The Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) hosted a town hall to present its ideas for restructuring the executive committee and reassigning responsibilities in the governance team. The process is part of EUS 2020, a long-term project that aims to improve EUS operations and increase representation of EUS members.
The proposal will reduce the number of executives from the current eight to seven, removing the Vice-President (VP) Services position and restructuring the responsibilities of the remaining positions. In addition, the EUS 2020 team proposed the creation of a directorship structure, which would create leadership positions under each VP that focus on certain aspects of the EUS, such as websites and technology.
As the EUS leadership structure is defined in its constitution, the proposed changes will require corresponding constitutional changes before they can be implemented. Carlos Capriles, a member of the EUS 2020 team who worked on the restructuring, clarified that the referendum required to pass these constitutional changes would not occur this semester.
“This is a conversation we want to be able to have […] so you know where we’re coming from,” Capriles said. “The ideas developed here will continue to be developed through the next year [….] This is not an individual mission, this is more than that—it’s the future of the society.”
In response to questions regarding the reduction of the executive team, EUS President Robert Forestell said that the restructuring will have VPs and directors working closer together to alleviate individual VP workloads.
“If we reshape the positions and have them more centred around certain areas, the areas [covered] will be bigger […] and that’s where the directorship structure will come in to alleviate this,” Forestell said.
VP Finance David Bailey suggested that the proposed structure, where VPs would manage directors, would be difficult in practice because it requires VPs to become good managers in addition to handling their portfolio duties.
“I consider myself a decent manager, but we still had many stumbling blocks in getting things done,” Bailey said. “We need to first get directorships to work a bit better [….] The idea is to play around with the directorship structure until they’re very independent and can work very well, and once you get to that point where […VPs] can just get updates, then you can confidently split things up [….] My recommendation would be to leave the executive structure [changes] to later, [and] put in the directorship structure in the meantime.”
The project will continue to seek feedback from students, according to Capriles.
