Council Meeting Agenda 

Monday July 28th at 1pm PST 

Call to Order/Welcome 

  • Chairperson Hannah called to order at 1:05pm  

Land Acknowledgement 

  • Chairperson Hannah offers land acknowledgement  
  • Valentine offers land acknowledgment 
  • Julia offers land acknowledgment 

Check-In Question 

  • What’s something you’d like to see the SSD do this year? 
    • Valentine would like Kevin Hall to experience how difficult it is to go around campus as a disabled student.  
    • Julia is excited for the first aid course and wants to try to bring back the post-secondary disability symposium.  
    • Hannah would like us to build! 
    • Bella is excited to build also and to update things that have not been updated in a while to build because she feels like we can do more!!! 
    • Diana says community building! Getting more interaction from volunteers.  
    • Dacian goal for the year at the SSD is to get UVic to make universally accessible classrooms. 

Access Needs Check-In 

  • Break at 45 minutes 

Adoption of Agenda/Minutes 

  • Adoption of today’s agenda 
    • Julia Moves 
    • Dacian Seconds  
    • Approved by consensus 
  • Ratification of June 24th 2025 Minutes  
    • Julia Moves  
    • Valentine Seconds  
    • Approved by consensus 

Reports 

  • Council 
    • Chairpersons 
      • Julia 
        • On the hiring committee for the new education and administration coordinator. We hired Kai who has been a peer support volunteer, Autism Week committee volunteer and workshop presenter, and disabled and queer circle facilitator; they’ll start on August 18th. Also prepping for September and helping with A4A. 
      • Hannah 
        • General things to keep things running, checking in with staff, had an A4A meeting last week. Met with someone from CFUV to talk about accessibility. Going to do an advert for A4A. Part of a group for feedback and testing for course outlines (have them available so you can look at previous course outlines). 
    • Treasurer 
      • Mia 
        • Absent 
    • Student Liaison 
      • Valentine 
        • Accessible campus inclusion course, just ended on the 20th to have lots of resources for us. They have a check-in system for listing one rose and one thorn, one good thing and one bad thing that happened. Also the roots and how you are taking care of yourself. Hoping to work on the website after their course ends.  
    • UVSS SSD Representative 
      • Dacian 
        • Committee things and a lot of meetings, no big updates just tugging along at all these meetings. (We appreciate you going to these so much!) 
    • International Student Representative 
      • Kush 
        • Absent 
    • Graduate Student Representative 
      • Jitendra 
        • Absent 
    • Secretary 
      • Zoe 
        • Absent 
    • General Members at Large:  
      • Lola 
        • Absent 
      • Kat 
        • Absent 
      • Gabi 
        • Absent 
  • Staff 
    • Office Coordinator 
      • Bella Jacobs 
        • Bella is back from their week off and is catching up! Everything printed for CKO and buttons will be made on August 8. We got the 4imprint grant for swag and only have to pay $84. We’ll have 150 pop-up cubes. Move-in day posters in progress, along with reaching out to tabling volunteers. Need a council member (if possible) to record the CFUV SSD ad. It will play long-term – until we update it.  
    • Research & Communications Coordinator 
      • Diana Viafara 
        • Poster in the chat, working on graphics and fun stickers! Curating button designs and updated versions. Things are going well, prepping for when Bella has to take over Diana’s tasks. Future proofing! 
    • Education & Administration Coordinator 
      • Vacant Position 
      • Kai starting August 18th.  

Campaigns 

  • #Access4All
    • Happy with the swag budget, brought to UVSS meeting. We are currently updating the exams. Release them on the 7th and hoping to connect with folks. Hannah has been working on a common misconceptions social media post to along with the demands. A4A has been inconsistent online, how can we be consistent.  
  • Operation: Uvic Accessibility
    • Funders have not yet replied to Bella  

Discussion 

  • Partnerships 
    • NEADS
      • No updates 
    • ICA
      • Coming to MHRF! 
    • UVSS
      • No updates 
      • ND Connect  

Bella met with them. Online mobile app that connects neurodiverse people in a peer chat way. Also work with Neils in co-op and careers. Want to do an online event open to UVic students and they come on and chat about their experience – chatted briefly so watch this space.  

Point raised on the cost of using ND connect can be a barrier and that it sounds like a cool service but it may uncomfortable promoting it knowing it can be an additional expense, especially when the branding they use doesn’t explicitly state the cost. – This is why we have not partners with them before – one off event would be free for students with a small fee for us – a larger collaboration would need to be something UVic supported as we could not cover the cost. 

    • Campus United
      • Want to connect with us. Want to come to the MHRF. Possible invitation to the MHRF. 
    • CFUV
      • Hannah gave update during Chairperson update.

Grants 

    • SSD First Aid Course
      • Came up in discord that people wanted a more accessible option. CanAssist does it in two 4 hour sessions rather than one 8 hour day. Hopefully they can accommodate us too! The minimum is 12 people sign up, would coat $1800 which we could not afford. Could we subsidize or do a sliding scale. Organizing for the fall, we need to survey the community, to see if we can do this. Maybe work with Neils. 
    • Workshops for Faculty & Staff
      • Not a lot of Faculty and staff know about us. Do we want to do a workshop to tell faculty and staff what we do? Or an info session. Valentine emphasizes that this information would be super important to students. Pre recorded, easy for the new staff member to start something, or making a slide for profs to use.  

Business 

Motions 

Email/Teams Motions 

Future Meeting Times 

  • Council Meetings 
    • Fill out the pool to find a date for our August monthly meeting 
  • Bi-Weekly Staff/Exec/Council (Thrive) Meetings  
    • Bi-Weekly Mondays @11:00am  
    • Next meeting August 11th @11:00am 
    • #Access4All Meetings  
    • Bi-Weekly Thursdays @1:00pm  
    • Next meeting August 7th @1:00pm  

In-Camera (If needed) 

Julia Moves  

Valentine Seconds 

Move-in 2:06 pm 

Move-out 2:22 pm 

 

  1. Adjournment – 2:23pm 

Thank you for coming!