Unofficial results of the Trent Central Student Association (TCSA)’s Spring General Elections seem to reveal a failure to solicit a sufficient number of votes to ratify referenda, effectively leaving Association policy changes dead in the water.

According to the Association’s own By-Laws, Policies, and Operating Resolutions, referendum questions are to be determined by simple majority, provided the number of votes cast represents more than fifteen percent of the Association’s membership, which is comprised of the undergraduate student body of Trent University.

Results posted Saturday afternoon to the Association’s website attest that none of the four referendum questions posed by the Association—which included proposed amendments to the Association's By-laws, as well as the proposed dissolution of the defunct Levy Group Electric City Hacks and the reallocation of its funds—received more than 1100 votes—approximately 10% of Trent University’s undergraduate enrolment and, by extension, of membership to the TCSA.

Association Resource Manager, Wendy Walker, in an Instagram Reel posted by the TCSA on March 11th revealed that the quorum threshold for the 2023–2024 Spring General Elections was 1509 students. At time of publication, the video has been viewed 3,922 times, or roughly 3.8 times the voter turnout for each of the referendum questions, respectively.

While the Association places overall voter turnout at 22.72% of its membership, none of the individual questions met official quorum, with only one (for the position of Vice President Campaigns & Equity) receiving more than 1200 votes. It is unclear, given the per-question totals posted as part of the unofficial results, how the Association determined a seeming 10% discrepancy in turnout.

The results are reflective of a longstanding pattern of voter apathy and disengagement among the Association’s membership, a trend to which many students and even Walker herself spoke at the Association’s February 14th Semi-Annual General Meeting.

At said SAGM, students in attendance twice voted down the Association’s proposed By-law changes, citing grievances ranging from a perceived lack of due consultation, to fears that the change from a 10% to a 5% threshold for referendum petitions on Levy Group fees could lead to negative repercussions for the Trent University levy community, which includes groups such as Arthur, Trent Radio, and the Seasoned Spoon, as well as the Association themselves.

This failure to reach the determinative threshold to approve policy changes would seem to compound the precarity of the position in which the Association already find themselves, coming off the resignation of a Vice President of the Executive, and the revelation that Association President, Aimee Anctil, hid allegations of workplace harassment and racism against said VP for upwards of nine months in an effort to “preserve peace in the office.”

As the VP in question, Bri Policicchio, was the sole candidate for the position of President the Association has been left functionally without a leader going forward into the upcoming Academic year. In the interim, Walker told Arthur in an earlier request for comment that “The board will appoint a director to the position of President until we can complete our By-election in the Fall.”

“As a democratically elected student union, we work for students,” Walker stressed in the Association’s March 11th Instagram Reel. How the unilateral appointment of an interim President gels with that assertion remains unclear.

The results of the TCSA’s Spring General Election will be ratified at the Association’s Board of Directors meeting on Sunday, March 24th. At time of publication, an agenda for the meeting has yet to be posted to the Association’s website.