Tojiboeva has served as the chief justice of the Judicial Board (J-Board) of SSMU for three years and as the president of the Sociology Students Association (SSA), as well as McGill Students for UN Women in the 2015-16 school year.

Tojiboeva’s platform is based on transparency–she is aware that many students currently distrust SSMU, and strives to repair this relationship from within the system. She aims to improve mental health services for students, improve accountability in SSMU’s democratic, financial, and equity systems, and plans to create a sexual violence policy within SSMU.

Tojiboeva also plans to reform the J-Board by drafting a constitutional amendment to formally separate it from the SSMU Board of Directors (BoD). She hopes that this will ensure a separation of powers, making SSMU more accountable.

She has direct experience with the intricacies of SSMU governance bodies, and she hopes this will help her characterize her presidency by action, rather than inaction--which she believes has plagued this year’s SSMU executives.

Helen Ogundeji, U3 Arts, has three years of floor fellow experience, two years on the Black Students’ Network (BSN) executive team, and one year as president of the Sociology Students’ Association (SSA) under her belt. Ogundeji also served as Secretary General of the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) in the 2015-16 school year and she currently chairs SSMU’s Equitable Governance Reform Committee.

Ogundeji’s platform is built around rebuilding trust between SSMU and its membership, and ensuring that all students feel included and represented by student governance. Her platform is based on three core goals: Efficiency and collaboration, accountability, and student advocacy. As part of the first pillar, she plans to use the SSMU Projects Fund to create more paid positions that will support the work of SSMU executives in completing previous and implementing new projects. In keeping with her goal of achieving accountability, Ogundeji plans to create a code of conduct for SSMU executives, whcih she will work on via an ad-hoc committee.

Finally, as part of her plan for student advocacy, Ogundeji aims to make mental health services more accessible to racialized students on campus through the creation of a team of counsellors who are people of colour.

Lukas Shannon, U2 Science, has experience in comedy–having founded an improv group on campus–and his experience in high school football. Shannon believes that his skills as a natural leader, his dedication to the people he would serve, and his belief in the innate goodness of people would be his greatest assets in this position.

Shannon’s platform is based on accessibility and engagement with SSMU. He hopes to establish daily open-door hours for SSMU executives, in which students can speak freely and openly to them about their concerns on campus. He also plans to prioritize the establishment of a Sexual Assault Policy. Shannon cites his bilingualism as an asset to his campaign, and hopes to establish a clear outline for students who are interested in learning French to do so.

Connor Spencer’s experience comes from her work organizing student protests on campus and across Montreal for the past four years, especially protests for McGill Against Austerity, where she worked closely with the two most recent VP Externals. Spencer has also been directly involved in off-campus organizations, including À La Rue Montreal, a student advocacy group that protests in pursuit of free education and against unpaid internships.

One of Spencer’s major platform points is to create a link between McGill and other Montreal campuses for students to be better educated and more unified when lobbying the government for change in education policy. Spencer also hopes to encourage McGill students to vote in favour of joining the Association for the Voice of Education in Quebec (AVEQ).

In her platform, she outlines her intentions to support the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) and other campus labour unions and to create a stand-alone Gendered and Sexualized Violence Policy, distinct from the McGill administration’s Sexual Violence Policy. Spencer is bilingual and has expressed her intentions to address the francophone affairs and indigenous affairs portions of the portfolio, but has no official platform point addressing these groups.

Maya Koparkar is the only candidate running for VP Internal. In addition to working under this year’s VP Internal as Internal Logistics Coordinator, Koparkar has been a member of the Students’ Society Programming Network (SSPN) for two years, and was the VP Internal of the Molson Hall Council in her first year.

For Koparkar, the VP Internal is not only an event planner, but also the portfolio that humanizes SSMU as an organization. Accordingly, her platform focuses on integration and cohesion of the portfolio with other SSMU bodies and resources, diversifying and increasing awareness of events while maintaining their inclusivity and equity, and first-year engagement.

To improve the cohesion of the portfolio with other SSMU bodies, she plans to consult directly with various SSMU commissioners on how the outputs of the her portfolio can be improved.

Furthermore, she wants to introduce more diverse and smaller events to the SSMU calendar while implementing feedback methods for each event. She also hopes to sign a Memorandum of Agreement with Dean of Students Christopher Buddle to apply the McGill Code of Conduct to Frosh.

She emphasizes first-year engagement as a means of fostering a positive relationship with SSMU across each student’s McGill experience. To this end, she plans to work closely with the First Year Council (FYC) through regular check-ins and assistance with budgeting and calendar structuring.

Jemark Earle, U3 Music, has been as a floor fellow for two years and served as the VP Health and Athletics representative for the Music Undergraduate Students Association (MUSA) and the Frugal Scholar for the Schulich School of Music for one year. His platform focuses on three things: Mental Health First Aid, student-led campaigns, and his own personal projects.

Earle is cognizant of how long the transition to the current Counselling and Mental Health service has taken, and hopes to further ease this transition through the training of SSMU executives in Mental Health First Aid and more resources in mental health. He also hopes to bring more student-led advocacy and awareness campaigns to campus, including the “I don’t say” campaign, which raises awareness about language that is offensive to marginalized identities, and the “Pro-Pronouns” campaign, which normalizes the use of correct gender pronouns in daily life. Further, some of Earle’s own personal projects include the establishment of a Mental Health minor and the reallocation of club space in the SSMU building.

Anuradha Mallik, U2 Science and Music, is running unopposed for the position of VP Operations. Mallik has worked as the head of communications for the Water for Life project in 2013-2014 and has served as the chargée d'affaires of the Secondary Schools' United Nations Symposium (SSUNS) in 2017. She also served as a floor fellow from 2016-2017.

Mallik’s platform is heavily focused on sustainability, intending to develop strong cooperation between McGill’s Office of Sustainability and SSMU to ensure further distribution and development of various sustainability projects. She also plans to continue to work on McGill’s Sustainability Policy alongside the VP University Affairs. Mallik emphasizes building on SSMU’s recent ratification of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She states she will continue the Environmental Committee of SSMU–a roundtable discussion on sustainability with representatives from different faculties and SSMU.

Mallik believes that the success of Gerts relies heavily on continuing BARmacy and encouraging active bystander culture. She would also like to continue the current VP Operations’ efforts to advertise Sadie’s and plans to develop an equitable hiring strategy.

Additionally, Mallik intends to advance the “crash pad” project–an area in the SSMU building where students can spend the night on campus–expanding it for Frosh and implementing it on other late-night events, such as exam seasons or Nuit Blanche. She also wishes to increase the SSMU lounge space to the second-floor cafeteria.

Arisha Khan, U2 Arts, is running unopposed for the VP Finance position and is the current SSMU Funding Commissioner. Khan is also a SSMU Representative on the McGill Innovation Steering Committee and is conducting research for SSMU on students from foster care who attend McGill. Additionally, Khan was a finance and operations assistant at SSMU during the 2015-2016 academic year and has experience working for the Government of Ontario. Notably, Khan helped develop a $450 million funding model in her position with Ontario Public Service in 2016.

The main points of Khan’s platform include updating SSMU’s operational systems in order to reduce the current burden on human resources, making SSMU’s financial information more readily accessible via a VP Finance website, creating opportunities for professional finance development that will be accessible to student group executives, and creating a working group to guide SSMU’s socially sustainable short and long-term finance strategies.

Khan said she plans to reach out to other Canadian student societies in order to get a better idea of financial strategies that are working at other universities and see if they can be applied to SSMU. She also believes that SSMU’s Ethical Investment Plan should be more sustainable and would like to formulate it so that the plan is re-examined more frequently to help students understand where their money is going. Khan plans to create graphic summaries of SSMU finances and share these on the new VP Finance website.

Isabelle Oke, U3 Arts, focuses her platform for VP University Affairs on three main pillars: Campus outreach, student rights, and accessible services. Oke draws from her experience as the president of McGill’s Black Students’ Network (BSN) and a floor fellow in Carrefour Sherbrooke. Furthermore, she serves as the floor fellow representative on the executive for AMUSE. With equity as a central tenet of the VP University Affairs portfolio, Oke emphasizes the importance of the VP University Affairs’ role to push forward the accountability process within the SSMU executive.

Oke plans to use campus outreach as a method for rebuilding student trust in SSMU. In order to best advocate for student concerns, Oke recognizes the need for conversation; however, when executives get overwhelmed, Oke cites outreach as the first thing to be neglected in their portfolios. Oke plans to mitigate these effects by hiring students to talk about SSMU in positions dedicated specifically to campus outreach.

In her platform, Oke seeks to address the obstacles and barriers to success for students of specific backgrounds, namely first-generation and foster-care students. She plans to use McGill-specific data and the reports conducted by previous VP University Affairs to enhance the accessibility of campus resources such that McGill achieves a higher retention rate and recruits from a wider range of demographics while ensuring adequate support is in place.

Alexander Dow, U3 Engineering and current Student Senator for the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS), brings substantial experience to his candidacy for the VP University Affairs position.

Per its slogan–“students first”–Dow’s platform’s goals include representation of the voice of undergraduate students at the McGill Senate while assisting student senators in understanding the priorities of the students they serve. He seeks to hold the university accountable to the documents that they present by ensuring that they provide information as well as the methodology for how they came to conclusions.

His experience on various Administrative Committees, including the Academic Policy Committee, the University Teaching Lab Working Group, the University Health and Safety Committee, informs his platform. He seeks to adjust the Faculty Academic Roundtable–chaired by the VP University Affairs–to become a space to develop solutions for problems that span across faculties at McGill. Furthermore, he would seek to improve the transparency of student funds across campus by developing templates for its governance.

Dow identifies the VP University Affairs’ role as Equity Officer as the portfolio’s most important. As the SSMU Equity Policy is expiring in 2018, he would hold open consultation to ensure that its language is appropriate and up-to-date. He identifies McGill Counselling and Mental Health Services as a space that requires a greater student voice in particular, which he would work toward by communicating with the Executive Director of Student Services, the VP Student Life, and senators. Further, he would seek to improve the Code of Student Conduct, which will be open for revisions in September 2017. His platform states that he will consult students and stakeholders in this process.

Finally, Dow hopes to improve the communication and outreach of the Library Improvement Fund while holding the university accountable for its plans for the Fiat Lux project.