SU Referendum: 97 percent vote to Impeach
BY NADINE AWADALLA
With additional reporting by MAYAR MAGED and SEIF ISSA
![Students, faculty and staff participated in the referendum to vote for impeaching AUC administration [Suhayla El-Sheikh]](http://www.auccaravan.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/referrendum-e1427580315972.jpg)
[Suhayla El-Sheikh]
The question on the ballot asked “Do you agree on the impeachment of the administration and contesting the board of trustees decisions?”
Approximately 2,500 votes were cast, with only two percent voting no. One percent of the cast ballots were considered invalid.
The SU announced following the results that it will be deliberating further courses of action with the workers, staff and supportive faculty.
The SU said it held the referendum to reflect a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the administration, and to put student representatives directly in contact with the Board of Trustees.
“We are stakeholders. We need to be aware and we need to be informed. As students, we have three demands. First of all the administration has to go because they have misinformed us a couple of times on different occasions,”Hassaballah El- Kafrawy, SU vice president, told the Caravan.
El-Kafrawy cited the cancellation of the academic merit scholarship as one of the ways the administration failed to take the SU’s recommendations into consideration.
The scholarship previously awarded a 30 percent deduction of tuition fees to the top 25 percent of degree-seeking undergraduate students.
El-Kafrawysaid the cancellation was raised as a suggestion, which was rejected by the student representatives.
However, it was later tabled adding that he was surprised to hear the decision had been taken.
He also expressed discontent with the Board of Trustees.
“We deserve to have a say and a right [to participate] in the decisions that affect us every day,” said El-Kafrawy.
The SU outlined two primary demands in a video released on its official Facebook page late last week.
The first was the creation of a governance committee made up of students, staff, faculty and members of the administration responsible for the revision of all administrative decisions.
By extension the SU also demanded more transparency and access to the university’s balance sheet, income statement and financial statement.
The video, narrated by El- Kafrawy, also questioned why the Board of Trustees did not allow the university to incorporate a larger percentage of endowment revenues into its operating budget to compensate for the deficit.
AUC’s endowment revenue includes income from investments and grants, and is not accessible for use in its full capacity.
“This is [the] number one reason why there is a misunderstanding of investment revenues; the percentage [we can use] is five percent and it is calculated at year- end market value on a rolling three- year average,” Executive Vice- President of Administration and Finance Brian MacDougall told the Caravan.
The SU called for the referendum after it held a mid-March general meeting, during which they revealed documents available online that they believed showed discrepancies between the numbers published in the University Factbook and the tax forms filed in the US.
The SU presented as proof the tax exemption form 990 that AUC files annually with the American Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
This Form 990 – for the 10-month fiscal year FY13 – was a 70-page document that outlined the complete financial health of the institution.
The document was filed under the 2012 form because it cataloged a fiscal year that began on September 9, 2012 and ended on June 30, 2013.
“According to the IRS documents that [were] sent to America, there is a surplus in the budget since 2012, but according to the university’s Factbook there is a deficit in the budget. So the university is [either] lying to us or to the US,” said El- Kafrawy at last week’s meeting.
However, MacDougall later told The Caravan that the numbers referenced in the Factbook were those of the approved budget and not the audited financial results.
The university’s audited financial statements, which present the total results of any given fiscal year, are not part of public record. “External auditors produce not only our consolidated financial statements, but they also produce the 990 form which were required to submit to the US government because we are a tax exempted organization,” MacDougal told the Caravan.
However, MacDougall said that he was not approached by the student leadership or asked to explain the reason behind the discrepancy.
“What disappoints me is a suggestion last Thursday that the administration was somehow misrepresenting the facts of the university, suggesting that the university did not really have a deficit. That is irresponsible as far as I am concerned,” MacDougall said.
MacDougall says students should have sought clarification from administration rather than “create confusion in the AUC community by showing different information from different reports”.
“We have a need to all understand how decision-making is made and what the role of various stakeholders are in the operation of the university,” MacDougall said.
But the SU says it has been frustrated that crucial decisions – such as selling the Desert Development Center (DDC), leasing the Greek campus in the Tahrir Campus, and the impending discontinuation of operations at the Zamalek dormitories – are all taken without sufficient consideration given to student input.
