MSU Elections 2020: Jackson Tarlin’s Platform Overview

Photo by Matty Flader / Photo Reporter

Jackson Tarlin, a Level V Engineering Physics student at McMaster, has presented a wide-ranging platform that aims to address a range of issues affecting students.

“Our goal is to take every annoyance you’ve grumbled about during your time at McMaster and throw them in the trash. Then set the trash on fire. If we have time left over once we’re done, we’ll use the trash fire to light our pipe and then sit in a muskoka chair and watch the sunset,” the platform overview states.

Tarlin built his platform upon four pillars: Student Life, Clubs and Services, Campus and the Environment. 

Student Life 

Tarlin’s platform approaches student life with a focus on personal expression, McMaster Student Absence Form extensions, hydration, affordability and accessibility. 

Beginning with personal expression, Tarlin aims to address conflicts between personal expression and a need to maintain illusions of harmony on important issues. He would assign zones to different parts of campus, with each one corresponding to a distinct and permissible level of personal expression. Tarlin’s five zones range from Zone 1, which prohibits politics and foul words, to Zone 5, which restricts conversation to swearing and screaming only, prohibiting compassion. 

With regards to the MSAF policy, he proposes changing the current allowance period, which currently allows up to three consecutive days of missed work, to allowing up to two months of MSAF use. Tarlin states that this would increase stress during exam time and reduce student retention. 

Hydration has its own place in Tarlin’s platform. He plans to shame individual water fountains by putting up a bulletin board dedicated to criticizing the worst water fountains across campus. He believes this will encourage water fountains, although they are inanimate, to better themselves. 

Tarlin proposes the replacement of all stairs on campus with ramps. He hopes that the amount of construction required would facilitate a familiar and comfortable ambience for McMaster students. 

“It just wouldn’t be McMaster without [all the noise and construction],” Tarlin’s platform explains. 

Clubs and Services 

Tarlin’s second pillar focuses on The Silhouette, Spotted at Mac and McMaster Confessions. He suggests increasing the tuition of 20 students by $15,000 to hire full-time journalists for The Silhouette and allow the newspaper to release issues every day. 

Tarlin’s proposal to give full club status to Spotted at Mac and McMaster Confessions is something he hopes will increase their reach with their respective audiences. Both of these Facebook pages are known for publishing anonymous posts from Mac students.

Campus 

Tarlin sees opportunities to change campus in five ways: moving the A.N. Bourns Science Building to Parking Lot I to make Thode more accessible from the John Hodgins Engineering building, replacing a tree near Togo Salmon Hall with a “better tree” and building a monorail between the McMaster University Student Centre and Mills Library.

Due to the very small distance between MUSC and Mills, the monorail would not need to move. Tarlin believes that the costs of constructing the monorail would be saved by the absence of electricity costs needed to run the monorail. 

The Environment

Tarlin dedicates the rest of his platform to the environment. He encourages more animal safety awareness in order to stop students from eating cockroaches at Centro. As a tribute to modern music, he wants to rename Cootes Paradise, “Gangsta’s Paradise”. He also points out the moderate nature of geese at McMaster; he believes they could be trained to be as violent as geese from universities such as Waterloo and University of Toronto. 

Lastly, Tarlin’s platform delivers one ultimate goal: to solve climate change once and for all. 

More information can be found on his Facebook page “Tarlin 2020”. He is also reachable via email through [email protected]