Third-year economics student Ferdinand Rother is running to be student senator-at-large on a platform focused on supporting international students, transparency and student community.
Rother believes the upcoming year will be critically important as UBC reacts to new government announcements regarding international students.
An international student himself, Rother said “having a voice on the Senate who can bring [the international student experience] into focus is very important.”
He hopes to create an International Student Affairs Committee that will provide resources, information and a plan forward. A new committee is established if a two-thirds majority approves it.
Rother also sees transparency as a significant issue for the Senate. He wants to make it easier for students to engage by updating the “archaic” website and being active with updates on social media.
“Instead of just releasing PDFs of the minutes of meetings, just having a breakdown, maybe like a three-minute summary of [meetings] in a larger font on the homepage,” proposed Rother.
Rother is also part of the Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies (CENES) advisory council and said he spoke to faculty who feel “like they're not informed enough about [decisions made in the Senate].”
The student community is another major concern for Rother, who views the “self-segregation” of students by community, country and hobby as an important issue.
If elected, he wants to push for Jump Start to be extended by another week to help students make friendships across barriers from the very beginning. However, Jump Start is a program run by the VP Students Office, which the Senate rarely interacts with.
Rother believes his experience as president of the Interfraternity Council, the body that governs fraternities on campus, will be helpful when it comes to liaising with the AMS and UBC.
He also highlighted his work on an engineering design team and the sailing team as examples of his ability to work across faculties.
When asked about the recent Senate 2026 document published by the Student Caucus, Rother was unfamiliar with the work but said he would do further research.
Rother praised the work of current senators who are active on social media and expressed the intention to do the same. Additionally, he said that his involvement with a wide variety of student groups equips him with a good understanding of student concerns.
“I have a lot of friends in engineering, in sciences and Sauder who feel disillusioned … because they feel like their voices aren't being heard. They think [student politics] is all a scam,” Rother said. “We need to work on engaging not just arts students into the process.”
He intends to combat this by focusing his outreach on faculties that are generally less seen in student politics.
Rother is running against incumbent student senators Kareem Hassib and Kamil Kanji, as well as first-time candidates Alex Chui, Jasper Lorien, Sahib Malik, Kyle Rogers, Taushifa Shaikh and Solomon Yi-Kieran.
This article is part of our 2024 AMS Elections coverage. Follow us at @UbysseyNews on X (formerly Twitter) and follow our election coverage starting February 27.
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