On Jan. 16, the students of McMaster voted in overwhelming support in favour of continuing the relationship with the HSR when it comes to the bus pass contract. The first round of voting had only 574 votes out of 7,231, not including abstentions, against any form of bus pass in the McMaster Students Union referenda. The Graduate Students Association had a similar result with only 18.3 per cent of students against their HSR referendum.
The result was the most expensive option available with the fall-winter and summer passes and expanded service of route 51 for increased frequency and later service. This was specified to be until 3 a.m. This is also what the level of service was prior to this new contract.
While the card used to cost $138.65 per student in 2015-2016 and $150.80 per student in 2016-2017, this continues to increase with the MSU agreement to $187.67 this year, $206.17 next year and $225.55 in the final year of the contract despite no additions being made to the level of service.
The card used to cost $182.70 in 2015-2016 and $198.66 in 2016-2017 for the GSA, and continues to increase to $232.70, $257.39 and $284.40 over the next three years respectively with the Presto integration included.
These costs might be justifiable if the service ever lived up to its potential. It does not take a trained eye to note the near daily outrage on Twitter or the lack of response about topics such as the operator shortage, busses, including the 51, skipping stops due to being over packed and inconsistent arrival times.
Students respect individual drivers, the GoFundMe campaign for “Friendly Frank” being the best example of this, but it is difficult to advocate in favour of the bus service as the level of service appears to be decreasing. This will only continue to be an increasing negative as the number of students increases at McMaster in addition to the costs.
It is difficult to put a positive spin on prices increasing $86.90 per MSU student and $101.70 per GSA student from 2015-2016 to 2019-2020. It is even more difficult to place pressure on the service with the hard commitment of a binding contract. This is a city-wide issue that has a great deal of influence on how McMaster students commute from any distance from the university, and one that will likely continue without external intervention or pressure. It would be a poor bet to hope for anywhere close to the same amount of student support in the future.
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On Oct. 15, the McMaster Students Union Student Representative Assembly and board of directors met in Gilmour Hall to discuss and vote on a number of administrative motions.
One, put forward by Max Lightstone, caucus leader (engineering), asked the SRA to approve a report crafted by the Student Activity Building space allocation ad-hoc committee.
The report consisted of a detailed plan for the new Student Activity Building, which is projected to be completed by 2020. It also included information about how the recommendations for the new building were made.
In particular, it noted that 426 students were asked, via an online MSU survey, what facilities they most wanted to be part of the SAB. Eight hundred and ninety nine students voted for an architect design. The Interfaith Council discussed prayer space in the SAB, and religious groups were consulted.
Students identified study space, lounge space, study rooms, nap space and dining space, respectively, as most important prospective SAB facilities. When asked what should be prioritized, 50 percent of students voted for natural light.
It’s worth noting that although eight percent of students voted for workout space and seven percent voted for studio space, the committee opted not to consider including these areas in the SAB.
The motion to adopt the report passed unanimously.
In addition, motions to open seats on the sustainability education committee, finance committee, provincial and federal affairs committee, and internal governance committee, for instance, were also voted unanimously in favour of.
Only a few SRA members expressed interest in joining committees. Though a few representatives, including Alex Wilson, caucus member (science), noted prior commitments to at least two other committees, other members appeared to be uninterested.
For a position on the Elections Committee, Brian Zheng, caucus leader (Kinesiology) ran against Chukky Ibe, MSU President. Zheng was voted in.
Another administrative motion concerned the approval of the vice-presidential and speaker operating policy, which was constructed by the elections committee.
Concerns, particularly from Preethi Anbalagan, vice president (administration), arose over vice-presidential candidates’ amended speaking format, which consisted of comparatively longer presentation and question and answer period times.
After a lengthy discussion, the assembly voted to send the report back to the internal governance committee for review.
Though the meeting focused almost exclusively on administrative points, the assembly’s discussion was fruitful. The next meeting will be held in Gilmour Hall on Oct. 30.
The paper focused a bit on this last week in the article entitled “Communicating with the SRA” in the News section, but there are a few points mentioned in that piece that continue to be an issue. The live stream continues to be a problem, and the inability to fulfill the “Communication & Outreach” section of the Student Representative Assembly’s operating policy persisted for the Sept. 24 meeting.
While the live stream was available for the meeting, there is a significant chunk cut out from the archives. The current video has just over an hour segment cut out from a much longer meeting. About 17 minutes of the available content is a break.
Individual SRA faculties did a good job of promoting the live stream when it was available, but few followed up stating the results of the meeting afterwards to little detail. The only mention from the MSU itself on any social media was a retweet from SRA Social Sciences a day in advance of the meeting.
For the most part, the MSU continued to fail in providing timely, accessible information to the public. Unfortunately, this appears to be one part of a much larger problem.
There seems to be minimal priority in any sort of communication with the public.
While I can certainly respect that a large priority has been placed on projects like the café in 1280 and the Student Activity Building, I cannot respect the lack of effort when it comes to updating the student body on these processes or on anything related to smaller projects or proceedings.
The fortunate part for this paper is that many of our news articles, no matter how big or small, are breaking stories. If it were not for their efforts, I would have only the tiniest idea about what any of the Board of Directors has actually done over the last five months besides set up vague plans for things.
The 2017-2018 Approved Minutes on their website should be a fine enough way to get information about what the student government is consistently up to. At the time of writing, this has some notes from the month of April and the meeting on June 18.
For this paper specifically, there are no minutes at all available from the entire 2016-2017 year and none from this year available on their website for our Board of Publication.
The President’s Page in our paper could be another good resource, but requires you to pick up the physical copy for that week. The MSU website is in a similar situation to the previous point with nothing from the entire 2016-2017 year and nothing from this year in their President’s Page Archives.
You deserve to know what is going on. Maybe the board of directors simply do not want to boast about their accomplishments. My main worry at this point is that they have few accomplishments to boast about in the first place.
On Sept. 24, the McMaster Students Union Student Representative Assembly and board of directors gathered in Council Chambers at Gilmour Hall for the second SRA meeting of the academic year. At the meeting, three primary motions were discussed.
The first, put forward by Alex Wilson, SRA (Science) member, called for the MSU to adopt a more critical stance on McMaster’s recent smoking ban. In particular, Wilson asked the MSU to release a statement claiming that “McMaster Students Union cautions against the move towards a smoke free campus and prioritizes considerations of student safety, accessibility, and comprehensive access to McMaster University when considering implementation.”
The SRA and the board largely agreed with Wilson’s original statement, but they voted to amend it to include the fact that, despite its anti-ban position, the MSU recognizes the negative health effects of smoking. Not sparking significant disagreement, the amended motion won the majority vote.
The second motion, put forward by Max Lightstone, SRA (Engineering) caucus leader, called for the MSU to promote the opportunity for students to opt out of paying their Ontario Public Interest Research Group fee.
Although an amendment to extend MSU promotion to all opportunities to opt out was considered, SRA members agreed that promotion can take place on the grassroots level, not requiring an official motion. Another concern raised was the fact that the relationship between the MSU and OPRIG would be strained in the event that the MSU endorsed the opt out. As a result, the motion failed.
The third motion, put forward by Sabrin Salim, SRA (Science) member, asked the board to release a statement within 48 hours of the meeting to apologize for the events that transpired on the night of Post Malone, explain why an apology to reps and students was not released earlier and highlight what changes will be made in light of Homecoming and future events. This motion ignited heated debate, with SRA members disagreeing with board.
Ryan Deshpande, vice president (Education), sought to amend the motion further to place less emphasis on the apology and stress how the MSU is preparing for Homecoming, stating that releasing improvements would make the statement more constructive.
“Moved by Deshpande, seconded by Sabra, that the MSU release a publication this week in advance of Homecoming in conjunction with the communication department that specifically highlights appropriate safety measures for Homecoming and apologizes for negative experiences in the past event of Post Malone,” the amended statement read.
A few SRA members, such as Wilson and Salim, expressed frustration over Deshpande’s amendment, noting that the MSU needs to acknowledge that many first-years and reps felt invalidated at Post Malone.
Nevertheless, amidst logistical concerns with the Salim’s original motion and a growing awareness that an unfruitful debate would persist should the amendment fail, the SRA and the board voted to pass both the amendment and the amended motion.
The next SRA meeting will be held at 5 p.m. on Oct. 15 in Gilmour Hall.
When Neo-Nazi propaganda was found on campus and in the Westdale area last week advocating against the conservancy of ‘white’ culture and telling the McMaster community to “punch a Nazi”, I began to question what the group advocating for this message was about.
According to their website, The Revolutionary Student Movement is a group of “definitively anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-ableist, LGBTQ2S*-inclusive and proletarian feminist” students who fight fascism.
The students that share the views of the RSM also hold that they are an anti-capitalist movement who are guided by communist principals and in the name of Karl Marx, work to “organize proletarian students in the interest of the revolutionary working-class movement”.
Now that we have established what this group is all about, we can crack down on the posters we have seen on campus.
My first impression when I saw the word “Nazi” used in a seemingly violent, World War II propaganda-like poster was not a positive one. So, I inquired further.
The RSM holds a political view that they would like to express. In and of itself, this is not a crime.
But expressing that violence against those who identify as Neo-Nazi is a violent act in itself.
The RSM, through their unsanctioned posters, are directly advocating for violence and discrimination in their views, something they are seemingly working against in their movement.
The posters in question asked the reader to “punch a Nazi”, as in, “react in a violent manner towards someone with a different political and ideological system than yours”.
Does that sound familiar? Not to mention that the posters themselves were not stamped as authorized by the McMaster Students Union, which diminishes the authority of the approach of the RSM’s view on Neo-Nazism.
Putting up posters on campus is allowed, as long as the posters are approved by the MSU. The MSU Underground Media and Design is the only place on campus that can approve posters.
The RSM, through their unsanctioned posters, are directly advocating for violence and discrimination in their views, something they are seemingly working against in their movement.
According to the MSU Underground Media and Design Poster Checklist, posters that have any messages or images on the poster involving violence, hate, harassment, a discriminatory opinion or could be offensive/controversial will most likely not be approved.
These posters could be reviewed as offensive to certain sensibilities, but since they did not have an MSU stamp of approval it is difficult to tell.
Seeing as the club did not adhere to MSU promotion and advertising policies, the RSM, like all the other clubs who adhere to MSU policies, should revise their methods of message promotion.
The views and beliefs of the RSM are political views that they are entitled to have, regardless of whether or not people agree with them.
That is not the issue here. What I am concerned with is the means by which they shared their views on campus.
Had the posters been approved by the MSU and attempting to simply share a view as opposed to seemingly impose it on the McMaster community, their message could have had a lot more merit to it.
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I have a question for the 2016-2017 McMaster Students Union Board of Directors: how much time did any of them spend in the Pulse?
Shockingly, adding a gym fee to everyone’s student fees means that more people are actually going to go to the gym. The spacing problems associated with this would be evident to anyone who has ever walked past the Pulse sign-in desk.
The Pulse is always packed at 6 a.m. when I go. It is packed at 11:30 a.m. when our Arts & Culture Editor goes. It is packed at 6 p.m. when our Photo Reporter goes. No matter when you try to squeeze in a workout, you’re squeezed in with more bodies than you thought could occupy the treadmills, deadlift platforms or studio.
I could spend my word count rehashing the gripes of anyone who has spent time at the Pulse this year, but it’s really just the most current example of a larger issue on campus.
There is a trend among cohorts of the board that they undertake a large project they will likely not see to completion. We saw it in the 2014-2015 academic year when Teddy Saull’s “Perspectives on Peace” gesture was launched in March 2015 only to seemingly fizzle out after his term.
We saw it when the 2015-2016 board, spearheaded by Ehima Osazuwa, advocated for the implementation of all-genders washrooms. This has only begun to come together as of this fall, which is over a year since he left office.
And we saw it with the 2016-2017 board, who pushed for the Student Activity Building without having to consider the growing pains-style consequences of that referendum’s details.
Burnout is an easy feeling to understand, and this is especially true for university students. I can understand why, after a tiring year, the board would desire to leave a legacy at the institution they’ve worked hard to change. But to students, this can be interpreted as pursuing vanity projects on their dime.
As someone who has struggled with elements of the gym for a long time, I appreciate the previous board’s intention to make the Pulse a more inclusive environment. But the increased crowds no matter what time you go, unless you’re one of the few who make use of their extended weeknight hours, does nothing to quell those negative feelings.
The slight animosity towards those impeding on your personal space at the gym is a horrible feeling, especially when it’s probable that they are working out before dawn to avoid crowds, just like you. Given that first years will not see the opening of the Student Activity Building until the latter part of their third year, promising increased space three years from now is of little comfort to most of the student body.
The quick-fix pop-up Pulse, set to open in one of the auxiliary gyms after the fall reading week, may make me eat my words. Frankly, I doubt it. Even if it is successful in diverting some traffic, it will stand that last year’s board never worked out how you’re going to work out for the foreseeable future.
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By: Takhliq Amir
The first 2017-2018 meeting of the Student Representative Assembly, the governing body of the McMaster Students Union, was held on Sept. 10. Limited information was available to those not able to attend, however, because the usual method of online live streaming was unavailable.
“The live stream was not available this past Sept. 10 meeting due to a logistical error…. Members will sometimes live tweet the meeting if no stream is available, but meetings are long and can be exhausting,” said Helen Zeng, the MSU Speaker.
As elected faculty representatives of their student bodies, members of the SRA meet biweekly to discuss issues concerning undergraduates. Meetings are open to all, and the agenda and supporting materials are made available on the MSU website on the Wednesday preceding the meeting.
To ensure that their constituents can hold members accountable, the SRA has an operating policy titled “Communication & Outreach” that aims to outline the members’ responsibilities in making information available to students in a timely manner.
One of the goals of the operating policy is disseminate information to students in a timely manner. Communication materials are required to be completed within 24 hours of a meeting, and once approved by the Speaker, each caucus is responsible for disseminating the material on their social media accounts within 24 hours of receiving it.
“The operating policy does its job at keeping the assembly accountable to a standard level, but any other initiatives are up to assembly members to take on…. The SRA will do their very best to engage the student population, but engagement is never an easy task,” Zeng said.
“Moreover, there are extra steps that the SRA takes in order to be accessible. We made a presence at Horizons Successfest to promote meeting and committees to first year students, we had material at Clubsfest to promote the assembly, there is a window banner in MUSC that shows all the meeting dates, and SRA members will make numerous outreach and engagement efforts on their respective social media accounts,” she added.
“It’s difficult to live tweet a meeting and pay attention at the same time. Additionally, there are issues with the live-stream itself.”
Uwais Patel
SRA
Social Science
Meeting minutes, however, are often published two weeks after each meeting, and are inaccessible until then. There is still much that can be done to improve the accessibility of the SRA, a sentiment shared by Uwais Patel, SRA Social Science.
“The current structure of the SRA’s accessibility, in my opinion, is pretty minimal,” said Patel.
“The advantage that I see is that an effort is at least being made. Meetings are live-streamed, discussions are recorded, and everything is posted on the MSU Website with the hopes of the organization keeping itself transparent and accountable to the public.”
Patel also noted the challenges that come with communicating with one’s constituents.
“It’s difficult to live tweet a meeting and pay attention at the same time. Additionally, there are issues with the live-stream itself. For one, only one mic is available (placed in the middle of the room) to pick up all words said by assembly members. Constituents in the past have complained about not being able to hear.”
The SRA has acknowledged the issue and has voiced its commitment to improving the accessibility of its meetings in the future.
“Meetings will be live streamed from now on and we are working with the MSU Communications Officer to create more streamlined media to promote agendas before meeting. As well, following the meetings,” said Zeng.
“[Meeting minutes] can take a while, [so] we have the Operating Policy that allows SRA members to summarize meetings as they see fit (videos, media, class talks etc.) and promote this to the general MSU membership.”
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When it comes to student union politics and political parties, the McMaster Students Union and the New Democratic Party often share insights, with both throwing their full support behind ideas like better public transportation and making tuition accessible.
And yet the NDP remain a quiet voice on the McMaster political landscape.
On Sept. 8, provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath came to McMaster to talk about potential recommendations with student leaders. She met with many groups on campus, most notably the MSU board of directors, who talked to Horwath about what the NDP can do to represent students.
Hamilton has a long history with the NDP. There are currently three NDP members of provincial parliament in Hamilton. The city has often voted orange in the past and many of the student union recommendations mirror NDP policies concerning higher education, such as lowering tuition.
“. . . if we don’t get elected government, then all we can do is push the government to do the right thing. We’ve had some success, especially with respect to the work-integrated learning.”
Andrea Horwath,
Leader (Ontario)
National Democratic Party
The last time Horwath visited McMaster was in 2013. The then-current board of directors made a series of recommendations, mainly focused on making school affordable and creating experiential learning opportunities. In the years since, some of these recommendations have come to fruition. The introduction of a new Ontario grant for students and new work-integrated programs have been introduced under the Liberal government.
“As opposition, we can build things into our own platform during election time,” said Horwath. “We can engage with students in between elections and during campaigns and then if we don’t get elected government, then all we can do is push the government to do the right thing. We’ve had some success, especially with respect to the work-integrated learning.”
The NDP has also indirectly supported multiple campus initiatives, including April’s debate for light rail transit in Hamilton, which saw delegations from then vice president (Education), Blake Oliver. The NDP supported LRT and helped different communities access funding for it from the project’s early stages.
Despite the support for the NDP within the city and many shared policies between the party and the MSU, the NDP does not have a large presence on campus. McMaster NDP only has 278 likes on Facebook, while McMaster Young Liberals has 662 and the McMaster Conservatives has 580. Non-McMaster groups that still hold influence in the area, such as the Revolutionary Student Movement, also hold a much higher degree of support from the general population than any NDP group does at McMaster.Horwath credits this to the job opportunities that exist for those involved with the ruling party, the Liberals, which attracts the attention of many student leaders hoping to make impacts after graduation.
“I want to encourage students to get involved with the campus clubs and what comes from these connections. [My aide] was a student here for many years and works for me now. I know many people who work at Queen’s Park for me and the NDP party either on an election or with campus based clubs. I think sometimes people don’t see the connection getting involved with a club or an election and the job opportunities that come out of that,” said Horwath.
Nevertheless, Horwath continues to talk with student leaders and tries to work with them from the position she holds to implement their ideas. And as time marches forward, one can expect future student leaders to find success in fulfilling their visions whether they have the help of a political party or not.
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The McMaster Students Union employs dozens of students through part-time positions in various services with flexible hours. These often attract the best and the brightest within the student union. But working for the student union is not without its own hiccups, and students are speaking up.
Following the end of her term as part-time manager for the Peer Support Line, Zeinab Khawaja, a fourth-year Health Sciences student, presented a statement to the Student Representative Assembly. She expressed concerns about the expectations the MSU holds for their workers.
In her statement, Khawaja argued that part-time managers have not received adequate training before their roles began and subsequently did not receive adequate support from their higher-ups. She took particular issue with the expectation many held for part-time managers that they would willingly work over their hours without compensation.
“My job description contains the line ‘Time demands may exceed stated hours of work’ and there is an expectation that I will not be paid for this. This is unhealthy, unfair and quite probably in violation of labour laws,” she said at the SRA meeting on April 9.
Services, part-time managers and you
Whether you were aware or not, you have probably used an MSU service at some point during your undergraduate career.
The MSU offers over 30 services for all members. These range from leadership-oriented services such as the MSU Maroons and the Creating Leadership Among Youth conference to advocacy-driven services such as Diversity Services and Maccess, which aim to promote equity for marginalized groups on campus. MSU services are largely run by fellow students, many of whom work as part-time managers for the each service.
Broadly speaking, part-time managers are in charge of hiring executives, managing finances and coordinating events for their service. Every service has specific needs and different services require different jobs from their respective part-time manager.
For example, part-time managers for advocacy-related services such as the Women and Gender Equity Network and Diversity Services are often expected to work with other equity-related groups on campus such as the Ontario Public Research Group and the Presidents’ Advisory Council on Building an Inclusive Community.
The majority of part-time managers are expected to work for roughly 10 to 14 hours per week depending on the service with the majority of their terms beginning May 1 and ending April 30. Some exceptions exist.
Some part-time managers are paid for more hours such as the Emergency First Response Team director, or different, shorter terms for seasonal part-time managers such as the Shinerama Campaign coordinator whose job is finished after Welcome Week is over.
"This is unhealthy, unfair and quite probably in violation of labour laws."
Zeinab Khawaja
Fourth-year Health Sciences
One manager's experience
Peer Support Line is an anonymous and confidential support line where any McMaster student may receive emotional support from trained volunteers. PSL saw a marked increase in usage this year, and Khawaja ran into new, unprecedented problems with her own safety being compromised at times due to her association with the service.
“Our usage more than doubled from last year, meaning we were much busier than we have been in the past. I was repeatedly talking to security services/police because of certain unprecedented situations, and I often had to drop academics or other commitments to do so due to the urgency of the situation,” she said.
To ensure the service ran smoothly and that her volunteers were also being supported, Khawaja had to work over her paid hours repeatedly. Because of this, she asked for retroactive pay from the Executive Board, the MSU committee responsible for the day-to-day operations of the student union. Khawaja asked for three extra hours per week from Sept. 1 to March 26, and was denied this request. This denial sparked her desire to speak up about her working conditions.
In Khawaja’s last Executive Board report for PSL, she expressed her lack of compensation for the work she and her executive team had put in throughout the year, but received little support from the board.
“When I shared the things we were struggling with, I got no support. I explicitly said that I needed help with a few things, but there was no feedback, follow-up or guidance provided. In fact, none of the concerns I brought up at EB throughout the year were ever mentioned again unless I actively brought it up multiple times,” said Khawaja.
“It feels like our dedication to our services is used against us, because it is known that we will continue to do the work and put in the hours even though we are not being compensated fairly for it. … Yet going above and beyond in our roles — something implicitly expected of a “good” part-time manager — is not rewarded, and instead deemed a ‘personal choice’ of the part-time manager that was never explicitly asked of us.”
Khawaja also expressed concern about part-time manager training, since they were not explicitly trained to do the day-to-day activities expected from them such as filling out a purchase order, working with the MSU Underground for promotional material and booking spaces on campus. Many other part-time managers came to Khawaja to learn how to do these tasks.
“These are basic tasks that all part-time managers have to be able to do. This not only indicates that the training provided to us did not prepare us for our jobs, but also that there wasn’t a supportive environment where part-time managers felt they could ask for help without fear of being judged,” she said.
While Khawaja was the only part-time manager to speak at the SRA meeting, she states she has the support of other part-time managers who were not comfortable speaking up.
“I didn’t ask anyone be included because I know it’s difficult and no one seemed very excited to be included. Some people explicitly said they didn’t want to be named. ... I’m someone who’s comfortable and it was really important to me to bring this to attention so that it would hopefully change, and I know that how other people feel,” she said.
While Khawaja was the only part-time manager to speak at the SRA meeting, she states she has the support of other part-time managers who were not comfortable speaking up.
What is being done
Preethi Anbalagan, the current vice president (Administration), cannot comment on Khawaja’s statement since she is not at liberty to comment on closed meetings or disclose similar information. She does, however, plan to support part-time managers through various other means and pointed out that there are steps in place within the union to support part-time managers.
All part-time managers are expected to report to the Executive Board, a committee consisting of the board of directors, some SRA members and some of the full-time MSU staff. Part-time managers are expected to meet with EB regularly and submit EB reports. These EB reports are typically two to four pages in length and discuss updates, service usage, budgeting, volunteer retention, successes and challenges and similar topics.
“You do have that nine person panel, where you are supposed to talk about some of the challenges you face on a day-to-day basis or put them in the EB report so that nine people around that table are able to look at those challenges and provide some recommendations and how part-time managers can navigate the challenges they’re facing,” Anbalagan said.
Anbalagan also plans to implement an anonymous feedback form where employees may comment on how she can improve in her role as their support. This will exist in tandem to the traditional one-on-ones vice presidents (Administration) have held in order to support their workers. At this time, however, it is unclear whether issues concerning compensation and unpaid hours will be addressed by the upper management of the MSU.
Part-time managers continue to work diligently to ensure their services run smoothly and grow. With Khawaja’s statement ringing in the ears of the higher-ups, there is hope more safeguards will be put in place to maintain a more equitable work environment for all MSU employees.
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On April 1 and 2, incoming Student Representative Assembly members voted in the new McMaster Students Union vice presidents. Preethi Anbalagan was elected for vice president (Administration), Daniel D’Souza for vice president (Finance) and Ryan Deshpande for vice president (Education). The newly elected vice presidents will be joining president Chukky Ibe on the 2017-2018 Board of Directors.
For the first time, the entire Board of Directors belong to a marginalized minority, something reflected in the focus on diversity and inclusion in all the vice president-elects’ platforms.
Anbalagan’s platform includes multiple points about how to support the SRA, part-time managers and associate vice presidents employed by the MSU. Among the points that stand out is the centralization and accessibility of resources.
She plans to increase accessibility to resources for the SRA and make herself more accessible by centralizing information pertinent to both groups. She hopes that the shared resources will foster collaboration between members with similar platforms and goals. She also plans to focus on helping SRA members stand up for their opinions, plans to run skill-building workshops for SRA members to work on strengthening their voice.
Anbalagan also plans to initiate a summer conference style orientation for part-time managers and the SRA. The orientation will replace the existing MSU Retreat.
Another major focus for Anbalagan is safety on campus. She wants to create a formalized online training module for how to contribute to a safer campus and to expand bystander intervention training to more reps and students on campus that will be running large Welcome Week events.
Off-campus students also have a place on Anbalagan’s platform, as she plans to pilot events and social gatherings in areas of high commuter population prior to welcome week and to increase visibility of campus services and the SRA during Welcome Week.
D’Souza’s platform complements Anbalagan’s programming for off-campus students well, though this is more of a minor point for D’Souza. Instead, D’Souza plans to focus on affordable food and space, experiential work opportunities and diverse programming and outreach.
D’Souza plans to address two longstanding campus issues that students care about: space and affordable food. D’Souza hopes to convert the unused space at TwelvEighty to create a joint restaurant and lounge and coffee shop similar to the model other universities already use.
D’Souza also plans to cut some of the most non-profitable endeavours of TwelvEighty’s expenses, such as some Thursday club nights that have been poorly attended in the past. D’Souza hopes to use the free nights and decreased cost of renting TwelvEighty to encourage diversity programming. As for food, D’Souza wants to stock Union Market with fresh groceries through Farmstand during non-operating days in the summer and fall and an outside source in the winter.
D’Souza plans to foster a partnership with the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce to increase opportunities for students in chamber events and local business. He hopes to use the MSU job portal to advertise for these jobs. D’Souza also emphasizes bystander intervention training and stresses that his goals for diverse programming and the potential use of the John Hodgins Engineering building field for on-campus concerts will not come to fruition unless this training is in place.
Deshpande takes an evidence-based approach to his main platform points, which are education, safety, diversity and food security.
After seeing the data from the Academic Services Review survey, he plans to lobby for revised exam scheduling and to enforce the assessment ban through an anonymous appeals process.
Among his points are podcasted courses and extended library hours, although Deshpande was not specific in how he would approach these points. Additionally, Deshpande will tackle the syllabus repository that students passed in the January referendum.
Deshpande also plans to lobby for accessibility, focusing on advocating for the university to use deferred maintenance funds to increase physical accessibility on campus. He also plans to work with Ibe to improve bus shelters and Wi-Fi on campus and increase the number of gender-neutral washrooms. Deshpande plans to revisit the conversation about an Indigenous course requirement and to advocate for Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe flags on campus. Similar to his fellow vice presidents, Deshpande wants to push for all undergraduate students to be trained in sexual violence prevention during Welcome Week. He also plans to lobby for expanded OHIP and UHIP coverage to include healthcare costs associated with a response to sexual violence.
Deshpande’s food security platform point includes the implementation of a food security analyst, readily available allergy information, increased Kosher and Halal options and improved local food opportunities.
The incoming vice presidents all have platforms that complement each other and their president-elect, promising a cohesive board of directors set up well to succeed in their upcoming term.
This article has been updated to correct a platform point of Daniel D'Souza. Originally, we wrote that D'Souza's potential partnership with the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce would provide opportunities for the SRA. In fact, the partnership could provide opportunities for all undergraduate students.
