Wednesday’s AUSU council meeting started on time and moved along at a crisp pace?two qualities every meeting should aspire to. Once again, agendas were not available to meeting observers, making it difficult to follow the discussion. And once again, the formal meeting was followed by a closed councillors-only session.

First item up for discussion was a motion to temporarily increase the number of annual AUSU computer bursaries from 8 to 12. Council had already voted on this by e-mail, and that vote was ratified at the meeting.

Next up was another e-mail vote ratification, this time on engaging OOHLALA to develop a mobile app for AUSU. Since this had been discussed and voted on prior to the meeting, little detail was provided before the e-mail vote was ratified, except that roll-out is expected around September 2015.

Following next were a series of proposed amendments to AUSU policies. Without access to an agenda, I can’t tell you what the changes were, but the amendments were passed for policies 3.02 Election of Executive Officers, 6.03 Expense Claims, and 6.04 Travel and Related Expenses. Changes to a fourth policy, 3.04 Referendum, were voted down when it was discovered more information was needed.

The remainder of the meeting was the usual round of executive reports. The reports are not available to meeting observers and only some items are discussed. Here are a few tidbits gleaned from listening in:
– Enrolment numbers in AUSU’s new healthcare plan are encouraging. While formals statistics aren’t available yet, the number of students signing up is higher than anticipated.
– The final draft of the AUSU Student Planner has been approved and printing is underway. AUSU expects to take delivery of the planners January 5 and will immediately begin distribution to students who have placed orders.
– The problem preventing updates to the AUSU website has been resolved and updates will get underway shortly. It was noted that the Hallowe?en theme on the live chat had finally been refreshed to a Christmas theme.
– AUSU is moving to EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) for payables. This is expected to reduce postage and courier costs as well as making the payment process easier.

As reported February 21 in The Voice Magazine, Council announced at the February 19, 2014 meeting that their executive reports would be made available to AUSU members. The reports, for a time, were posted along with the approved meeting minutes on the AUSU website. Unfortunately, no reports have been posted since the June 11, 2014 meeting. Reading the reports is a great way for us students to keep up with what AUSU is doing on our behalf (and with our money!) so I hope the practice of posting reports continues.