“One of the main platform pieces that sets me apart ... is my piece on harassment discrimination and I hope to start a discussion with regards to sexual assault and that's particularly effective in the graduate student community recently.”
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“My platform is really focused on student health, development and wellbeing. Those are my three main categories that I’m focused on. Mental health is a big one. I want to introduce a fall reading break and really advocate for that.”
“I’m currently the AMS Vice-president Academic and University Affairs and a current student senator and chair of the ad-hoc senate committee on student mental health. I think that that continuity is very important.”
“As the VP Academic and University Affairs, your job is to act as the go-between with students and the university. Building a solid foundational relationship with them would be critical to enacting change in the university.”
“The biggest point is student engagement. I really want to be able to keep students both engaged with the AMS and university issues. I feel as though the more informed students are, the more informed the office will be.”
“I don’t think my platform is particularly radical — I’m not asking for free tuition, I’m not asking for free rent, I’m not asking for the communist revolution. All I’m asking for is some transparency and accountability.”
“Students in general don’t know what the AMS is, they don’t know what the AMS does, why the AMS does the things they do … my goal is obviously to engage with 50,000 students and be able to help them answer that question.”
“I want to focus on community engagement rather than events planning because we already have an entire staff dedicated to events ... I think the VP Admin should be focused on building communities through things like lunch time programming.”
“It’s the one position where that strategy hasn’t been incorporated at all. The VP External office has previously been quite isolated, quite traditional in their model of lobbying. I think there are real gains to be made there for students.”
“Working with other student associations is incredibly important just because no matter what the projects that we’re working on and no matter which levels of government we’re advocating to, they’ll always be our partners in those things.”
Every year, the AMS finds various bits of its bylaws to change — sometimes small changes, sometimes larger. This year, the AMS has proposed a significant bylaw change that will severely undermine student voices.
Think about it. For the price of a cup of coffee or a slice of pizza, you can support eight human beings to come to the amazing country and university we live and study in. We need to ... commit to long-term support for refugees.
The elections staff this year are lovely — they’re warm, welcoming, friendly and eager to help. They’re also, for the most part, categorically useless at their jobs. How did they get their positions? Who knows.
While we occasionally butted heads over policy, Jenna Omassi was a force of nature. I never failed to be impressed by her intelligence and mastery of both the substance of the issues and how to turn that knowledge into action.
The proposal for the building has been met with support from the First Nations communities, faculty and student groups consulted. It will be built between Koerner Library and Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.