URFA member vote on pausing URFA elections, General Meeting, and COR

March 18, 2020

On March 17, the URFA Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee (EC) met and had a dis­cus­sion regard­ing the URFA Win­ter Gen­er­al Meet­ing and URFA Exec­u­tive elec­tions, sched­uled to take place on April 1, 2020. 

The Sit­u­a­tion with COVID-19 has changed the day-to-day work­ing envi­ron­ment of mem­bers sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Class­es are mov­ing to online instruc­tion, and many mem­bers are work­ing remote­ly or prepar­ing to do so. This is a chal­leng­ing time for every­one, and URFA is work­ing hard to address ques­tions and con­cerns from mem­bers that have arisen due to COVID-19. 

As a result, the URFA Exec­u­tive is propos­ing to pause the sched­uled April 1 Gen­er­al Meet­ing and Offi­cer elec­tions, as well as the April 7 Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (COR) Meet­ing .Can­celling the April 7^th COR meet­ing would also pause the elec­tions of the Mem­ber at Large Aca­d­e­m­ic, Mem­ber at Large APT, and Equi­ty Offi­cer (who would all sit on the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee), who are all elect­ed from the Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The Exec­u­tive is propos­ing this pause until the sit­u­a­tion on our cam­pus­es returns to normal. 

The URFA EC believes that this is the best course of action to address this unprece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion. This will ensure the sta­bil­i­ty of the lead­er­ship of URFA, as we do not believe that now is the best time to be onboard­ing new mem­bers onto the URFA EC. All cur­rent mem­bers of the EC have agreed to stay on past the end of their April 30, 2020 terms if necessary. 

We also under­stand that many are focused on fin­ish­ing the semes­ter, mak­ing changes to their work­ing envi­ron­ment, and stay­ing healthy. Paus­ing the elec­tion until a time when the sit­u­a­tion on cam­pus has returned to nor­mal will ensure every­one has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear from the can­di­dates and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cast their vote. 

To move for­ward with these pro­posed changes, URFA will have to tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend three arti­cles of the URFA con­sti­tu­tion: Arti­cle 8.12, Elec­tion of Offi­cers, Arti­cle 10, Meet­ings of the Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and Arti­cle 11 Meet­ings of the Association.

The URFA con­sti­tu­tion can be viewed online here.

We are ask­ing all mem­bers to cast a vote on this pro­pos­al. Bal­lots have been sent to your email. If you did not receive a bal­lot, please con­tact the URFA office.

Vot­ing will close at the end of day on March 22, 2020. 

Please feel free to con­tact the URFA office if you have any questions.