Has your experience with the Dalhousie Student Union this year been a positive one?
Do you feel a sense of community has been established within the DSU?
If you would like to have your answer to either of those questions factored into an official report on the DSU’s performance, today is your final day to respond.
Any submissions to the DSU’s fall Student Executive Review Survey must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. tonight, Dec. 1. The survey response form is embedded below – after you download a copy, you may fill it out and email it to DSU councillor Kaitlynne Lowe at kaitlynnelowe@hotmail.com.
The seven-page form asks for input on the DSU’s overall performance, what you would like to see out of your union, and your perspective on the performance of individual executive members this semester.
DSU councillors have all received their own councillor forms to fill out. All submitted survey responses will be compiled by the Executive Review Committee (ERC), a DSU committee entrusted with compiling three reports annually on the performance of council, into a report providing an overview of the opinions of the people who heard about the survey and then filled out and submitted responses.
The committee will produce the report in time for it to be presented at the Dec. 3 meeting of DSU council, approximately 42.5 hours after the deadline for survey submissions.
Survey almost entirely unadvertised
The opportunity for DSU members to answer this form started on Nov. 17, when Executive Review Committee chair Kaitlynne Lowe, on council as president of the Dalhousie Arts and Social Sciences Society (DASSS), submitted the forms to DSU council chair Andrew Christofi for distribution to other council members.
Lowe says she asked for the forms to be posted on the DSU’s website, but she doesn’t think this was done.
“As for advertising,” says Lowe via email, “my hope was that the review would be posted on the website. In addition to this, the councillors were supposed to distribute the student review form for their constituents.”
Lowe adds that DASSS councillors all received copies of the form.
Did you receive the survey form from (one of) your representative councillor(s)? Let us know in the comments.
(For full disclosure, the Gazette was originally emailed copies of the form intended for councillors on Nov. 24 after a contributor involved with DASSS told us this survey was occurring. We were unaware there was a specific form for general DSU members to fill out until Nov. 30. when we asked Lowe.)
All DSU members are eligible to be on the ERC, but the non-council position was completely unadvertised
The ERC is composed of one DSU councillor who serves as chair, another councillor, and one non-council DSU member.
The non-council member spot on the committee was vacated sometime between the council meetings of Nov. 5 and Nov. 19.
At the meeting of Nov. 19, DSU chair Andrew Christofi announced the position was open for nominations.
Only one student, named Malik, was nominated. While Malik was not present at the meeting, councillor Lowe had announced at the Nov. 5 meeting he was interested in having the position.
Malik had submitted a letter of introduction for the Nov. 19 meeting which was read to council.
The position was never advertised to the DSU’s general membership, and it had not been publically announced that the position was vacant until the Nov. 19 meeting.
If you would have liked to have had this position, which entails of assisting in creating the report that stands as an official document reviewing the performance of DSU council, you would have needed to be present at the Nov. 19 meeting by chance and received a nomination upon hearing about this position and realizing you wanted it.
You then would have been compared to the candidate who had already expressed interest in the position, and who had gone as far as already sending in a letter of intention.
Lowe said at the Nov. 5 meeting she would prefer if there could be an unlimited number of non-council members on the ERC.
Summer 2014 survey
The first report of the ERC for the 2014-15 academic year was made public on Sept. 24. You may find it embedded below.
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