2 THE VOICE, FRIDAY, DEC. 2, 2016 EDITOR ALYD LLEWELLYN xclusives Candidate: aborted LSU election Ss ‘ ane | Student vying for Position on board expresses outrage at eee Students sti mied.by.college LSU’s lack of transparency ‘fishy’ F Mancia aad Meeting a unions PHOTO ILLUSTRATION Headlines from past Voice articles recount how the LSU has stonewalled Langara reporters and evaded journalism inquiries in the past. LSU and Voice still at odds LSU reforms shelved Recently fired general manager planned to make LSU more transparent and accessible to students By JAKE WRAY and ALYD LLEWELLYN Rodenbour, was hired in August to make changes by one LSU board then fired in November by a new board before those changes could be imple- mented. Rodenbour said in an interview with The Voice that his goal was to make the LSU more transparent and to improve its democratic process. Some of the changes he said he im- plemented included streamlining the candidate selection process and strengthening the role of the chief re- turning officer. But left unfinished were his and the former board’s other plans. Those included starting a stu- dent run radio station, increasing ser- vices provided by the LSU and a new set of bylaws he hoped would increase the transparency of the organization. “Early on I had great support,” Rodenbour said. “Until, to be quite frank, the by-election happened. The political demographics of the board changed and the board’s priorities changed.” Va Va Fe: general manager, Desmond Last week Rodenbour was Years of disagreements between the two bodies have stifled relations 66 By MELANIE GREEN, KRISTYN ANTHONY and MICHELE PAULSE ecrecy is the way non-elected of- ficials in the LSU control busi- ness operations, according to the former chair of the Langara Rob Dykstra, who recently retired Most of the meetings at the LSU are They went around and they empti ed Journalism department out all the after 30 years in the department, said The Voice has long sought to report on boxes and issues related to the LSU but cannot. threw the closed to the public, including students, papers who pay fees that go to the union. away Members of the LSU only serve an av- ROB DYKSTRA FORMER JOURNALISM INSTRUCTOR erage term of one year, Dykstra said. “They could keep the elected people in the dark,” said Dykstra in an inter- view Thursday. “Half the time the elected people didn’t know what was going on.” In the past when The Voice published negative stories toward the LSU, Dyks- tra said, it appeared the LSU, under orders from the executive director, tried to thwart those articles from get- ting to the general student population. “As soon as The Voice was distribut- ed, they went around and they emptied out all the boxes and threw the papers away.” The role of journalists, Dykstra said, is to hold accountable people in posi- tions of power and provide information to readers. The LSU has a different mandate, according to him. “The way they take control is they keep information from students,” Dyk- stra said. “The only solution is to have an open and accountable student gov- ernment.” Last year, an anonymous letter left at the door of a journalism instructor made troubling allegations against the LSU. But, due to the anonymity, the contents couldn’t be proven and the LSU refused to speak to reporters, even filing a formal complaint against one journalism student. Vincent Matak, a former editor with The Voice, said the paper tried to find out more about the allegations. “It was really unfortunate from a student journalist’s perspective just not being able to hold those people to account,” Matak said. The LSU threw up obstacles in their refusal to release any information on their procedures or budgets, according to Matak, and only allowed access to meeting minutes after multiple ap- peals. “We weren’t actually allowed to do any sort of reporting with any of the information we were granted access. All we could do is sit down in the LSU office and review it. We weren’t al- lowed to take any notes, we weren’t al- lowed to duplicate the information.” Matak said changes won’t happen until students take a more vested inter- est in how their fees are used. “There definitely needs to be a mass rally for students to expect more from their government and for the student paper as well to push for more,” he said Thursday. The investigation continued from page 1 Malhi said staff also balked when council members discussed hiring le- gal counsel. “They basically walked out of the meeting,” she told The Voice. “We wanted everyone to be on board. But the reaction that we got was really un- expected.” Emma Leigha Munro, a former LSU member-at-large, said she witnesssed questionable financial decisions, al- though Malhi claims she never wit- nessed any evidence of that. “There were definitely things that were questionable,” Munro said Thurs- day. “Such as alcoholic beverages at a party, open tabs, board parties, Christ- mas parties.” Munro told The Voice that she was suspicious of LSU spending and her feeling was that staff wielded the real power in the LSU while elected mem- bers were treated as pawns. “T feel like they ran the whole thing and we were just there because they needed it to look like we were there,” Munro said. Another source familiar with the LSU said he was unimpressed with the way things were run and staff often pressured council members to do their bidding. The source expressed concern about the number of people pushed out over the last 16 months. “It’s essentially like putting Langara back into the dark ages,” he said. The Voice reached out for comment from the LSU, which did not respond. Another issue raised was how staff tried to prevent elected board mem- bers from connecting with other stu- dent societies, including the umbrella Alliance of B.C. Students. In an April 2016 email obtained by The Voice, LSU staff member Gurbax Lealh instructed ABCS officials to al- ways contact LSU staff before ap- proaching elected LSU council mem- bers. The Voice, Thursday, attempted to contact the LSU for comment and got no response. Langara College officials also de- clined to comment. 66 We were just there because they needed it to look like we were there EMMA LEIGHA MUNRO FORMER LSU MEMBER-AT- LARGE dismissed just oye three months in The p oliti- to his contract, cal demo- which he thought ° would run until grap hics of the endofnext se: the board mester. Also dis- missed was the chang ed LSU’s lawyers and the and council mem- board’s ber Harsimran See Malhi. priorities Malhi, who was part of the previ- chang ed ous board that DESMOND brought in Roden- RODENBOUR bour, told The Voice that a fourth FORMER LSU GM person was also fired. “When we hired him he dealt with things so politely and so friendly. If he wanted to make a change he would go talk to staff members,” said Malhi. “He would make them agree, if not then he would see if there was a common ground.” Malhi said she believes her firing is related to her support of Rodenbour’s initiatives. The LSU provided the names of the newly elected board, but refused to provide any contact information. The board members are: Diksha Arora, Sa- man Barring, Harjot Grewal, Amritpal Kaur Kaler, Harman Kaur, Meharban Singh and Parmeshar Toor. Jeremy McElroy, general manager of the Kwantlen Student Association, said he was surprised to hear about the manner in which Rodenbour was let go. “It’s not very common for general managers or executive directors of stu- dent unions to be let go quite like that,” McElroy said. Rodenbour said he still believes in the democratic process. “T was careful, that on the last day when things looked like they might go south, I presented the new by-laws at the open board meeting so they are not confidential,” Rodenbour said.