Third-year commerce student Kuol Akuechbeny is running for a Senate seat with a platform centred around mental health, diversity and expanding open educational resources (OERs).
While Akuechbeny is new to the senate, he does have leadership experience from serving as AMS University Affairs commissioner and president of the World University Services of Canada (WUSC) UBC, which works to bring refugee students to the university. He, himself, is a refugee from South Sudan.
Within Senate, Akuechbeny hopes to adjust UBC’s academic policies in ways that can better accommodate students with mental health problems. He cited the experience of a friend who went through a difficult period with his mental health and was unable to organize himself around UBC’s current academic policies — for example, his program required him to take a full course load. He ultimately left UBC.
“Those things were not very flexible to this student, and that’s why he’s not on campus, in my opinion,” he said. “So I think we should have done more.”
Akuechbeny’s also interested in working towards a fall reading break, which he believes would be beneficial to students’ well-being.
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Akuechbeny is also concerned that Senate has not been flexible enough towards OERs, which are free teaching materials that students can use. He plans to join the Library Committee to advocate for more of these resources, in order to cut down the costs of textbooks for students.
He wants to sit in on the newly-created ad hoc committee on Equity and Inclusion as well, in order to push for more inclusive and diverse programs on campus. He cites the normalization of diversity on campus as an ambition of his.
“My most ambitious goal would be… seeing that down the line — in the next two to five years for example — people don’t have to say ‘Oh I think there’s a shortage of diversity and inclusion at this point,’” he said. “Everyone can see it like common sense.”
Beside Senate, Akuechbeny is also running to be AMS VP Finance, a role that he seems to have devoted more attention to on his website. It is also currently unclear how he would use the two roles to complement each other, if elected to both.
But regardless of which position he is running for, Akuechbeny is running to give back to the community.
“All the students that come through [WUSC] believe that it is a good idea to give back to UBC, British Columbia and Canada — the country that gives us a new home, and an amazing country to be in,” he said.
“So I want to give back to UBC students by using my experience as a way of saying thank you for all of the good things you have done for me.”
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