Financial controversy swirls at UofT Scarborough

In the midst of a recession, it seems that even student unions aren't exempt from financial disasters.This Monday the Scarborough Campus Students' Union at the University of Toronto announced the Feb. 6 closure of the campus restaurant Bluff's due to "severe financial difficulties".

This announcement comes after executive pay hikes and allegations of financial misconduct.

In a letter e-mailed to all students, SCSU President Zuhair Syed said that with funding from the Council on Student Services and an emergency bridge loan from the SCSU both exhausted, Bluff's was no longer financially viable.

But the closure of the campus restaurant is just one part in a series of events regarding the SCSU finances in the past few months.

Last semester, Syed fired SCSU accountant Henry Climaco without consulting the rest of the board of directors or the union's standing committee on finance and services.

Soon after in late November, the student union was asked to undergo an additional third-party financial audit by the university's office of the vice-provost students.

And at their last annual general meeting, the SCSU passed a motion immediately granting its executives large increases in pay.

From then on, SCSU presidents were to receive an extra $7,000 per year, vice-presidents an extra $8,000, and chairs and vice-chairs each receiving an extra $4,000 per year. Some of these pay increases amount to more than 30 per cent the previous year's salary and bump executive pay up by $63,000.

Syed reasons that despite the recession, the pay raises were long overdue.

"We're getting paid one of the lowest salaries in all student unions," he said. "We can't even sustain ourselves. Many executives I know who have to take other jobs, even two part-time jobs, just in order to survive."

Syed emphasizes that their salaries were some of the lowest in Canada, and that students were the ones who had voted for the raises at the general meeting.

Still, there is tension inside the board on the manner in which many of these decisions are being made.

Last semester, Kenny Wang resigned from his position as chair of the union's standing committee on finance and services. The humanities director says he left after noticing a number of financial irregularities (like cheque requisitions and conflicts of interest).

Wang says he also felt a noticeable lack of transparency and communication between members of his committee and union executives.

"It's more an issue of I couldn't inform my committee of what was going on," he said. "There were people that would influence the committee against what I was saying, so it was kind of a situation of my word against theirs."

Wang cites an instance where an SCSU executive owned a business and the union was purchasing event prizes from its subsidiary.

Wang says he was told by the executive that was just a way of doing business and lowering costs. However, Wang emphasizes that shouldn't be the SCSU's primary concern.

"As much as he said we need to make some revenue, our main goal isn't profit," he said. Rationale aside, Wang pointed out that "whether or not [the SCSU executive] thinks it is, it is breaking policy."

He summed it up simply: "In a sense, the people are making cheques out to themselves."

Jim Delaney, director of the Vice-Provost Students Office, confirms that the audit request was made back in November after Climaco was fired and brought forth a number of allegations regarding the union's financial practices.

Climaco alleges he was fired without just cause after he showed a number of financial irregularities to union executives. Climaco says that as a result, he was also given the equivalent of two weeks' pay as severance.

Syed confirms that Climaco was fired without consulting the members of the board or the union's standing committee on finance and services; it was solely his decision.

However, Syed asserts that it was under his jurisdiction as president and CEO to do so.

"By law and by policy, it's absolutely clear that there was no issue with that," he said.

Two months after the provost office's request, the SCSU has not yet started the audit or signed a contract with the external auditing firm. Syed says the delay has been due to necessary consultations with board committees and the university winter break.

Still, Bluff's staff member and student Shanique Edwards says she's tired of this kind of mismanagement.

"I just believe that organization just has to be shut down," Edwards said.