To clarify: SCSU ran a huge deficit from their restaurant which had been operating for 3 years, their $60 grand emergency bailout lasted less than two weeks and they missed a round (there were three rounds) of club’s funding for student organized clubs on campus.

-Not Skeptic

I’m not talking about the mid-year financials that you’ve included. I’m talking about the year-end financials for the 2007/2008 financial year, which ended quite some time ago. These draft forms, which were never signed by any auditor, note a year end date of April 30, 2008. I assume you’ve had plenty of time since then?

Brother, you can dance around this however much you like, but this fact remains. Your simply haven’t fulfilled your basic obligation to your members (and to the government, as a not-for-profit) to have an annual audit conducted last year. We aren’t talking about this year – we’re talking about last year.

It can’t possibly be an audited financial statement because it hasn’t been audited! If this is what passes for communication around the SCSU these days, then I think you should realize why your members are alarmed. You put a bunch of numbers in front of them and claim it’s been audited, when in fact there’s no proff it’s even come within spitting distance of a real auditor. Do you simply not know what the phrase “audited financial statement” means, or were you hoping no one would notice?

The audited financials are actually the documents I presented for the fiscal year 2007/2008 for both SCSU and Bluff’s. However, as you may know, audits are conducted at the end of the fiscal year, which is why our CFO had to put together a mid-year statement for Bluff’s. Those specific statements have not been audited. However, the best we can do is to print these statements, and run them by our Board of Directors for the time being. We will proceed to conduct an audit on the statements for Bluff’s this year before the year end audit since we are closing the restaurant this Friday, but this cannot be done until a few weeks down the road as you may imagine. So while we are rushing to get as much information as we can to students, I hope you can appreciate the difficulty in getting ‘audited’ mid year statements so fast- it will take longer.

I applaud a move towards transparency. But so far, unless you’ve simply failed to include the very critical pages where an auditor takes responsibility for an audit, all that transparency has served to demonstrate is that the problems reported in the U of T media are not exaggerated. I’d really have hoped the President of the union would understand that an “audit” isn’t an audit unless it was actually conducted by an auditor, who students can turn to for independent verification of what you are reporting to them.

For the purposes of transparency and accountability, and because many students have voiced serious concerns about allegations being spread around, please refer to a special report that we’ve created to address the common questions. The report contains mid-year financials for Bluff’s as well as audited financials for SCSU and Bluff’s for the last fiscal year. Additionally, We’ve posted answers to common questions people seem to have. We hope that you take the time to read everything in detail, and I welcome ANY questions people have so that we can get this all cleared up as soon as possible.

http://www.scsu.ca/documents/SCSU%20REPORT.pdf

yes i know about the inconvenience of the GM. they have proxy forms to help with that. the GM was publicized pretty soon after the AGM. agendas were online and in the office. the policy itself is also available online. any one of the scsu admin assistants or exec would have been able to hand you both the agenda and policy.

what im saying is that if you (not you specifically) cared, then you would know. i cared, i found out, and i know.

again, i was completely against the raise. me and 25 others i represented at the GM. but at the same time, you have to realize the hard work these execs are putting in. close to 40 hours/week easily.

the scsu needed quorum for this meeting, because last year, they didnt have quorum, so they didint have the general meeting, and they couldnt change any policies (remuneration wasnt on the agenda at that time). they did everything they possibly could this year to increase the attendance. btw, quorum is 40 members. and we had more than that. unfortunately, as i said, those opposed to the remuneration policy didnt show up, and didnt vote. i find it hard to believe that all the students who dont have a problem speaking up agaisnt it now couldnt do it a few weeks ago when it was in their hands to make the decision. these students didnt have the slightest bit of initiative to what? look up when walking through the student center? these students can write all the BS they want on the facebook groups, in these comments, and by publishing their articles, but their opinions are nullified by the fact that they didnt speak when they were given the opportunity. as an exec member, what are you gunna do if you hand the mic to someone to say something, and they stay silent? as a leader, you’re going to call the shots based on what you hear around you. and thats what i believe the SCSU did. and they did so rightly.

i came out. i voted. i spoke. unfortuanely, there werent enough people who believed what i believe, and thats fine. thats democracy. so, suck it up.

i am interested in what goes on in my school, through the good times and the bad. i dont just propagate and bash my executives in bad light and through biased reporting.

this is a shame.