The AMS is considering a set of governance changes according to committee meeting minutes from January.
During the January 19 Executive Committee meeting, AMS President Cole Evans announced that the changes are designed to make accessing internal and external AMS policies easier for students. There wouldn’t be any structural changes to the student society, however.
In an interview with The Ubyssey, Evans elaborated on these changes.
“We found out that the number of internal policies was slowly creeping up — I think we were around Policy I-23,” said Evans. “We started to realize it’s not really an accessible way to number policies for students, when they’re all on ... a long list that looks to be the same thing.”
Evans said he hoped to mimic the Board of Governors’ categorization system.
“You’ll notice the Board of Governors categorizes its policies by government policies, financial policies, people of community policies. That’s what we would like to do here: to make policies more accessible to find and sort for students moving forward.”
When asked for specific changes to the AMS going forward, Evans brought up other upcoming policies planned to increase student engagement.
This includes standalone elections policies which are under consideration; the details of a new policy on AMS prizes and awards to be revealed soon; and an expansion of the academic survey to encompass all surveys online and make them consistent each year. He did not provide details on these specific policies.
Evans said he expects AMS councillors to approve these changes this month.
“We’re starting work on them now and we’re getting pretty close to wrapping it up. So we’re hoping to bring these changes to the March 23 [AMS Council] meeting,” said Evans. “We want to do a bit of consultation with members of faculty and committee before we do that, but we hope to bring these forward in about a month's time.”
Another governance review is likely forthcoming for structural elements, according to minutes from the January Executive Committee meeting. The last review took place in 2016.
During the Executive Committee meeting, Evans said he wanted to limit the review to speed up the lengthy process.