The University of Regina Students’ Union is set to dissolve after student voters voted in favour of the move at a virtual meeting Tuesday morning.

The decision following the vote at the online meeting, which had around 170 attendees, follows months of controversy and allegations of financial mismanagement within the students’ union, as well as an ongoing Regina police investigation related to its finances.

Not all of the 170 attendees cast a vote. The final tally was about 70 votes in favour of dissolution, 13 against and one abstention.

The vote was originally supposed to happen at a meeting in September, but was postponed over contention around the voting process and format.

Some students said Tuesday’s rescheduled meeting was riddled with issues that left many unable to participate.

Matthew McStravick, a student senator and president of the University of Regina Model United Nations Club, said he and “dozens of students” were not permitted to join the meeting despite being registered. He was only able to get information from a student who streamed the meeting on the Discord social platform, he said.

picture of student during an interview in room with students Matthew McStravick, a University of Regina student senator and president of the university’s model UN club, says he doesn’t believe the vote was valid. (Antoine Pejot-Charrost/Radio-Canada)

“The attendees were anonymous,” McStravick said. “The result seems completely unverifiable, because the identities of those attending cannot be confirmed.”

McStravick said the process left students feeling “silenced and upset.”

“It feels like students’ ability to engage is being suppressed,” he said.

“This would have been far better dealt with through … an in-person meeting that could have been widely attended and that was advertised much further in advance.”

Meeting inaccessible, disorganized: students

Fourth-year business student Jordan Cousins said he tried to vote but was not let into the online meeting.

“I entered in my information to participate in this vote,” Cousins said. “I, a student who would have voted no, was not allowed to vote, even though I am a dues-paying member of URSU.”

Cousins said he would have voted against dissolution, because he believes a student union still serves an important purpose.

“I think a student union is important,” he said. “Regardless of what’s happening with the current leadership, I think it’s still important to have student union representation.”

He says he is worried students will lose their voice at the university.

“There will be no seat at the table when it comes to decision-making at the university,” Cousins said. “All the spaces that URSU has and all the funding that URSU gives to students will all vaporize.”

Benjamin Esson, a fourth-year science student, said he was among those who managed to get into the meeting, but described it as disorganized and restrictive.

“It certainly seemed like a lot of the people who were very vocal in the first meeting [in September] were nowhere to be seen in this one,” he said.

“They only allowed two people at most to raise their hands and talk about any given point.”

Esson said there were issues with microphones, ignored messages in the meeting chat and problems with the voting link itself.

“The direct link to get to Microsoft Teams, the meeting itself, was invalid,” he said. “That becomes a problem when people can’t get into the meeting to vote themselves.”

He said the final result shouldn’t be recognized.

“I don’t think they should be counted in any way, shape or form,” Esson said. “They wanted to sweep this under the rug as much as possible, and I don’t think that reflects what the students want for themselves.”

CBC News has reached out to the U of R Students’ Union for comment but had not received a response at the time of the publication. 

Call for accountability, new process

McStravick said many students want the students’ union to be replaced, but through a fair process.

“It could be good news to be rid of URSU, to have a better and more representative student body,” he said. “But the way we’re getting there feels completely inadequate to students.”

He said the vote came from an unrepresentative fraction of the student population.

“I do not think that that vote was valid,” McStravick said. “Everything about this process needs to be revisited. The meeting should be held again in a more open and transparent fashion.”

In a statement to CBC, the University of Regina said it is aware that the special general meeting took place Tuesday morning and that “many students were disappointed that URSU offered only online participation.”

The university said it understands the meeting resulted in a vote to dissolve the union, and said it is waiting for “communication from URSU or its legal counsel with respect to its proposed next steps.”

The union was no longer recognized by the University of Regina prior to Tuesday’s vote and was evicted from campus earlier this year.

The university’s statement said it “understands students’ frustration” and reiterated that it has lost confidence in the union’s leadership, noting it has not disbursed any student funds to the union since the start of the fall semester.

The university said it “remains committed to working with student leadership who will act in the best interests of students” and encouraged student participation to “make the changes necessary to result in an effective and accountable student representative organization.”