By Riley Hill
Students’ Union science representative Jacob Nasser received a reprimand after his coworkers brought forward complaints to Student Legislative Council (SLC).
Fellow science representatives Jacqueline Boon and Amar Deshwar accused Nasser of violating SU bylaw 34.1d, which says faculty representatives must represent their constituents on university committees.
“It was a failure to attend, meaningfully, the university committees that he was supposed to,” said SU president Raphael Jacob. “More serious options would have been a removal of his honouraria or benefits, censure and finally impeachment. Council felt that was not appropriate and went with a reprimand.”
At the meeting, each side was given 10 minutes to state their case, then five minutes for a rebuttal.
“We had a very long question period, over an hour,” Jacob said. “Then we went in camera and the complaintents and respondents left the room. That’s when SLC began its discussion.”
The reprimand was issued after the four hour, private session of SLC. Nasser was given 24-hours notice to produce documents.
Nasser said he was not given enough information about the complaints brought against him before the meeting, making it difficult to produce documents.
“I was told to submit all the documents about the rules I had broken. For me that’s very vague,” Nasser said. “If they would have given me some evidence before about what I did wrong, then I could build my own case.”
Nasser said he wants the bylaws to change so defendants have more time to present evidence to SLC.