For Your Bookshelf…

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/bl.30028
• Author: Catherine M. Raso,Ercole D. Perrone
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Published date: 01 September 2015

6 BOARD LEADERSHIP

For Your Bookshelf …

Reviewed by Catherine M. Raso and Ercole D. Perrone

Catherine M. Raso, a highly experienced Policy Governance consultant who

has worked with more than a dozen student association boards, and Ercole

D. Perrone, executive director of the Humber Students’ Federation with eight

years’ experience in student government, review A Blueprint for Student Driven

Professionally Supported Student Association by Michael Hughes.1

in roles that is missing for many student

associations, that is, the difference

between the roles of students-as-

owners and students-as-customers. (In

fact, many associations do not under-

stand this important distinction.)

The role of the board is to represent

the students-as-owners. But student

association boards are so consumed

by running the business of the associa-

tion (providing services) that they don’t

have the time, or awareness, to truly

get ownership input and to represent

the interests of the broader student

community at the board table.

The traditional (and all-too-common)

structure is that students are elected

to the board into a particular position,

including (1) the president (who has both

operational responsibilities as the CEO

and governance as the board chair) and

(2) vice presidents (who have operational

portfolios). The board is then naturally

consumed by operations and there is no

time left for governance and owner rep-

resentation. This is further compounded

by an elected president/CEO/student

whose election platform may differ from

that of the elected board members.

This becomes a significant issue of role

clarity; that is, who is responsible to

whom for what? What is the distinction

between governance and management?

To add insult to injury, many boards

also have elected representatives of var-

ious faculties or groups on campus. This

representation is a systemic governance

defect since it is flawed by tokenism and

exclusion.

The author, Michael Hughes,

attempts to achieve that role clarity by

offering fifty-six recommendations.

We agree with the author’s follow-

ing recommendations:

• That the workgroup board model

be changed to a governing board

model, so that the board’s primary job

is to represent the students-as-owners

of the corporation/association.

• That constituency representatives

be eliminated from boards because

representation is inherently flawed.

• That the board size be reduced.

This makes sense since the board’s

membership will change from being

A Blueprint for Student Driven Profes-

sionally Supported Student Association

Prepared by: Michael Hughes

Prepared for: Acadia Students’ Union,

Cape Breton University Students’ Union,

Dalhousie Agricultural Students’ Asso-

ciation, Saint Mary’s University Students’

Association, and St. Francis Xavier Uni-

versity Students’ Union

Published February 20, 2015

THIS REPORT is an examination of

the governance of five university

student associations in Nova Scotia,

Canada. It identifies current gover-

nance challenges and shortcomings

for student associations, as well as

best practices used to address these

challenges. The report also provides

detailed recommendations drawn from

best practices and input from various

stakeholders and experts in the field.

Michael Hughes has studied and put

to paper what we have been working

on for years: the much needed trans-

formation of student association gover-

nance to maintain relevancy. He begins

by saying that the governance structure

of the student associations that he

studied—which applies to all of the stu-

dent associations with which we have

worked—have changed very little since

they were first incorporated. Michael

sums up the issues nicely as follows:

“Student associations still use a

workgroup board despite significant

expansion in the size and complexity of

the organizations since incorporation,

and the addition of many full-time and

part-time staff. Changes to association

governance have resulted in ad-hoc and

temporary change, rather than systemic

transformation. Governance problems

within student associations are directly

related to the preservation of the

workgroup board model despite orga-

nizational change. … The governance

problems identified by respondents

are not the result of poor execution of

the workgroup board model, but the

workgroup board model itself. Rather

than governing the association, student

leaders are placed in a position wherein

they react to or approve an increas-

ing amount of staff and management

work, rather than lead through gover-

nance. As a result, students have long

since lost ownership control of their

organization because the board’s time

is devoted to approving management

work, and not leadership.

Student control of student associa-

tions has also eroded because boards

do not govern with representative input

from the student body. By not target-

ing consultation efforts and focusing on

board representation rather than col-

lecting representative input, boards do

not govern with input representative of

the ownership meaning that the owner-

ship does not fully control the organiza-

tion. The consequence of this is that the

association’s owners, students, have

lost control over their organization.”

Student associations are legally

incorporated as not-for-profit corpo-

rations and they provide services to

benefit their own students within the

university/college community. So while

students, as owners of the corporation/

association, pay an annual student fee

and elect members to govern on their

behalf, students are also consumers of

the work of the student association. It

is the understanding of this distinction