Your 2008 presidential candidates
PIERCE CAIRNS | JONNY SOPOTIUK | TROY UNRAU
REGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVES
THIRD-YEAR PHARMACY
WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT?
Well, there comes a time in every student's life when they're faced with a choice: either to be idle, or to rise up and purify what they perceive to be a corrupt organization that claims to be its union.
HOW WOULD UMSU BE DIFFERENT IF YOU WERE IN OFFICE?
Where to begin? I really don't know where to begin with that one. We're running on basically three pillars in our platform: the economy, the executive, and the experience. We’re looking to fundamentally alter the way UMSU perceives its economic policy, the way the executive is set up and operates and the way students actually experience university. Which is primarily why we’re here, primarily why I’m stepping up to do this hopefully.
So I guess some of the basic elements; with the executive, we’re hoping to reduce the size of the executive and the amount of money that it takes to operate the executive. In terms of the economy we’re hoping to withdraw from CFS, remove a lot of the funding to various functions and groups (more restructuring than anything); and the experience—we’re hoping to make students a lot more autonomous in their affairs, less interference in student groups, less CFS interference with UMSU, and perhaps some more—I don’t know if Shawn would have mentioned it—we’re hoping to provide some free coffee on Fridays, something little like that.
WHAT IS YOUR POSITION ON THE TUITION FEE FREEZE?
It’s perhaps had its use in the past, but we’re hoping to not only thaw the tuition freeze, but it’s going to be a tuition forest fire here. Manitoba consistently ranks terribly in, we’ll say the Maclean’s surveys, and I know you have to take those with a grain of salt but it looks a little suspicious when we stop releasing information on it after doing consistently bad the last ten years. I’m hoping by removing the tuition freeze that the university can start to garner some of the funding needed to provide better equipment and better education, and I know several faculties including my own, over the last several years, have voted to raise their own tuition, and that’s got to be saying something.
UMSU HAS A HISTORY OF LOW VOTER TURNOUT. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO STUDENTS TO ENCOURAGE THEM TO VOTE, AND VOTE FOR YOU?
I’m hoping my mere presence increases voter turnout. Some would say we’re a bit controversial in our platforms and methods. I think ultimately if they don’t turn out they’re stuck with whatever they end up with. Students like to complain about a wide variety of things, and politics should not be one of them unless they vote. Seven per cent I believe was last year’s turnout — that’s abysmal. If you look at the amount of students that support the tuition freeze, hypothetically it’s what, 82 per cent? If even half of the people who didn’t support the freeze come out and vote, I’d probably get double the votes of the winning parties last year. So the numbers are there—students have to wake up and do this. And if they don’t, well, they’ll get their comeuppance I suppose, to be perfectly clear about it.
STUDENTS UNITED
SECOND-YEAR UNIVERSITY 1
WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT?
Over the past several years of being very involved, I've gotten to know what the organization does, how it serves students, and through that involvement it's gotten me very passionate about student issues and how UMSU serves students. As president of the students' union, there's definitely a lot of change you can do. So, me and my team of Students United, we have a lot of amazing ideas that we'd like to bring in, to serve students.
HOW WOULD UMSU BE DIFFERENT IF YOU WERE IN OFFICE?
Well one of the big things that I've found over the past several years, is that new students coming into school, as well as students who have been here for over five years, don't really know what UMSU is doing for them. So we believe that we really need to improve communication. So we have some really interesting ideas that we'd like to implement, and one of them is a program called UMSU vision, which is a network of closed-circuit TVs across campus. That's one of the big things we feel that we need to do, work on communications, so that students know what the students' union is doing for them. [ . . . ]
We definitely have a lot of projects we’d like to do, improve the businesses, the way the services are run. [ . . . ] Looking at ways with Aramark and the university to have more enviromentally friendly products, a plastic bag ban on campus. [ . . . ] Working hard with other students’ unions inour province and across the country, lobbying government for more funding.
WHAT IS YOUR POSITION ON THE TUITION FEE FREEZE?
I think it’s very important that post-secondary education is accessible for all students, regardless of their background, family income. With any tuition fee freeze, I think we need to make it work. There’s obviously infrastruture deficits, classrooms, labs, not having enough teaching assistants is something that’s failing the students. So working with the tuition freeze, I think we we absolutely need to work on lobbying the government, getting more funding through federal government and provincial government, so that our education is extremely high-quality, but working with the freeze.
UMSU HAS A HISTORY OF LOW VOTER TURNOUT. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO STUDENTS TO ENCOURAGE THEM TO VOTE, AND VOTE FOR YOU?
I think it’s important that students come out, vote, raise their concerns. The UMSU executive is accountable to students. They’re the ones that put us — put them — in office. STheir student fees pay the umsu execitove wages, so absolutely they should have a say who they want in office. I think voting is a great way where students can show what issues they want and what priorities they want their UMSU executive to do. We feel, my team and the Students United, feel that a lot of our experience on campus will benefit UMSU, being on executive positions. With that experience and our work over the past several years, we can definitely benefit the students.
CLEAN SLATE
THIRD-YEAR ENVIRONMENT
WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT?
I’m tired of throwing darts form the outside, and figure every once in a while I need to get in there and tussle. [ . . . ] UMSU is notorious for getting extremely low voter turnouts. And as such, previous UMSUs have believed that they had a mandate from the students. And I’m not sure that they really have. [ . . . ] I’m willing to do a number of things that would make them relevant again, such as online voting. And changing the tone of UMSU from that of confrontation to that of collaboration. I have a sort of sneaky catchphrase that will sound new and novel the first time I use it in a debate, that goes along the lines of, ‘UMSU used to build buildings, but as of late they only thing they’ve built are walls.’
HOW WOULD UMSU BE DIFFERENT IF YOU WERE IN OFFICE?
Ideally what I would do would be put up glass walls around UMSU — that way people could see UMSU there all the time, they could see when someone’s in, and know how to talk to. [ . . . ] rather than this vague feeling that they need a union to speak with their student union. [ . . . ] I’m also a fiscally conservative type, but I don’t think that means cutting any funding from UMSU. What that means is, optimizing and improving efficiencies within UMSU to make sure that the fees that are taken out of students, where students cannot opt out of them, are wisely spent. It’s not just the university fees that students pay, it’s also UMSU fees.
I’d also like to more UMSU buinesses into an arms-reach blind, so that UMSU would actually have the ability to target things as food services withouut it appearing from the outside that we’re simply endorsing our own food services instead. [ . . . ]Part of the duty of the president is to set long-term goals for UMSU, and this is one of them. This is part of a larger theme of tackling exclusivity contracts in general, be it exclusivity contracts or food services.
WHAT IS YOUR POSITION ON THE TUITION FEE FREEZE?
I’m going to take the middle-of-the-road statement on this one. I feel very good that the tuition fee freeze had a very good motivation when it was conceived.
However, you cannot freeze tuition forever. If you freeze it forever, and don’t take into account inflation into the picture, eventually there’s going to be a degredation of service [ . . . ] The goal posts have been moved, and we’re losing our abilities to compete with other universities in other centrs. I’m not in favour of a blanket tuition freeze release, however I am in favour of negotiation.
UMSU HAS A HISTORY OF LOW VOTER TURNOUT. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO STUDENTS TO ENCOURAGE THEM TO VOTE, AND VOTE FOR YOU?
Very few students seem to care about UMSU operations. I find this to be a difficulty, because stednts are obligated to pay UMSU fees. And without having some sort of bizarre opt-out union, they should be caring about where thier fees are spent, and how they’re spent. However, this is not necessarily meaning that it’s the students that need to change. It may mean that UMSU needs to do a better job of connecting to the students on an individual level. This doesn’t mean distributing the air-dropped CFS materials on them. This means going out, finding out what the day-to-day issues are, and trying to effect change where it’s reasonable.
