SMUSA Constitution News
Written by: Neema Mazonge
@neemamazonge
Photo by: @SMUSA
As we recently came to the end of the SMUSA 2020 elections, I would like to congratulate all the candidates that participated in this year’s elections and to those who won the different positions. To the newly elected SMUSA President and Board of Directors, I hope this will new chapter will be one to sincerely bridge and merge the gap between students and the association.
On that note, as the outgoing SMUSA team completes their turn, a few details have come to our attention that breach the SMUSA constitution. The SMUSA constitution which can be found on their official website states that all current members of the society need to be enrolled at Saint Mary’s University to be on the Board of Directors. However, it has come to our attention that one of the BOD members, Henry Peng who is currently still in office is a recent graduate (January convocation) and has been allowed to serve until April. This implies that students are breaking their own constitution.
I reached out to Crystal Witters who is the current Chair of the Board who was happy to comment, however, during the time of publication of this article, I hadn’t received the answer to a few questions I had sent to her. I also reached out to Henry Peng who was able to give me a comment. He said “My membership on the board is not breaking the constitution. I was elected in 2018 for a two-year term which expires at the end of the fiscal year, April 2020, because SMUSA operates with the year-end of April. When we serve SMUSA, we should implement the responsibility instead of shirking it. This is the responsibility of a student leader and specifically a board member. If everyone leaves halfway, it is not good for the future. The full complement of the board is beneficial, for the future of SMU students, for the implementation of our policies and improved development of SMUSA” (Henry Peng).
In my opinion, I believe it is important to have the BOD members be current students at SMU because that makes it easier for them to know the actual issues going on in campus as both students and members of the Board. These are some of the few issues that students do not know about and one of the reasons why their needs to be transparency between students and SMUSA. We hope that the incoming elected members will be more transparent with students while making decisions. Once again congratulations to all newly elect and we cannot wait to see where the new team takes us. Cheers!
SMUSA Board Chair, Crystal Witter wanted to share her views directly with our readers. You can find her response to this article here.