In his campaign for MSU president, Olami Olalere aims to introduce an MSUTV, create a back-to-school event day and promote housing accessibility
Olami Olalere is a third-year Honours Life Sciences, and one of three students running for the McMaster Students Union 2025 presidential election. The three main pillars of his platform emphasize improving student life, fostering student engagement and promoting student expression.
Olalere refers to these pillars as the "iSee" framework. His campaign slogan is "this is on me, all for you!"
Student Life
The first pillar of Olalere's campaign focuses on improving student life. Olalere highlights four key areas of action under student life: bettering engagement with and access to MSU services by improving advertising, addressing housing accessibility, advocating for better transit and events designed for enrichment and fun.
Olalere proposes increasing access to MSU services through enhancing advertising. Olalere plans to raise awareness of the services and resources the MSU offers, ensuring that students are better informed. To achieve this, in his campaign platform he proposes "partnering more" with MSU affiliated centres, such as the Women and Gender Equity Network, the Pride Community Centre and the Student Health Education Centre, to drive more traffic towards MSU services.
With the goal of improving helping students find housing, Olalere proposes holding a housing fair where landlords would showcase their properties. He also plans to collaborate with the municipal government to uphold student tenant protections and establish a route of direct communication between students and the municipal government. He has indicated an intention to introduce a housing budget to fund these initiatives.
Olalere's next priority is improving transportation on and around campus. He plans to engage with Metrolinx to increase the frequency of GO busses during rush hours. He also wishes to arrange monthly buses for students to attend away Marauder sports games to foster school spirit.
Lastly, Olalere wants to introduce new events that enrich the student experience by planning additional events for homecoming, including a halftime show at the football game and to build on the night concert by including a fair featuring local vendors.
He also proposes a smaller "Back-to-School Day" event on campus, offering entertainment and activities to celebrate the return to campus at the start of the academic year.
Student Engagement
The second pillar of Olalere's campaign focuses on engaging students with campus events that promote inclusivity, empower student voices and encourage civic participation.
Olalere proposes introducing a culture festival or month featuring various cultural events, performances and exhibitions to address what he perceives as a lack of events that represent the diverse student body.
Olalere also proposes creating a "Maroon Wall," a place for students to express themselves and engage with peers. He intends to collaborate with McMaster Athletics to create a McMaster student-only stand for home games.
With the goal of showcasing student creativity, he proposes hosting a gallery and art exhibition where students can display their work, participate in a bidding process and win prizes.
With the goal of fostering engagement with MSU politics, Olalere proposes student town hall meetings in the McMaster University Student Centre atrium to discuss key issues with the MSU. He also proposes collecting the opinions of students through surveys, suggestion boxes and monthly MSU outreach booths in MUSC.
Additionally, Olalere wants to encourage civic participation by educating students on the importance of voting and providing peer support resources to address what he refers to as "election anxiety."
Student Expression
The third pillar of Olalere's campaign focuses on student expression.
In his platform, Olalere proposes hosting a Halloween festival. The festival would feature events for both on and off-campus students, including a haunted house in the Hub.
If elected, he claims he would create "MSUTV", a student-run media outlet dedicated to showcasing the vibrant life of campus. The platform would live-stream sporting events, student governance coverage and highlights of campus events, allowing McMaster students to see their stories come to life.
More information on Olami's campaign can be found via Instagram.
C/O Yoohyun Park
Enforcing diversity is a step to promote equity, but a true belief in its importance goes a much longer way
Rules and laws are meant to be imposing in order to keep society safe and avoid significant conflicts. However, they are often used as potential solutions to prevalent societal issues.
One instance is the use of the Rooney Rule in the National Football League, meant to avoid discrimination in hiring coaches and other senior vacancies in the organization. This rule is reflective of many efforts to increase inclusivity for people of colour, but ineffective in creating an internalized motivation for change.
This rule should serve as a reminder that unless we truly believe and desire for the advancements we are making, any external forces will be futile.
The Rooney rule was created in response to the struggles faced by minority coaches and professionals in landing senior rules within the NFL. Essentially, teams are now required to interview ethnic-minority candidates for head coaching and general manager jobs and interview women for any business front-office position that opens in the league.
Although the number of minority coaches increased by 6% in the first year of conception, it is very volatile. For example, in 2018, there were 8 head coaches of colour. But, in 2019, there were only 4.
What are the actual implications of this rule? Yes, minorities are more involved in the interviewing process. But teams are not required to take this rule any further.
In other words, teams could just add someone of colour to their interview roster with no intention of hiring them. A rule does nothing to make change if the people following them are not committed to ensuring it leads to what it is meant to — in this case, increasing the number of minority professionals within the organization.
This is a sports-related example of how people are the real drivers behind change in the NBA. Those of colour represent barely 3% of the NFL’s head coaches but make up approximately 43% of those in the NBA.
This was achieved through being “aggressive” about creating an inclusive culture and focusing on relationships with the people involved. By working with those within the organization and creating an environment where diversity and inclusion principles were internalised, significant change was able to be made.
Such rules have implications in other areas as well. Consider the job hiring process, wherein there are laws organizations must follow to avoid discriminatory practices.
Yet, again, these only go so far and are highly subjective. Consider a manager deciding whether to hire a man or woman of the same qualifications. Although illegal and unethical, the manager could easily say that the woman was less of a ‘fit’ for the organization to cover up sexist prejudices.
If one does not truly believe in the purpose and desired outcome of a rule or guideline, is it not actually effective.
As in the case of the NBA, these shortfalls can be reconciled by focusing on people, alongside intangibles like culture and overall environment. For example, if a firm really believes in a diverse team where everyone is treated equitably and fairly, then just hiring practices will be natural as opposed to simply forced by law.
Having people with these internalized values is important, but it must be further fostered by organizations’ cultures, missions and values. If the people do not align with the firm or vice versa, then there will just be further conflict hindering them from achieving any goal, let alone overall equity.
Of course, internal motivation is not enough. It must be matched by tangible action as opposed to symbolic gestures.
Firms are increasingly supporting workers of colour by leaving partners who have shown racist behaviour, contributing to Black Lives Matter movements and clearly communicating with their minority workers.
Overall, rules act as limitations, constraints and restrictions on society. So how can we expect them to free society of racist and other discriminatory burdens? We should be focusing on the foundation of society — its people — and the environment in which we live to catalyze true change and foster an equitable, inclusive world.
