The race for VP admin is in full swing, as incumbent Ava Nasiri, Alex Remtulla and James Jing battle it out for the position. The job requires the officeholder to facilitate the transition to the new SUB and the administration of AMS clubs.
Current VP Admin Ava Nasiri has first and foremost based her platform on establishing a “stronger support network between the AMS and its clubs and constituencies,” as well as increasing collaboration between the AMS and its clubs, in order to “bring back the fun.”
Nasiri plans to reach out to inactive UBC students by “empowering the constituencies of the undergraduate societies and the clubs … so that through them we can do a better job of engaging students,” she said.
She would also like to transition the position VP admin to VP student life, in order to work more closely with UBC students. “There are all these incredible things happening within the AMS that we don’t really translate out towards the student body,” Nasiri said.
In addition, Nasiri would like to change the way club leaders are prepared for their positions, switching from the current one hour introductory session, to several sessions throughout the year.
“I think that my past year here [in this office] and around campus have really given me the experience and perspective that you would need to be able to take this position and make it something really incredible,” she said.
Second candidate Remtulla is a fourth-year political science and United States studies student. Remtulla's platform emphasizes the transformation of the new SUB into a hub for student life and creating more easily accessible information. He said that he’d love to work with different groups to get students excited about the AMS and the new SUB.
Remtulla emphasized that this new integration of the SUB into student life requires the AMS to open up the conversation between the governing body and its constituents. “If you already engage students and already create buy-in … the AMS can be a really fun organization, that’s how you get them interested in the society, and wanting to learn more about what it does,” he said.
Coming from a high school graduating class of five, Remtulla originally worried he would not fit in around the 50,000-student campus. But after volunteering for Day of the Longboat in his first year, he knew he had found something he loved. He said he is running in order to “create something that encompasses all students, whether you’re involved or not."
Jing, third-year biochemistry and transfer student from UBCO, cites his struggle to return to UBC Vancouver as one of his reasons for running.
“I wanted to come back and make an impact, to [allow the students] a more personal experience than what I had," he said.
Jing’s platform places most emphasis on increasing exposure of clubs to the campus community, maximizing the utilization of the new SUB and providing assistance to clubs and their leaders.
He said that the key to getting students to care about their AMS is through clubs. He also placed importance on using the new SUB as a means of engaging students who were otherwise uninvolved by using it to facilitate inter-club activities and letting clubs interact with each other, in order to “expose the students to the diversity that this campus offers.”
Jing says he is running to bring the soul back to the AMS. “I think the focus needs to be brought back to the students … without [the students] the university is just infrastructure. It's just buildings.”
All three candidates equally stressed this need for the AMS to greater incorporate the student body into their process.
Voting is open until March 13th.
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