Platform critique: Aquino Inigo

Safety on campus is not to be taken lightly, and any promise to improve it needs to come with a sufficient amount of research and consultation with student and non-student services alike.

McMaster Students Union presidential candidate Aquino Inigo has failed to do that research, and instead offers plans that provide minor improvements at best, and at worst, will actually fail to provide an improved sense of security on campus.

Inigo promises to expand the Student Walk Home Attendant Team through a new call-in service, implement more streetlights in darker neighbourhoods surrounding campus and adding a new volunteer student foot patrol team that will work with Security Services.

The good points stop at the SWHAT call-in service. The addition of this service will allow students to anonymously call a SWHAT volunteer to accompany their walk home on the phone. The service would be offered until 3 a.m., two hours later than SWHAT is currently offering. SWHAT would only need one additional telephone, and currently has the volunteer base to support the addition according to SWHAT part-time manager Leon Zhang. Zhang could not estimate how often the new call-in service would get used, but latest SWHAT reports show that the services took 173 walks over the month of Nov. with an average of 5.77 average walks per night.

In principle, making some of the darker streets surrounding campus would make students feel safer during late walks home. Despite his website’s call to work with him, Ward 1 councillor Aidan Johnson has confirmed that previous councilor, Brian McHattie, explored the idea and found it to be infeasible because the residents along relevant streets resisted additional light pollution.

Ward 1 Administrative and Consistency Assistant Nikola Wojewoda-Patti noted that the MSU had previously inquired about additional lighting before, referencing former 2014-2015 MSU president Teddy Saull’s platform point on the same issue. City staff and police voiced concerns about drawing pedestrians onto potentially less safe routes – i.e. away from main and residential streets where there are already lights, houses and more foot traffic.

Inigo was unaware of the prior failure prior to his interview with the Silhouette, and though revisiting the issue is possible, it is clear that he has not done sufficient research, and has failed to consult with the very councillor he names on his campaign website.

The largest failure of his safety platform is the lack of student group and service consultation before the introduction of his volunteer foot patrol platform point.

Inigo’s conception of safety is simply tied to an increased presence of Security Services, and though that will be done through volunteer foot patrol and not security or police officers, it still represents the idea that an increased presence of security surveillance equates to ‘feeling’ safer

Inigo is not calling for this volunteer foot patrol in response to any statistical increase in crime on campus. He doesn’t offer any facts to back his claim that an increased presence of security through a foot patrol will actually deter crime and “suspicious activity”.

His website has made no mention of how increased security presence through a volunteer team will actually address the concerns of students who feel more unsafe around police officers, security services or a foot patrol group that represents security services. While he believes that students will feel more comfortable approaching the volunteer team rather then a security officer, the fundamental issue Inigo is missing is that this still makes certain students still feel that there is more security representatives on campus and that itself will make them feel uneasy.

Inigo did consult with Director of Parking and Security Glenn De Caire, but Inigo did not collect any evidence to suggest that students will feel safer around student groups representing security versus security officers themselves. He did not consult with MSU Diversity Services regarding this initiative.

The lack of consultation on this platform point is inexcusable. Following the protests of the De Caire Off Campus and the backlash to City Council’s proposal to increase by-law officers in Westdale, Inigo would have realized that any proposal to expand the scope of Security Services would need consultation and a lot of research.

He is a candidate that believes that security can always be improved, yet he makes no mention of how his safety platform can specifically combat sexual assault and violence in the university and he offers no additional support for victims. Given the assaults that occurred during Light Up the Night in April 2016, it is clear that he has not done the full research. His plan for safety offers little support for a significant portion of the student population.

Had Inigo done the necessary ground work, he maybe could have actually made substantial promises to the student population, but instead chose to live in a world where certain students ‘feeling’ more is good enough to run his campaign.