First-year bachelor of international economics student Matthias Leuprecht is running to be one of five student senators-at-large in the UBC Vancouver Senate. His platform places environmental sustainability and Canadian Indigenous reconciliation at the forefront.
Max Holmes, current student senator and AMS VP Academic and University Affairs (VPAUA), is running for re-election in the Vancouver Senate. If elected as a senator, Holmes plans to continue his focus on survivor-centric sexual assault policy and reforming academic concession, complementing two major tenets of his VPAUA platform.
After a year of serving as a senator-at-large in the UBC Vancouver Senate’s student caucus, fourth-year mining engineering student Jakob Gattinger is running for re-election to continue the work he’s already started and tackle the topics he didn’t get around to addressing last year.
Third-year cognitive systems major Aaron Verones wants to improve the communication from the VP Administration office, increase space availability to the UBC community and route more money back into students by hiring them whenever possible.
Second-year arts student Chris Hakim is running for VP Administration to bring more consistency to the AMS’s operations. Having been involved in student governance since he first came to UBC, Hakim now has a wealth of experience within the AMS.
Third-year economics student Adam Forsgren aims to expand the AMS’s investment portfolio and to make the organization’s monetary operations more accountable to students in the role of VP Finance.
Third-year business student and AMS University Affairs Commissioner Kuol Akuechbeny is running for the position of VP Finance on a platform of supporting clubs, student entrepreneurs and businesses through ambitious financial reform.
Max Holmes is the current VP Academic and University Affairs and is running for re-election in this year’s uncontested race. Holmes was elected to the position in a September by-election following Daniel Lam’s departure.
Jeanie Malone, biomedical engineering graduate student and Board of Governors student member, is re-running for election to the Board after a year of lessons learned. Malone’s goals for the coming year are pretty consistent with last year’s platform’s emphasis on the student experience and transparency, but with an acknowledgement of the challenges that lie in the year ahead.
Jakob Gattinger is ready to take his frustrations with UBC governance bureaucracy and throw himself into a new role with the Board of Governors. As someone who ran for the race — and lost — last year, he has since then accrued new experience in the form of a Senate seat and a brief stint as interim VP Academic and University Affairs.
The VP administration debate today proved much more controversial than the former one on Tuesday. Much of the controversy came from candidate Aaron Verones’s refusal to reject the Inter-Fraternity Council’s (IFC) endorsement.
Thursday’s Great Debate saw six candidates running for the five Senate student-at-large positions go over commonly-discussed issues such as the lack of a fall reading week as well as the poor accessibility of campus facilities.
Presidential candidates Andy Lin, Marium Hamid and Rodney Little Mustache met again Thursday evening for the Great Debate. This time, the candidates field questions more tailored to their platforms than just those about the broad structure of the AMS.
All three candidates for AMS VP External — Mishal Tahir, S.G. Krishna and Cristina Ilnitchi — faced-off on questions related to tuition advocacy, transit and sexual assault policy implementation at the Great Debate on Thursday night. While each candidate brought unique platform points, it became clear that each had varying levels of concrete policy proposals.
Thursday’s Great Debate gave uncontested VP Academic candidate Max Holmes a second opportunity to discuss his platform with the audience. Holmes, the incumbent running for re-election, reiterated his desires to improve consultations and hold UBC accountable, while tackling a significant amount of questions regarding financial operations.