When I started out as the Opinions Editor for The Silhouette this past year, I admittedly didn’t care much about student politics or governance. I was unfamiliar with the policies of the McMaster Students Union and had no idea what happened during Student Representative Assembly meetings.
Nowadays, I regularly watch the SRA livestreams and perform my due diligence to be aware of changes occurring within the MSU. A large part of that is for my job, but I’ve found that staying informed has benefits beyond finding something to write about.
The purpose of the MSU is to “represent you and to help build a better community for all students”. As the governing body of the MSU, SRA members have a responsibility to represent and lobby on behalf of their students.
It’s only fair then that we as students hold these members, and the MSU in general, accountable for their actions. In doing so, we are ensuring that any changes occurring are truly reflective of the needs and desires of students.
There’s many ways for students can hold these organizations accountable. They can attend SRA meetings, speak to their SRA representative, voice their concerns online or even protest for change.
Alternatively, you can do what I do, and write about your concerns for the campus newspaper. Perhaps some of my criticisms have been harsh or slightly misguided. But at the end of the day, I’m proud of the articles that I’ve written and edited for The Silhouette. Even if they have stepped on some toes, I’d like to think they’ve helped incite some positive changes on campus.
Whether these changes are a fully-stocked Union Market or investigations into MSU-recognized clubs, it’s evident that speaking out on issues is important.
Not everything the SRA or MSU has done has been negative. In fact, they have made some great, positive changes that are deserving of praise, or at the very least, of respect.
A few weeks ago, I had plans to write about the SRA’s contradictory playing of the national anthem and delivery of a land acknowledgment at their meetings. To my surprise, I found that they passed a motion to stop playing the national anthem at their meetings altogether. Things like these are positive changes that students should be aware of.
Of course, there is only so much that students can do. Given the record eight students who attended the General Assembly on March 20, it is obvious that the MSU must do a better job at engaging with their student constituents.
But just because the MSU and SRA have much to improve doesn’t mean that students are off the hook for staying informed. Without student input and advocacy efforts, organizations are given too much power and can make decisions that negatively impact us all.
For example, without the efforts of a few brave survivors telling their experiences with sexual assault within the MSU Maroons, it’s unlikely that the service would be doing anything to account for the issue, much less propose developing a long-overdue sexual assault and harassment policy.
I encourage students to get engaged with their university’s politics. It might seem overwhelming, and the information is certainly not easy to navigate, but it’s important work.
Especially in light of the upcoming changes to post-secondary education made by the provincial government, it is in the best interests of all students to be engaged with their union’s activities.
My term at The Silhouette is reaching a close. I’ve learned a lot during my time working for the newspaper but my biggest takeaway is that student politics affects us all, including those outside of the MSU bubble. For our own sake, we ought to keep our student organizations accountable for their actions.
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Attendance at the annual McMaster Students Union General Assembly hit a new low this year, with a total of eight members showing up.
Eight students represent 0.0293 per cent of the MSU’s student membership. The number of students needed to reach quorum this year was 724.
We're here at the annual MSU General Assembly! The assembly officially started at 4pm, but there are <10 attendees (including the full MSU board of directors) pic.twitter.com/Kf9YvrJQLL
— The Silhouette (@theSilhouette) March 20, 2019
MSU president Ikram Farah delivered an address at the start of the assembly, speaking about the recent Ontario government cuts to the Ontario Student Assistance Program and new Student Choice Initiative guidelines.
Following Farah’s remarks, a motion to adjourn the meeting passed unanimously.
The assembly lasted a little longer than five minutes.
GA frequently sees a low turnout. Last year and in 2016, approximately fifty students attended. In 2017, just 27 students were present.
Still, this year marked a sharp decline in attendance.
Moreover, unlike in previous years, no GA motions were submitted to the MSU by the March 13 deadline.
The low turnout raises questions as to whether the MSU sufficiently advertised GA, which is the main constitutionally-mandated meeting for students to pass motions affecting the entire student body.
MSU speaker Elizabeth Wong said that many channels were used to promote GA, including social media pushes, text messages and posters and banners in public spaces.
However, Student Representative Assembly social science caucus leader Fawziyah Ali said that promotion this year was less effective than in previous years.
“In terms of Facebook promotion, poster promotion, I don’t think it was as advertised as it could be, so people didn’t know that it was happening,” Ali said. “There should have been better promotion, because MSU GA is an important event, especially to bridge that gap between the MSU and students.”
Student engagement with the MSU, particularly regarding elections, has been relatively positive this year, with a record number of students running in the SRA general elections and increased candidate turnout for first-year council elections.
These increases in MSU engagement have been largely attributed to improved promotion efforts from the MSU.
This year, the GA event page on Facebook page was created only one night before the event, and a total of 164 students were invited.
For comparison, last year’s event page included 212 invitations and was created more than a week in advance.
GA has hit quorum before, most recently in 2015 and 2012. While this was largely due to the boycott, divestments and sanctions motion in 2015, the high attendance in 2012 is considered to have been the result of an extensive promotion campaign run by the board of directors.
“It’s not like you want contentious issues to happen so people come out. That’s not at all what it is. You hope that there are no contentious issues, but there is always something to talk about,” Ali said.
Vania Pagniello, an incoming SRA representative, noted there may still be a significant gap when it comes to educating students about how GA works and why it is important.
“I think the average student doesn’t even know what a motion is,” Pagniello said.
Ali speculates that students may also be looking to non-MSU networks, such as the Hamilton Student Mobilization Network, to raise awareness of social issues.
“I think there’s some disenchantment in terms of students and their relationship to the MSU,” said Ali.
Until more is done, it seems that GA will continue to be an under-utilized tool for effecting change on campus.
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A record 79 candidates were vying for a position on the McMaster Students Union Student Representative Assembly general elections, which ended last Monday.
Seventy-nine candidates competed for 31 SRA seats across all faculties, the highest number ever.
Last year, there were just 41 candidates running for 31 seats. Two years ago, there were 50 candidates.
The highest number of candidates came from the SRA science and SRA social science faculties.
Twenty-five candidates ran for seven seats for science, while 16 candidates ran for five seats in social science.
In 2018, there were just nine and five candidates for the science and social science faculties.
Candidate turnout was higher than last year for other faculties as well.
SRA commerce had eight candidates running for four seats this year compared to five candidates last year, and the arts and science faculty had four nominees running for one seat compared to one nominee last year.
Voter turnout was markedly high as well. Twenty per cent of undergraduate students, or a total of 4283, voted in the SRA generals election, a dramatic increase from last year’s election, which saw 1064 voters.
Several current SRA members and winning candidates attributed the increase in candidate turnout to more effective advertising from the McMaster Student Union elections department this year, made up of chief returning officer Uwais Patel and deputy returning officer Emily Yang.
“This year, the CRO and DRO did a really good job in doing outreach. It was a lot of promotion, and it was faculty-specific promotion as well,” said Tasneem Warwani, current SRA arts and science representative.
“I think what they did really well was reach out to SRA members to ensure that they were reaching out to their constituents,” said Devin Roshan, current SRA health sciences representative.
One new initiative the elections team took on this year was sending faculty-specific emails directly to students to remind them of nomination deadlines and how many seats were available.
“On the MSU pages, social media-wise, I saw more promotion about it,” said third-year social sciences student Allie Kampan, who won an SRA seat. “More people were aware of it this year.”
Some faculties also tried to host more faculty-specific events encouraging students to run. For example, the social science caucus ran an event where they handed out nomination forms.
“I think the SRA reps made it more approachable this year,” Kampman said. “There’s a stigma around a lot of MSU things, specifically SRA, which is that it’s unapproachable.”
Roshan pointed out that increased turnout also comes from regular efforts through the year to educate students on issues and what the SRA is doing.
The health sciences election this year featured eight candidates for two positions, building off seven candidates last year after just two in 2017.
Students entering post-secondary education may also be becoming more interested in politics.
“Looking at the first years specifically, in my interactions I’ve had with them, they’re very passionate about getting involved,” Warwani said.
First year council elections this year featured a record high of 54 candidates running for sixteen positions.
Not all faculties saw a rise in candidate turnout. Humanities had only three nominees, meaning all three available seats were acclaimed. There were just two nursing nominees for one seat and four kinesiology nominees for two seats. SRA engineering also had just eight candidates for six available seats.
All of these faculties have struggled to put forth nominees in recent years, with seats often being acclaimed.
According to incoming SRA engineering representative Hawk Yang, one possible reason for the typically low candidate turnout is that the engineering faculty has a prominent engineering society, which often overshadows SRA engineering initiatives.
Nonetheless, as evidenced by the SRA statistics, the MSU is still seeing refreshingly high interest in student government this year.
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Only a month ago, McMaster celebrated its highest MSU Presidential election voter turnout in recent history. Nearly 50 percent of MSU members cast a ballot in a highly contentious election. The MSU administration, the candidates and their teams prided themselves on their ability to engage the student body at such a high level. For the two weeks of campaigning, campus came alive with political allegiances and discussion of important student concerns.
None of that momentum was felt at the MSU General Assembly on March 15.
Attendance at the annual event peaked at around 50 students, a pitiful number, especially considering the gravity of the issues at hand. These included tuition advocacy, MSU vice presidential elections at-large and the termination of Glen DeCaire as Head of Campus Security. In order for quorum to be met and any decisions to be considered valid, three percent of the MSU’s voting members must be present at the General Assembly, around 660.
“We need to think about balancing [the voices] of the students who do come out, and making sure it’s an accurate representation of the student body."
Inna Berditchevskaia, MSU Speaker, knows the General Assembly can highlight an issue of great importance to students. “It has the potential to be very effective if we can actually get a representative sample of students in the room … At last year's GA we reached quorum because there was one issue that students cared a lot about, and I don't think it was the GA, I don't think it was the opportunity to speak to something on the MSU level that appealed to students,” she said, citing the example of the passing of BDS at last year’s General Assembly.
“I wish more people had come out. I was the one to organize this and I put a lot of planning into it, so it was unfortunate to see so few people come out,” Berditchevskaia said, adding that the MSU used all of its own avenues for advertising the event, plus the creation of a widely-shared Facebook event.
For Kathleen Quinn, an incoming SRA Social Sciences caucus member who put forth several motions at the General Assembly, the low turnout is an indication of a greater problem within the MSU. “I think that at McMaster, it's a cultural problem, first and foremost. When we look at the GA and the emphasis that's put on it as a democratic vehicle, as something that can help students, but I just don't see those conversations happening,” she explained. “I don't believe that turnout has traditionally been high because I don't think that the union sees itself as a democratic vehicle for change. It does have democratic principles at its core, but I don't think we educate students about the importance of this.”
Having experienced the student activism movement in Montreal, Quinn said universities in Quebec tend to approach their General Assemblies in a different way than McMaster. “It was really interesting to see how many people, when I said we only have one GA a year, were shocked. They were used to participating more often and on different levels,” said Quinn.
Despite the low turnout, both Berditchevskaia and Quinn were adamant that the three percent quorum not be changed, a decision that would require a constitutional referendum. “I don't think that lowering that threshold means that we get that plethora of voices. If we lowered quorum or didn't have quorum, a tiny group of us would be able to push through things. And we need to make sure we have those big conversations,” Quinn said.
Berditchevskaia agrees. “We need to think about balancing [the voices] of the students who do come out, and making sure it's an accurate representation of the student body, because we do need to keep in mind that the student body is 22,000 people.”
As the event did not come close to having the required minimum of 660 members present, the motions put forth will now be discussed by the SRA at their meeting on March 20 — a shift in the discussion that seems dubious, as very few SRA members were present at General Assembly.
Many of the members who were there spent the two hours laughing and chatting amongst each other, appearing unengaged by the debates and motions they will now have to discuss and vote on with no more formal expertise than the constituents they represent.
For the future, Berditchevskaia wants to see the attitude of the MSU shift. “I think we need to go about it from a perspective of not advertising for the GA but creating a culture in which students want to be engaged with the democratic process regardless of how contentious the issue that's being brought up is,” she said.
“I don’t believe that turnout has traditionally been high because I don’t think the union sees itself as a democratic vehicle for change ... I don’t think we educate students about the importance of this."
Quinn sees the transient nature of the student body as a reason there is so little commitment to improving campus for others. “You have a sense of, I guess, responsibility over your own future. Maybe that's why participation isn't happening. People don't feel like they are responsible for what happens next.”
Going forward, the issues — including a motion asking that the MSU advocate for a provincial tuition freeze — will be discussed at the March 20 SRA meeting. Any of the motions put forth could pass, be amended at the will of the assembly, or face all-out rejection.
Photo Credit: Mike Beattie
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