Shaarujaa Nadarajah overview
Shaarujaa Nadarajah - Life Sciences III
Shaarujaa Nadarajah had completed her third year of Life Sciences when she was elected vice president (Administration) by the Student Representative Assembly. As vice president (Administration), she has worked alongside the current president Justin Monaco-Barnes and with student managers across campus.
Nadarajah was also involved with Relay for Life for three years, becoming co-president in her third year. As SRA (Science) for a year, she was in the unique position of representing student voices.
“You recognize the challenges of representing students at one time because you are balancing your opinions with the opinions of the mass majority that you are trying to represent,” said Nadarajah.
Nadarajah’s biggest platform points are those of women and resilience and campus safety. To accomplish the latter, she will focus on running a shuttle bus during exam hours. The busses would ideally be the same that currently shuttle from Lot M to Mary Keyes.
The Student Life Enhancement Fund’s pilot project funding can contribute to the fiscal cost of the project. Another important point for Nadarajah is to make bystander intervention training for Community Advisors and TwelvEighty security guards, increasing safety at large group events. Nadarajah has consulted with Meaghan Ross and the Women and Gender Equity Network and all groups are excited about the prospect of offering sexual and gender-based violence training to the larger student community.
Nadarajah also wants to focus on optimizing student space by restructuring TwelvEighty for group events and late night study hours. Nadarajah has set out achievable environmental goals set on improving McMaster’s energy consumption through lighting changes. A longer-term goal and more difficult goal to complete is the incorporation of photovoltaic and thermal solar panels.
Nadarajah believes her platform point about women and resilience will be the most difficult to achieve. The platform focuses on advocacy, representation of marginalized groups and empowerment of groups that currently stand for these issues.
“It’s hard because when people look at leadership, they look at the measurable things at the end of the year that you can check off on a project basis, and this is not a project-based platform point at all. It is a visionary platform point,” said Nadarajah. One approach is to back groups such as McMaster’s Women in Engineering with money and infrastructure so that they are better able to carry out their mission.
Opponent’s platform she’s fond of:
Aquino’s safety pillar
Nadarajah admires Aquino Inigo most. Both their platforms value student safety, though they do not always go about it in the same manner.
Platform she’s most critical of:
Chukky’s “Shorter Lines at the Underground”
Nadarajah is most critical of Chukky Ibe’s platform, questioning how he will achieve some of his platform points in a year and find the fiscal backing for the endeavours. She is particularly critical of his idea to make Underground services more mobile and to increase staffing, wondering if Underground’s vision matches his own.
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