In anticipation of the new school year, the Tribune sat down with SSMU’s executives to see what they accomplished over the summer and what big items are on their plate for the coming year. Our photographers, meanwhile, asked them to physically demonstrate their eagerness to spend long hours at their desks in the Shatner Building. The results were spectacular.
Zach Newburgh – President
What are your long-term goals for the year?
Essentially, to build a community together, to improve accessibility to the SSMU and to give green and sustainable initiatives a chance on campus. So, really thinking big, and that’s the acronym I gave during the campaign. The campaign may have won, but we’re going to need everyone as partners in this initiative.
In your campaign, you talked about GA reform. Is that something you will be working on this year?
That’s something that I’m definitely interested in. First of all, we need to set up a committee to review the General Assembly. See if it’s something that’s worthwhile, review its purpose and see if we’ve been fulfilling that aim. But certainly, the GA is a first-come, first-serve democracy. We like to flaunt it as direct democracy, but the reality is, it isn’t. We want to make it accessible to every single student on this campus, not just to the first 600 to show up to a room full of angry antagonistic individuals. I’d like to see the creation of town halls prior to a GA so we can address the issues at hand, hear debate and post that online.
Is there anything that your predecessor did last year that you are looking to change or to continue doing?
Ivan Neilson did a tremendous job in restructuring our organization. He led this initiative to revamp our committee terms of reference. He established various sets of committees and he also removed some that were obsolete. Generally, Ivan set a positive atmosphere in the office. I’d like to bring that atmosphere outside the office, making sure that the SSMU executive and the SSMU organization is known to students and is loved by students all across this campus.
McGill has never really had much school spirit or pride, but this seems to be something you want to change. Do you think that students are not open to creating pride, or that it has just never been done?
I would say that the student experience at McGill University is mediocre at best. There are few things that the administration and the students do together, but the administration doesn’t show support for us although they have the intention. Our intention is to create school spirit.
Anushay Khan – VP Clubs & Services
What did you accomplish over the summer?
I finished up a lot of projects that Sarah Olle had been working on. We finished the student lounge, which hopefully looks good. We’re still working on that. We finished the new meeting room next to the Lev Bukhman Room.
I worked on the SSMU Handbook and a lot of other publication materials. I revamped all the brochures and informational material. I also made it a point to start working on the website. It’s taken a lot longer than expected.
What are your top priorities this year?
For clubs, I think that in the past clubs have felt a little alienated from SSMU—that the bureaucracy was a little difficult to work through. I’m putting more forms online this year. That’s always beneficial. With services, it’s the McGill name and issues of liability [brought up by the McGill administration].
I’ve also been working with Zach Newburgh and Josh Abaki about getting meal card readers in the [SSMU} building, so that students in their first year can actually use their meal card plan in the building. That hasn’t been done in the past, and I think it could be really beneficial.
Did your experience working as interest group coordinator last year help you hit the ground running?
I think there’s a lot to learn in this job, because the portfolio is split between three very different areas. You run the building, you have publications and you have clubs and services. For me, clubs was very easy, because I had been doing that. I knew every club like the back of my hand.
Nick Drew – VP Finance & Operations
What are your long-term goals for this year?
One of my long-term goals was to kind of help create the new Gerts, which is undergoing some renovations. I want to phase the renovations out over three years because there’s a lot of money that needs to be invested in it to make it look the way the people that created the new designs intended. We basically need to amortize these costs so that we can do a really good job, because there’s nothing worse than trying to do something very half-assed and going too fast. We’re yet to get the new actual floor plan in the works because [the designers] sent us a few designs and they look too modern. It didn’t look like a bar that would appeal to the average student. So that was a bit of a discouragement.
Is there anything from previous years that you plan to continue doing?
Something I want to continue, which my predecessor did a very good job of, is tying the faculties together, getting them into SSMU and being more friendly [to one another] and giving a face to Gerts. Gerts did really well because the faculties were really into coming in and doing their events there. That’s something I definitely want to continue.
Do you foresee any obstacles in the upcoming year?
One of the obstacles we’ve [already] had to overcome was getting a lease on the SSMU Building from McGill and that was kind of worrisome when we first got into office. But [negotiations have gone well], and that’s good for us because now we know we can start investing in projects that will help the building and increase efficiency, especially concerning our energy audit, from which our score was not that high. But there is still a lot of room for improvement to make this building a lot more green.
Tom Fabian – VP Internal
What are your long-term goals for the year?
To make sure we have some big events at SSMU, I created two new events that have never been done before. To promote them throughout the year, I have a campaign called the “Get Ready” campaign. I’ve created a website that is sort of a forum for these six big events that I have for the year. I wanted to create hype on the website throughout the year for each event. I also want to foster a diversity of different, smaller events that are easier to put together through Gert’s or through whatever other means that I have.
In your election platform, you mentioned that you wanted to get students more involved. Is that something you are doing just through these events or do have other plans to get students more involved as well?
I want to get students involved in the event planning as well. In my committee, anyone who wants to can join in, and we’ll make a committee structure and make sure there’s lots of people involved in the planning process so that we have a lot of student input on how things should run. I’m also contacting a lot of different faculty and departmental student associations to see what kind of events they want to put on and get them involved in planning events, and I can help out since SSMU has the resources to do that.
Is there anything that your predecessor did last year that you might want to do differently?
On the events side, I delegate a lot, so I get a lot of people involved and I just make sure it runs smoothly. In the end, it’s a student-run event, so what’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like we’re professional party planners
who are contracted out. So, I don’t have a lot of stress in general because I get a lot of people to do a lot of different things and it all comes together. I’m really working on getting in contact with a lot of students, as many as I can, because that’s basically what the VP Internal’s for – talking to students, making sure students know who I am so they can come to me with anything.
Myriam Zaidi – VP External Affairs
What did you work on over the summer?
I have been working with the Post-Graduate Students’ Society a lot to see what kind of strategies we can adopt this year regarding tuition increases and the ideas that our principal is pushing for regarding tuition increases. I have also been working a lot with TaCEQ, we have created a plan of action for the year which is really great because this is the first time this is done. Finally, I did a lot of studying about what is going on and how to counter what is going on, so I learned a lot.
What will be your strategy to prevent tuition increases?
Informing students, especially since [the tuition freeze was lifted] in 2007. For about three years there was not much being done, there was no “threat” from the government or anyone else so we lost a lot of the people since then. Back in 2007, there were a lot of students who were informed and mobilized regarding the de-freeze, so now we have to start back from almost scratch and inform students about the consequences of tuition increases as well as other alternatives. So it’s going to be a very informative year.
How will you incorporate TaCEQ with the external portfolio and SSMU?
Since each VP external of the four member’s associations are the Board members of TaCEQ I can’t incorporate it to SSMU, we are already incorporated. But SSMU is working on the TaCEQ’s website, we are going to make an English version, since the previous website/blog was not up-to-date and with no English page. We are also going to promote the English acronym which is QSR (Quebec Student Roundtable). It’s going to be less complicated for students to hear and that’s what it means. Also I’m inviting a lot of members of SSMU, making them aware of the meetings that we have each month. I’m also perfectly bilingual, so I love interpreting or translating for students who do not understand.
Joshua Abaki – VP University Affairs
What did you work on over the summer?
Some of the things I established as my priorities for the year, for example keeping the libraries open longer […] Now McLennan will be open 24 hours a day from the third week of the term until the end of the year.
I have also been working on work-study. Normally we have quite a few students apply and not enough positions, so I launched a summer research project to see where we can increase student employment, and we have already started to increase the number of students employed.
Another thing is the off-campus support program for off-campus students. The idea is for students who live off-campus to have fellows depending on where they live to provide support and keep students connected. That program is now up and running.
How are you planning to get more people sitting on SSMU’s committees?
I made a call out to students to apply to sit on committees and I received over 60 applications and they are already filled. That is also one of my priorities: to get a good base of students who represent the McGill body. I’m excited, since a lot of them seem very enthusiastic and they bring great ideas into committees. It’s a great way to get involved.
What strategies are you planning on using to get the administration not to increase tuition?
We launched a summer research project on the self-funded tuition model to help us at least counter the administration’s arguments for self-funded models.
The other thing is getting students to raise their voices about the tuition increase, as well as show that it is contrary to McGill’s commitment to improve the university within the student body. So mobilizing senators and students as well as meeting with the administration.