Near the end of the short public meeting of UBC’s Board of Governors on September 25th I raised a procedural complaint, to which the board chair responded how nice it was to see all the orange shirts governors were wearing.
But, I get ahead of myself.
Dial back several minutes.
Governor Anna Kindler asked that one of the policies proposed for revision and streamlining be brought forward for full board consideration. The administration proposed that Capital Projects Policy FM11 be revised to shift the threshold for admin approval without coming to the board from 5 million dollars to 10 million dollars. Kindler expressed concern with the proposal and spoke to keeping the threshold at 5 million dollars.
“I think,” Kindler said, “there is some value to transparency and accountability and our capacity to openly and in public exercise our duty as it refers to the oversight of significant capital expenditures of UBC. … It is not a very good moment for the Board, and by extension the community, to remove itself from consideration of such significant financial commitments.”
I also spoke in favour of keeping the threshold at 5 million, as did governor Schein.
Various members of the administration and several members of the Board’s leadership spoke in favour of amending the policy and raising the threshold of capital projects that come to the Board for approval to 10 million dollars. This can be viewed on the recorded livestream of the board meeting beginning at around the two hour and forty minute mark.
As debate wound down the Board chair made clear their intentions to call the vote on the resolution. As opposed to calling for those in favour, followed by opposed and abstentions, the board has for the past few years followed a kind of reverse order that focuses attention on those willing to step out as opposed to a motion. Committee chairs are provided a standard script provided to read:
When the Committee is voting, I will call for objections and then for abstentions; if you approve the resolution under consideration you need not say anything.
If you are objecting or abstaining and would like your vote recorded in the Minutes, please say so when you vote.
For this particular motion, however, the chair opted to revert to a procedure in which all those who supported the resolution would be called to raise their hands first, and then those who opposed:
“I am going to call the vote and I am going to ask everyone to raise their hands, so all in favour …”
At which point I interrupted and challenged the chair’s change of protocol. The chair responded[2:59:33 -3:00:23]:
“As I have noticed sitting here today, as I have remarked earlier, it is a wonderful observation to see all the orange shirts, I haven’t done very well in seeing everyones’ hands. To the extent that there are objections … and support for the motion, that that is captured appropriately. Particularly the people toward the end of the room … so I’m doing it more … as a visual aid more than anything else. That is the reason because I understand from this discussion that there are different views and those views should be properly recorded and everyone should get a chance to ensure that their vote is properly understood and heard.”
As the only First Nations person on the board (and in the room), and also as the only governor not then wearing an orange shirt, it seemed off-putting to have the remark on orange shirts as part of the Chair’s rationale for changing the voting procedure for that particular vote.
I am reminded of something I wrote years ago about technical communication and the subtextual messages carried in the tone, inflection, and context of a communication. The particular paper was about power struggles and authority about commercial fishboats:
“I watched him coming with a smile which, as he got into pointblank range, took effect and froze his very whiskers. I did not give him time to open his lips. "Square the yards by lifts and braces before the hands go to breakfast." It was the first particular order I had given on board that ship; and I stayed on deck to see it executed, too. I had felt the need of asserting myself without the loss of time. That sneering young cub got taken down a peg or two on that occasion, and I also seized the opportunity of having a good look at the face of every foremast man as they filed past me to go to the after braces.”-- Joseph Conrad (1969: 169-60), The Secret Sharer.”
“There are many times when crew members are "taken down a peg or two" by their skippers. Just as in Conrad, fishing skippers in British Columbia will order their crews in technical language that, if competent, the crew will understand. Like Conrad's captain, fishing skippers have no need to refer directly to their power to ensure compliance. Their use of the technical language makes no claim of correctness for the command; only that it is comprehensible (Knutson 1987: 113). The skipper's order contains a dual intention, the most obvious of which is the successful supervision of a technical operation. More important, the captain asserted his command of the ship by usurping the second in command. He spoke first, thus silencing the mate. The captain accomplished this in a manner that was beyond questioning by the crew. The humiliation of the mate was embedded within the 'neutrality' of the technical language. The tone of his voice and his physical stance said to the crew: "you are less than me remember that". Because of the manner of the communication, all that can be questioned is the technical comprehensibility of the command, not the insult embedded in the manner in which the order was conveyed (Knutson 1987: 114). No one can respond to the tone of voice in the order in any way other than compliance without directly challenging the underlying social relations that created the 'consensus' of the technical language.”
Work relations onboard a commercial fish boat are certainly different than around a university governance table (even if forms of communication mirrors those on the boat). That said, to question beyond the bounds of the technical content of a communication from leadership can result in a governor being chastised for speaking out of turn or misreading the intention of, and thereby misrepresenting, the speaker. Habermas’ point, as it is Jurgen Habermas from whom this idea of communication flows, is that while the speaker with power’s subtextual communication can be understood, since they are framed in a technical form they have been put beyond question.
I still don’t understand the relevance of the orange shirt comment, but it certainly felt out of place as a response to my complaint on voting procedures
My challenge of the procedure was denied, the vote conducted, and the resolution passed with three governors opposed. Later, in response to my follow up email I was advised that the board procedures allows the Chair discretion in procedural approaches toward approving resolutions. I’m agnostic on the specific procedure one does follow, but I consider the notion a chair can change procedures at their own discretion problematic.