4 UNBC News

NUGSS Former President named (aise Wann ee)

Grant Bachand
Team Member

he Northern Undergraduate Student Society as recently

hired their former president, Duncan Malkinson to be
their new General Manager, replacing outgoing manager Matt
Rourke. Some students are up in arms over the decision.

When reading over the policies of NUGSS it is hard to
determine whether hiring a current board member for
the position of general manager is allowed, since their
policies on this matter are rather vague. Which for
Alex Pinette, an outgoing member of NUGSS and chair
of the hiring committee, says is not an issue because

it leaves more flexibility for the organization. The
policy says that a person cannot be on the board and
employee by NUGSS at the same time, but says nothing
about the application process for those positions.

The hiring of the General Manager follows a standard

format. The outgoing general manager looks over the
resumes submitted, and then gives the ones which meet the
qualifications to a hiring committee to look over, then the
hiring committee makes a recommendation to the board as
a whole. Usually the board accepts the recommendation by
the hiring committee and votes in favor of the hire. However
with Mr. Malkinson the process was a bit different, because
he was the president of NUGSS at the time of his application,
and therefore could not sit on the hiring committee and
another member of NUGSS had to fill in. Also, due to the

fact that he was the president of NUGSS, the board did look
at other candidates before making a decision on him as

to ensure they were not biased toward their colleague.

This however, has not satisfied all students, who see
the hiring of the former president as wrong and saying

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that he had an advantage that other applicants did not
have. However, normally the board would not see other
applicants before approving the recommendation of the
hiring committee but in Mr. Malkinson’s case they did.

One area of concern is the organization’s reliance on the
outgoing general manager in the hiring of the new one.
NUGSS is extremely reliant on this position for the hiring
of another which does leave room for concern, if something
was to happen and the former general manager couldn't
help with the new hire what would NUGSS do? Alex Pinette
stated that there are many other qualified people who
work for NUGSS who can step in to help. NUGSS may want
to look at developing a contingency plan in order to help
give direction to young, inexperienced students in hiring

a very important position like the general manager.

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