Mohkam Singh Malik (ਮੋਹਕਮ), a second-year Arts student, is hoping to join the Board of Governors (BoG). Malik is campaigning with a platform centred on affordability, student support and reconciliation.
One of Malik’s first goals as a member of BoG would be to allow UBC parking tickets to be payable via donations to the AMS Food Bank. Malik stated this would be an easy goal given that the university occasionally runs this promotion. UBC sometimes runs a promotion allowing students to pay half of their parking fines with the rest waived and UBC donates the money to the AMS Food Bank, but students cannot pay their parking fines directly through food bank donations.
To address student support, Malik said his focus would be to get UBC to increase the amount of funding available for undergraduate research positions, co-op programs, research labs and engineering design teams.
“One of the reasons we are such a world-class university is because we provide students with these opportunities, but other universities are catching up now, and if we want to maintain that status as a research university, we need to put forward more resources to make that happen,” said Malik.
Proposals regarding research and co-op usually come to BoG from the Senate. Malik is also running to be a student senator-at-large.
Malik was motivated to run for BoG after he felt like student feedback was not considered in the Land Use Plan. He is also concerned about the lack of campus green space left in the plan.
"If the [Land Use] Plan is implemented, we will have less green space than the WHO [World Health Organization] minimum for green space in a community,” said Malik. “That, for me, was ... something I need to get involved in because the university is not listening.”
WHO recommends 0.9 to 5 hectares of green space per 1,000 people and the Land Use Plan allocates 1.1 hectares per 1,000 people.
Malik believes that as a student BoG representative, he will need to work closely with the AMS to ensure both are communicating the same messages to the university to effect change.
However, Malik thinks working with the AMS would be one of his biggest challenges, given that “the AMS as a whole this year has been a mess.” Malik said he is expecting to see fresh faces in the AMS next year and believes that will go a long way in solving conflict.
In the past few years, students have been advocating for UBC to divest from companies protestors say are complicit in Palestinian human rights abuses.
Malik did not specify what divestment initiative he was referring to, but said he does not believe that divestment can be accomplished.
Instead said he would encourage BoG to focus on making future investments in the local community.
To engage with students, Malik proposed a semi-annual town hall. He also said he would set up a Calendly link so students could schedule times to come and talk to him about issues they want him to bring to BoG.
This article was updated on March 4 at 7:38 p.m. to clarify that Malik meant to reference UBC’s Land Use Plan, not Campus Vision 2050 in his interview with The Ubyssey.
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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