The Brandon University Students’ Union council held their regular biweekly meeting last on Monday, March 13th. At this meeting topics of note included the attendance of Accessibilites Director Whitney Hodgins at an out-of-province conference, the intended chair-person for the spring Annual General Meeting, the next upcoming BU Board of Governors’ meeting, and the current state of the Student Union Drinking Spot (SUDS).

Hodgins attended the Reclaiming Our Bodies and Minds Conference, held in Toronto, Ontario. She was asked to speak at this conference by CFS-National. The talk that Hodgins gave was entitled “The Autism Journey: Then vs. Now”, and was given on Friday, March 10th.

The council has asked Michael Barkman of CFS-MB to attend the scheduled AGM on March 21st. They intend to have him act as the impartial party required to be chairperson at the AGM.

At this meeting Vice President Internal Jill Creasor spoke about the upcoming BU Board of Governors meeting on March 25th. BUSU will again be putting a motion forward to the university in the hopes that the international differential fee is not increased, and also in the hopes that tuition is tied to the cost of living as it seems likely that the Protecting Affordability Act could be removed or changed. A petition has been going around asking for students to sign in support of not increasing the international differential fee, and at this meeting President Nick Brown said that at the time of the meeting there were approximately 250 signatures in support. As students have been asked to show up at the BoG meeting as a further show of support on Saturday morning, Creasor also moved that the council provide a light breakfast to those who attend.

One of the final subjects addressed at the meeting was the current financial state of SUDS. At the meeting it was reported that the campus pub was running a $33,000 deficit for the year of 2016-2017. A few years ago the pub was able to curate a surplus in cash, and with the following deficits this surplus has since run out and the bar is running out of money. In the past when this happened, BUSU bailed out the pub to bring their books back to a zero-sum, however that is not necessarily the course of action that will be taken this time. At this time it is unknown what will happen to the campus pub, however this will be addressed at a future meeting of the SUDS Board of Directors. Media is not typically allowed at this meeting, however The Quill has expressed an interest in being present or conducting an interview following the meeting in the interest of keeping students well-informed on the subject. Also mentioned at this meeting was that Student Union run bars are becoming less of a trend in Canada; SUDS being one of the final four student union owned bar’s remaining. The alternative that other campuses have pursued in lieu of the students’ union owning the bar is to have a third party run it.

The next regular council meeting will be March 27th at 5:00pm in the CLC Boardroom.

Republished from The Quill print edition, Volume 107, Issue 26, March 21, 2017.