress that “The number 2 [bus]…was added with no additional cost to the contribution that we have provided to the city,” and that “hopefully we will be able to have discussions about building that terminal which is desperately needed.”

From where the money to build said terminal will come is unclear, as the City seems poised to proceed with a tax rate which will see it forced to suspend or scale back most of the capital projects for which funding is not yet precommitted.

Arthur asked Milne for a copy of the TCSA’s contract with the City, but she was unable to provide it as “It is currently sitting on someone's desk at City Hall.”

The final item of financial import was the agenda amendment submitted by President Jaykar regarding requesting the Association make a $10,000 contribution to the Trent hack-a-thon.

The hack-a-thon, organized by the Trent Computer Science Association and co-sponsored by Trent University and the Trent Computer Science Department, aims to host more than 250 people for a multi-day event at no cost to the participants.

Jaykar says the event would be “a great opportunity for students to network, to broaden their skill set and actually get hands-on experience,” adding that “the job market right now is very tough, especially for computer science students.”

The organizing committee for the event are trying to raise a total of $28,000. The $10,000 contribution from the TCSA would make the Association a “Platinum Sponsor,” according to HackTrent’s website.

When asked by Arthur whether she is involved with the Trent Computer Science Association, Jaykar responded in the affirmative, and clarified that she is the group’s Communications Director.

When further asked by Arthur whether she felt that appealing the organization of which she was the President to financially contribute to her club’s event constituted a conflict of pecuniary interests, Jaykar replied “Yes it does.”

“The reason why I am bringing it up with the TCSA is because the TCSA is also collaborating with the Computer Science Association on this project,” Jaykar continued. “So I am also speaking on behalf of the TCSA.”

When asked by Arthur from which line of the Association’s budget the contribution would be drawn, General Manager Milne indicated that she “believe[s] there are two viable options.”

The first, she indicated, would be to withdraw the funding from the Association’s Partnership, Sponsorship, and Event line. Last year the PSE line was budgeted at $6,000, according to Milne, with a $1,000 maximum contribution allotted per request.

The other possibility Milne indicated was withdrawing the funds from the Clubs & Groups budget line, which usually permits only a $2,000 funding contribution per club. Milne also added that the Clubs & Groups line is usually zeroed—meaning the Association typically spends all of the money they receive from the Clubs & Groups levy in a given year.

Milne did, however, indicate that there was possibly a surplus in that line, though stressed that she would like guidance on how she should proceed with the allocation of funds before the motion went to a vote.

Chair Monico then interjected to say that “Technically, this motion is already on the floor and being voted upon, and the budget line wasn't included within that so I think it's something that will need to be worked out after the fact.”

The item was moved to a vote before clarification could be reached as to from where the money would come.

Before voting, Monico read the definition of conflict of interest to the board, indicating that “If a member has a direct, personal or pecuniary monetary interest in the motion under consideration, not common to other members…the member should not vote on such a motion.”

He added that “even then he or she cannot be compelled to refrain from voting,” though indicated that “[his] recommendation, however, would be that you abstain.”

The motion to approve the $10,000 contribution carried, with affirmative votes just barely edging out dissents, and one abstention.

As the Association uses an anonymous Zoom poll to vote on the Governance decisions which they make on behalf of the student body, it is unclear which members of the board voted for, or against the motion, or which member of the board abstained.

It is perhaps worth noting that the respective discretionary expenditures approved at Sunday’s meeting represented sums totalling degrees in excess of the budgeted expenses of many student support funds such as the Student Placement and Curricular Experience Bursary, Accessible Technology Fund, and Workplace Experience and Resume Kickstarter (W.E.R.K.) bursary.

Dedicating more money to drivers than those struggling to buy groceries; to an executive’s club than to gender-affirming care, would seem to reinforce existing class strata rather than eliminating them, as the Association professes to desire.

While the Association rhetorically paints themselves as preoccupied with helping the most financially disadvantaged and marginalized students, the items they deign to allot money to on paper would seem to tell a different story.

The Association’s promises and indeed its stated aims would appear to no longer correlate to any material action they undertake. The promises, in effect, become stand in for action, an obfuscation of the fact that the things in which the aims of the Association actually invests itself—parking, infrastructure, and the production of job-ready graduands—are largely the same as the university’s

While it is hard to extrapolate the trajectory of the Association’s new Executive team from one board meeting—let alone the first of the year—the comportment of the Association’s legacy staff seems to indicate little in the way of change.