Community University Television (CUTV) held a special general meeting on Dec. 5 as a follow-up to their prematurely adjourned annual general meeting on Nov. 4.
Two points were left over from their previous meeting: electing new board of directors members and deciding whether to ask the board to opt out of their contract to finance the Breach. After nearly four hours of debate and multiple attempts to hold a vote, the poll resulted in two-to-one members voting against the motion, affirming their support for the Breach.
CUTV is Canada’s oldest student-run television station and a Concordia fee levy group. The Breach, founded in 2021, is a media outlet that CUTV has been financially incubating at the cost of $360,000 over a five-year period. According to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by the two organizations at the beginning of the incubation period, the last $50,000 will be transferred by next February.
When the motion to opt out of the MOU was put forward at the annual general meeting (AGM) in November, Marcus Peters, an ex-member of CUTV board of directors and at the time member of the Breach’s board of directors, called to count for quorum, before leaving the room with CUTV board of directors member Nicolas Chevalier.
The meeting was four people short of quorum, meaning issues would have to be further revised and discussed at a Special General Meeting (SGM) on Dec. 5.
Within the first week following the AGM, almost 30 people signed up to become community members. This compares to 18 new members signing up in 2024 before the AGM.
At least 80 people attended the meeting on Dec. 5, in person and online.
During the SGM, members lined up to present their views on the partnership with the Breach. After two consecutive speakers argued in favor of the Breach, with many more waiting in line, a member motioned to end the discussion period, which was passed with a two-to-three majority vote.
“While I personally don’t use their equipment, I did have friends who do regularly borrow equipment and they say it’s completely fine,” said student member Shyam Ragavan. “I don’t think that that’s a good enough reason to stop funding the Breach. The Breach still falls within its mandate, and this has been going on since 2021. No one’s really had a huge problem with it except for these very few people who are quite clearly a loud minority.”
Ragavan is a second-year engineering student who is involved in many different fee-levy groups at Concordia. He joined CUTV as a student member in the past couple of months, after having learned about the Breach’s coverage of certain events that occurred at Concordia over the summer.
“We have improved the equipment lending process quite a bit since 2020,” said Dru Jay, CUTV’s Executive Director. “Have we spent as much on equipment as before that? Not always. There was a lot of good equipment and the wear and tear sort of started to become visible about two years ago. We did respond to that and upped the amount.”
According to Jay, CUTV has spent $18,000 on equipment in the past ten months, and foreseeing $30,000 spent in 2025.
But some expressed a wish to see more money go towards equipment.
“Camera gear is so expensive,” said communications graduate and ex-board member Leanna Gelston. “If you’re someone who’s lower income or you don’t have the privilege, having the experience of getting comfortable with the camera and equipment in order for you to apply to jobs after university, no other place around Concordia has that.”
Gelston was part of the CUTV Board of Directors from 2018 until 2020. She was voted off in the 2019 AGM. The Breach MOU was signed a year later, by the directors that succeeded her.
An overwhelming majority of members voted in favor of upholding the MOU at the SGM on Dec. 5. A total of 52 voters were against the opt-out with 42 having voted through Zoom, while only 25 members voted for the opt-out, with 10 people voting from Zoom.
“It makes me very happy to see that many people [are] engaged, you know, but I prefer to see them engaged in a less dramatic fashion,” said Jay. “I think a lot of people learned a lot about CUTV’s operations. It’s absolutely the democratic right of people to have different opinions about the direction of an organization, that’s fundamental to CUTV.”
Of the 15 people who ran for the CUTV board of directors, three had announced in their testimonies that they were explicitly opposed to the MOU; they were not elected. Community member Vincent Stephen-Ong, one of these three candidates, believes members should provide the date of their CUTV membership, their involvement in the organization and if they have been to the offices in person from now.
“I know that the organization does not have my interests or a lot of other people’s interests at heart,” said Stephen-Ong, who has been a member for almost a decade. “I want to keep [my membership] because I, at some level, believe that maybe there’s a chance that we can make some change. As a member, I have a voting right. Even if that change is just to vote and say I object.”
When asked for comment, CUTV staff members told the Concordian that Jay had told them not to speak to the media.
Jay said that he had strongly suggested at various points to all board members and staff not to speak about internal conflicts to the media. Rather, he advised they voice their issues to the board, or at upcoming AGMs or SGMs.
