Mankanwar Singh is running for UBC’s Senate on a platform of enhancing open educational resources, strengthening mental health supports and boosting Senate transparency through effective communication with students.
The third-year integrated engineering student said his time as an advisor in first and upper-year residences has taught him what it means to be accountable to students.
“I have actively worked with the students to make sure that they can feel safe, they can feel included … and they can make UBC residence their home,” Singh said. “I wanted to take my learnings from my role as a residence advisor … and transfer it to the larger student body at UBC.”
Singh also said he has been actively involved in creating the main Instagram pages that incoming UBC students use to interact with each other. These accounts (like @ubc2023 allow students to post introductions and meet new friends.
On student academic resources, Singh said he would advocate for students to be able to view course materials when selecting courses and to update Workday on the class-registration front.
“A lot of the links to UBC websites that we can search for courses don't link to Workday, which was the case [with the SSC]” said Singh. “So [I’d] work on that.”
While Singh said he was “still researching” the best ways to advocate for student mental health, he said one of his initial ideas would be to create a survey to address the needs of students and then advocate to increase funds according to the results.
Singh seemed unaware that such a tool — the Academic Experience Survey — already exists. While not dedicated exclusively to mental health, the survey includes a section on health and wellbeing, and is an advocacy tool compiled annually by the AMS’s VP academic and university affairs, not student senators.
On promoting equity, Singh said he would create an inclusive academic environment by ensuring faculty members received EDI training and that he would present pertinent issues in meetings.
When asked what the biggest challenge for student senators would be this year, Singh said transparency, and stated that if elected, he would focus on representing students’ concerns and opinions by holding community meetings and regularly interacting with them through platforms such as Instagram and Reddit.
Singh commended his predecessors' efforts to open up spaces for communication through frequent updates on social media, but added that further communication with students is needed to better address concerns.
“I believe we could work on getting more opinions from students … making sure that we know what they want us to represent them as,” he said.
When asked how he would advocate as a student representative amongst senior senators, Singh replied that knowing exactly what to advocate for on behalf of students is crucial.
“If I’m regularly engaged with the students, then I will have the confidence that I am the student representative, and that confidence certainly reflects in the communication to senators-at-large.”
Singh is running for the position against around fifteen other candidates. This candidate pool includes a mix of both incumbents and newcomers.
This article is part of our 2025 AMS Elections coverage. Follow us at @UbysseyNews on X (formerly Twitter) and follow our election coverage starting March 3.
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