VP Academic to Represent AMS on the Land Use Plan

For a while now, AMS Council meetings have been rather orderly and mundane. Nothing much of interest to report, with cooperation resulting in effective forward progress with none of the scandal and drama from years past. That ended tonight. If you want to see it all unfold in realtime, check out twitter from earlier this evening.

Here’s a basic recap of the situation:

The AMS has a committee to deal with University and External Relations which is affectionately named “Un-e-corn”. Un-e-corn had been taking meetings with Nancy Knight, who is in charge of UBC’s Campus and Community Planning (C&CP) about the ongoing Land Use Plan (LUP) consultations. After one of the meetings, Nancy requested that the AMS send a letter to respond to some of C&CP’s proposals.

The AVP Academic, Sean Cregten, drafted a response letter. (THIS IS ONLY A DRAFT.) It was meant to be reviewed by others, polished up, and then sent to C&CP. Bijan wanted to be the person ultimately sending the response to C&CP and insisted that the draft be sent to him so he could review it and sign off on it.

However, rather than simply polishing up the AVP’s original draft and signing off, he drafted a completely new letter which had both different content and a different tone. The contents of this letter were summarized and presented the Board of Governors at their meeting yesterday.

Upon reviewing both versions of the letter, the members of Un-e-corn unanimously agreed that the AVP’s original draft accurately represented their position on the issue, while Bijan’s version did not. As a result, two motions were passed at AMS council tonight. The first asserted the VP Academic’s ability to communicate directly with UBC about the LUP without having to defer to the President. The second designated the VP Academic as the AMS’s representative at the upcoming LUP public hearing.

The drama came as a result of Bijan going on the attack, rather than gracefully taking the hint that council felt Ben would be better suited to deal with LUP issues. Bijan asserted numerous times that he has absolute and inalienable authority over all AMS communications (this is not the case) and hinted that he would not honour council’s wishes if the motions were passed. It brought back memories of last year’s #UNfail. Listen to someone who knows how that turned out. Back in September, when Bijan opposed the AMS’s LUP policy, Blake Frederick tweeted this: “Protip for Bijan: #amscouncil is supreme and will destroy you if you cross her. You forgot to read the transition report.” Wise words.