Governing your union

Q&A with UMSU prez Garry Sran

TESSA VANDERHART STAFF

UMSU president Garry Sran has only been in offi ce for fi ve months of his year-long term, but already he’s famous: not only is he the closest thing the U of M has to a celebrity, meeting regularly with university president Emöke Szathmáry and the province’s advanced education minister Diane McGiff ord — but he’s quoted in the Manitoban on one subject or another on a weekly basis. Th is time, though, the Manitoban’s Tessa Vanderhart sat down with Sran to get his view, in his own words, on the big issues (no, not tuition policy).

Manitoban: What do you see UMSU’s role in the university community as?

Sran: Well, what I see UMSU’s role as, is a role in which we represent students — so, students, being members of our union can have a say in how the organization is run. And, it’s up to membership, and to the council, to direct the executive, and take some of the work. So a lot of the work that I feel the union should be doing — and is doing — is representing students’ voices not only to the administration but also to the local, provincial and federal government levels. And we’re also providing services that need to be provided. [ . . . ] Th ere’s other things, I could go on forever.

M: Most students don’t know that UMSU does a lot more than just, um, talk about the tuition campaign; they don’t know that UMSU has a $10 million budget. So, what do you try to do to make students more aware about that?

S: Yeah, our budget is roughly $9-10 million, but $4 million of that is the health and dental plan, and some of that money is through the businesses, such as the Copy Centre and whatnot. What we try to do, telling students about our services, is we go to classrooms and we do talks, and we tell students that these are the businesses that we operate, this is the revenue that’s coming in from these businesses, this is how these businesses, in turn, help out students, while all the money that’s being made is recycled back into student services and also bettering the businesses. We also, like on our website, post the fi nancial position of the students’ union, whenever we have our audited — our audited statements come out in somewhere like, October, November, and we always keep copies at UMSU, the UMSU offi ce, and posterboard. If anyone wants to see the fi nancial position, come here. And we also have our vice-president (internal) position, where, she talks to a lot of students, and the council members and committee members, getting people to realize that UMSU is not just campaigns: UMSU is also services, making sure that we build a campus community for students, such as the student groups, we’re also providing valuable services to students through our businesses, such as low-cost copying, billiards if they want to, you know, have fun, chill out, stuff like that.

M: What are UMSU’s long-term plans? I know you’ve talked about branching out to university food services, and taking over University Centre — so where does that sit right now?

S: I’m not sure if I can speak on the University Centre thing — that, that right now is confi dential, just because we’re just in the preliminary stages.

M: Well, I heard about it in food services committee meetings, last year that was open information.

S: Yeah. Well, I’ll talk about the food services. So, fi rst of all, on long-term plans with the food services, what we were doing over the summer was working on the food services proposal, thinking that UMSU would be bidding on the food service. And that’s one of the platforms that we ran on, the slate that I ran with, and one of my projects that I wanted to complete this year. As we were working on this food services proposal, we were working not only with the University of Winnipeg — ’cause they had a similar one when their contract was up at their school — but we were also working with other student unions and seeing how their contracts developed. So, we were getting a lot of research and input on that, and when the RFP [Request for Proposal] came out we were kind of shocked, because, one of the two main qualifi ers is that you have to have a $50,000 deposit — which is understandable — and the other one was that you have to be a food service provider, you have to have a reference for food services that you provide, on three separate institutions.

Us being UMSU, and some other folks that probably wanted to — some other businesses, some local businesses, that wanted to get in on the RFP — were shut out because of that one clause [ . . . ] Th at, was a disappointment, when we found that out, but we’re still on the food service committee, so we’re going to make sure [ . . . ] that we pressure the food service companies to provide what students want. [. . . ]

Th e other thing that we were working on is the University Centre, a lot of people are talking about it. We are working with the university, and trying to set up a working group to look at some of the options how UMSU can have greater control over the operations of this building.

Some of our other long-term projects that we’re still into is our four- and eight-month bus pass promotion, one of our campaign ideas. Th e diffi culty with that right now is like — we’ve been meeting with transit, we’ve been meeting with city offi cials — there’s a civic election this year. [ . . . ] So, we’re still going to be meeting with some of the candidates that are running in the civic election and putting these thoughts into their head, that this is something we should think about.

M: Last year — I’m not sure if it was one of your campaign promises, or just something that was being talked about — but, the day planners: UMSU was supposed to save money on the day planners [by having them printed by the CFS], but actually ended up spending $15,000 more this year. What happened?

S: Yeah, so, with the daytimers, that wasn’t strictly under my portfolio, that was under the vice-president (external). We’re still looking into that, we’re wondering where the cost did increase. It is a concern to us, because the cost of daytimers have gone up, and we’re just looking at areas now where to save. Even though the costs have gone up, we are saving some money through sponsorship, and through our advertising, so it’s looking better than what it actually shows, because we haven’t calculated in some of that sponsorship. But defi nitely, our plan is going to be to, this year, to fully review all of the options that are available, because the daytimer project works in a way where, right now, it’s the previous council, administration, or executives that decide when the daytimers go, because the timelines are set so that you gotta have most of your content in by April. So, by that time, when I got in May 1, the daytimers were already under print. So that’s something we’re going to be looking at this year, and working with, not only local companies, but with the CFS where we can get better deals and try to bulk-buy.

M: What do you think would happen if UMSU took a diff erent position than the CFS on something?

S: With the CFS, we’ve all got to remember that we are the CFS — like, I’m CFS, you’re CFS, you pay fees, everybody pays fees into this organization. So if we wanted to propose a diff ering opinion than CFS, we would just go through the regular process as any councillor would through UMSU council — we’d do the same thing with the CFS, pass a motion. And if we’re on board, and other student locals are on board, then it would go.

There’s a lot of times we do have differing opinions; there’s some campaigns that we don’t get involved with, and there’s some campaigns that we do. CFS is having a campaign against [the] General Agreement on Trades and Services . . . which is a great campaign, but it’s not relevant to the focus to our students; it’s more relevant to someone like the grad students, or — it’s relevant to all students, but, just, one campaign that we’re getting involved with is the federal funding campaign, and that’s something that we’re staying away from. And, it’s up to us really what position we want to take, it’s up to our membership the position they want to take in the council.

What would happen? Probably, nothing.

M: I was just wondering about the health and dental plan, and what your plan is to get it out of debt?

S: What ended up happening last year, was that there was a defi cit at the end of the year, that was the previous fi ve years of executives not wanting to move or budge on the health and dental plan. When the referendum was passed, I believe it called that, the question stated that, "would you be in favour of a health and dental plan, costing X amount of dollars, plus, if need be, to increase up to 15 per cent a year?"[ . . . ]

So what we're doing this year is making sure that, whatever's coming in, it's what's going out. So, not to get in a defi cit position again by off ering services, or, what should I say? Off ering services that are costing money but are never being used. Th ere are certain services that are listed under our health and dental plan that cost X amount of dollars per student, but yet nobody uses that service. So, just looking into, seeing which services are being used most, which services students want the most, and going from there, and bringing it back to the members and the council to see if they wanna have certain coverage, or not. And saving costs in that way.

M: I’m trying to decide if, for my last question, I want to ask you something about the administration or not.

S: You can ask me something, I don’t care — I like talking about them. Th ey’re fun to talk about.

M: OK, that’s going in the story. Do you think that UMSU’s approach, of sort of being antagonistic to the administration, is going to harm the long-term interests of students?

S: No, like, I’m not sure. Like, I don’t think we’re antagonistic with the administration. Th ere’s a lot of projects we work on with the administration, we talk to them, and they work with us on numerous things — things like these draws that we have, but also other initiatives, such as the Maclean’s magazine. We were happy that they pulled out of that, and we acknowledged them for it. And we don’t think that it’s hurting our approach, because if we’re not standing up to the administration, knowing that we don’t feel that the things that they are doing, are right for this institution, who’s going to do it, right? [ . . . ]

So, we’re there asking them the hard questions, and making sure we get the right answers, and the administration is working with us — and I think our relationship, this year, is good. I mean, we’re going to have diff ering opinions, but a lot of the times we don’t — and I think they respect our diff ering opinions, and they respect that, we’re standing up for students and that we’re making a case. I don’t think that our relationship is going to get any worse or any better; it’s going to be the same that it was this year, last year, to previous years. [ . . . ]

The approach we’re taking is what students want us to take. Th ere are going to be some students that think we should just sit down and have a cup of tea with them, and get nowhere, because I don’t think that works. And there are some students that think we should be more critical. And we’re just trying to take the balanced approach, and do what we think is right.