The Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) Annual General Meeting had been planned to address proposed fee increases and the petition for dissolution. It adjourned early as students and executives appeared unable to make major progress.
The AGM is planned to continue on April 7, and a vote on dissolution is to take place on April 8.
Over 180 graduate students attended the AGM on March 25th, in-person and online.
Starting shortly after 6pm, the meeting was intended to be co-chaired by a former GCSU president, Hadiza Bello and the GSU Chief Returning Officer, Chinedu Wisdom.
President of the Teaching Assistants Union (TAUMUN), Kieran Knoll, motioned to exclude Wisdom because of public statements he had made, which Knoll said would make him a biased chair. The motion passed to ratify only Bello as chair.
An anti-harassment officer, Kassie Drodge, and Dean of Graduate Studies, Amy Warren, were also present.
Around 6:30 pm, GSU executive motioned to adopt the agenda for the AGM. One student proposed an amendment to move the dissolution discussion and vote from 7:45 pm to 6:45 pm.
They cited issues of prior commitments, saying that many students were not able to stay for a full 3-hour meeting, and they still wanted everyone in attendance to have a say.
This prompted further discussion about the lack of information and official documentation circulated in advance, which many students in attendance took issue with.
According to the GSU’s constitution, meeting minutes, executive documentation, and financial reports are required to be uploaded at least 5 days before the AGM.
According to the GSU’s Executive Director of Communications, Gaayathri Sukantha Murugan, meeting minutes from February 2025 to the present were uploaded sometime on Tuesday, March 24.
By this point, spirits were high, and the energy in the room was tense. Many students in attendance were scrambling for a chance at the microphone, raising various points of concern to both the GSU executive and the meeting chair.
Overall, many students criticized the GSU during this meeting for what they characterized as general unpreparedness, unconstitutional behaviour, and disorganization.
By 7pm, membership had not yet voted to ratify the meeting chair or to move the dissolution vote to 6:45 pm, a time which had since passed.
The meeting chair proposed that membership use this meeting as an ‘information session’ for another subsequent AGM, where students would be more informed.
The meeting chair was then criticized by student participants for attempting to influence the outcome of the meeting.
Also at this time, executives and the meeting chair backtracked to identify non-GSU membership, including Muse staff, CFS-NL, and MUNSU executives, to ensure votes were counted accurately.
A student in attendance online called the AGM “a mess” and “a logistical nightmare.”
Eventually, the motion to move the dissolution vote to earlier in the AGM was not passed.
Following this vote, student membership in attendance online issued complaints about a lack of instruction regarding how to vote on motions online, and criticisms about Google Meet being an ‘inappropriate’ platform for an online option to join the AGM.
Throughout the meeting, the Google Meet was glitching, and due to the number of participants, some students were unable to use the ‘raise hand’ function or type in the chat.
Many members who joined late were also not admitted to the Meet right away, and therefore were absent from votes on motions and/or amendments. Concerns on how to confirm attendees’ status as graduate students without breaching privacy for proper voting were also raised.
At this time, another student raised a concern about turning the AGM into an information session and postponing the AGM.
They stated that the original dissolution petition, put forward by TAUMUN executive, had proposed a separate Extraordinary General Meeting for the sole purpose of discussing and voting on dissolution, to be held no later than March 18.
The student said that to postpone again would be a stall tactic.
GSU recently held an Emergency Meeting where they decided to merge this discussion and vote with the AGM.
Concerns about access if the meeting were to be rescheduled were also raised by other students, as some people travelled between campuses or requested time off work to attend the AGM.
Some advocated for a transparent, third-party voting system that ensures all voters are part of GSU membership and that their privacy is guaranteed.
Over an hour into the meeting, the agenda had not yet been adopted by the membership.
TAUMUN executive in attendance emphasized that GSU executive should have been prepared for their AGM, and to not vote on dissolution today would be wasting everyone’s time.
After some back-and-forth, attendees voted to adopt the agenda by 7:30 pm. One student piped up and said, “this is like a shitshow,” which garnered both laughs and applause from the room.
The next topic on the agenda was to adopt the meeting minutes from the Fall 2025 AGM.
Students in attendance pointed out that meeting minutes were not posted to GSU’s website with sufficient time to read them all. This motion did not pass.
Immediately following this, GSU Board of Directors representative Spencer Scott proposed a motion that the meeting be adjourned early, the executive committee distribute all necessary documents, and another AGM to be held on April 7, with an anonymous vote on dissolution to be administered on April 8 via Qualtrics survey.
The motion passed with 117 students in favour and 3 against.
The meeting then adjourned around 8 pm, meaning that the GSU’s AGM did not cover any other items on its agenda, including the recognition/ratification of graduate clubs and societies, a financial update, executive directors’ work reports, discussion and vote regarding the dissolution petition, the union’s elections for the upcoming academic year, or discussion and vote regarding the referendum to increase membership fees.
Reactions from executives
Following the AGM, GSU Executive Director of Communications, Gaayathri Sukantha Murugan, said that “I definitely think today was very contentious and people have a lot of feelings which I completely understand. It’s a very complicated situation.”
She said that the GSU will go ahead with the new meeting and voting times as motioned by Scott, saying that “our executive is going to do our best to fix and anticipate the technical difficulties that might pop up again.”
Kieran Knoll, President of TAUMUN, told The Muse that he was “incredibly disappointed at the fact this meeting was standstill and essentially theatrically paused because there was no actual effort put into the chairing of this meeting. There were no logistics to verify the voting or the membership. There was no separate online moderating.”
“It was an absolute mess, and for students to be in a meeting for an hour and a half just discussing the agenda shows the state of GSU and how incompetent they are to manage this crisis we’re facing,” Knoll said.
Knoll expressed disappointment with the lack of available documentation and what he believes to be undemocratic inefficiency in the union’s governance.
He questioned whether or not membership can trust that a dissolution vote will go ahead at all, because he does not “trust the executive to run their meetings and their votes as they should, as the constitution requires.”
“It was just from the get-go very confusing,” said Spencer Scott, Board of Regents representative on GSU, who raised the motion for early adjournment, coupled with increased transparency and a second meeting at a later date.
“It felt like we were just running around in circles, and it felt like you could feel the room getting tense as the evening went on, which is why I stepped up and decided to motion to adjourn because, in all honesty, it seemed like the executive needed more time,” Scott said.
“The reports are supposed to be out five days ago,” they said. “Students deserve to have the time to look over these reports and not just be fed the information in front of them. So I think it’s only fair that the AGM be pushed until all of the correct papers and documents are ready to be given to students with enough time to comprehend them.”
Another AGM will take place on April 7, and a dissolution vote will take place on April 8.
The Muse will provide updates as the story progresses.
