VP Academic Candidate: Siobhan Lacey

RF: What do you feel the responsibilities of the vice president academic are?

SL: It is about the internal profile of the school, advocacy for students academically. I saw a lot of students this year as Vice President for Residence Affairs struggling academically and I want to continue to advocate for students internally.

RF: How do you feel you are qualified for the job?

SL: My first year at StFX I was a community advisor, from the minute I got here I feel like I’ve been trying my best to help students, then I was a hall director then the Vice president of Residence Affairs. I want to try to make sure that students know that I am here to support them. I feel like I have lots of insight into the student experience, I have my own, but I also have all the residents that lived in my building or the students that came to my office this year. I was also able to hone my advocacy abilities this year, and learn how to network.

I’ve had to be in committees with my professors but who aren’t my professors in that moment, and I have had to navigate and balance being a student and working at the Union and I feel like I have done an excellent job of learning the ropes of student unionism. Also you can do a lot on an executive team if you are a part of it for two years rather than one. The way the union works we are setting things up for the year after us so it is rare to see the things we want to accomplish get done in our year. I am now very used to advocating for students in an executive board room and understanding all the roles internally and externally.

RF: What are your pillars/platforms?

SL: I have six pillars, the first being Open Educational Resources (OER’s) are educational material that can be freely and publicly shared, like textbooks or even buzzers. The goal is making sure they are available to all students. Affordability is a big issue, so this is a way to help that, this is something that someone at the Union is always working on.

Holistic view of education is my second pillar, how the life outside of the classroom is connected to life in the classroom. We need our faculty and staff to understand what students’ students are bringing into the classroom. Faculty can be very intimidating, so we need professors to be prepared to be receptive if a student comes to them and discloses a problem they are having. We also need to put more money into residences and meal hall to promote education, to get a dietitian, there are lots of initiatives, but the core idea is that students bring a lot more into the classroom than just their laptops or textbooks. They are bringing all their life experiences and we need to factor that in.

Next is the Co-Op program, currently our Co-Op program besides Schwartz is not good. For arts there only math and computer science co-ops and science is pretty limited as well. Acadia has a wonderful Co-Op program; we can look at theirs and try to implement it and match it to our location. I think it is very important for students to get job experience before going into the real world. We have service learning but there is no compensation for that which is a big issue when we are talking about affordability.

Study space is another pillar, I believe we need more study space during finals, its absolute chaos trying to get a table in the library. The new Mulroney building is beautiful but there isn’t that much study space. We need to work with the university to simply just open up classrooms, we don’t need to build more we have it, we just need to access it. There are many things we can do; we just need to do them. Compensation for Immersion learning is what I want to do, for nursing students, students in the forensic psych programming basically any student who has to go away for their education but has to do so out of their own pocket. I would like to find funding for students to get reimbursed for gas money or bus ticket, to increase affordability.

The last one is faculty and staff training, all of the HPs/VPs of houses have to go through all this training whether it be disclosure training or positive space training which is amazing and I fully stand by that but it is not required for the faculty or staff. I really want disclosure training for the professors because I get a lot of students coming to my office and are in a position where they have to disclose this very traumatic thing or get a zero on a missed assignment. The professor doesn’t have to walk these students through this process, but a part of disclosure training is being able to give the student the right resources and where to go from there.

RF: What’s the first thing you are going do when you get into office?

SL: I want to learn as much as I can as soon as I can, so I would go talk to some of the past Vice-President Academics and I know I can learn a lot from them. I am confident in what I know but I also realize there is still a lot for me to learn. I would start familiarizing myself with anything I may have missed. I would also read all the policies and by-laws I can find and understand how those policy’s and by-laws affect the real world. I would like to start networking as soon as possible to have those networks in place as soon as possible. I want to identify the things I need to work on, I am aware of my weaknesses and my strengths and there are things I can work on so I can get going and be as prepared as possible.

VP Academic Candidate: Alex Daly

RF: What do you think the responsibilities of the VP Academic are?

AD: Primarily they have to advocate for students on the various committees they sit on, they sit on Senate they consult with faculty administration and students about various issues and then they may go and present these issues to the various committees they sit on. They need to be aware of the pulse of the University for sure.

RF: What qualifications do you have for this job?

AD: I think I bring a fresh perspective I haven’t been on Council, but I have been involved a lot in the union especially this year as I am a student advocate. If someone is written up or they have a question about the conduct process they come and see me, and I give them the information they need. So, I have that one on one connection with students. I also go to administration and advocate for students and what they want. That requires the guts to go and not be afraid of the that power dynamic. I am also in the governance committee which means we go through all the by-laws and policies. Right now, we are updating everything because a lot of things are outdated and not working properly. I have read the by-laws back to front, so I know the intricacies of the union and how things are working and how to make things better.

RF: What are your platforms/pillars?

AD: I have six pillars, the first being to increase transparency and accountability in the student union. Voter turnout is extremally low for the union and the union is a multi-million-dollar corporation and we are here to do things for students, but a lot of students don’t know what the union does and provides, and they don’t advocate and get involved. The second thing is Open educational resources on campus, which would be free textbooks on online and such. There are many things we can do on campus to get infrastructure going and hire people for the library trained in that. The third thing that I am very passionate about is making sure that trans and non-binary students can get their preferred name on a official university documents, on class lists because currently they cannot to ensure that all students on campus can go to class and not be afraid of being outed if their gendered name is called out for attendance. The fourth thing is working with the Maple League (Bishops, Acadia, Mount Allison, StFX) which can create more course selections for students on campus. We are such a small university, so some things are just not offered, so it lets students take classes online and creates more opportunities for them. The fifth pillar is that the VP Academic sits on senate and senate is where most of the decisions are made especially on academics. The Board of Governors has a specific part of their agenda dedicated to student issues and I’d love to see that on Senate. I feel that this will prioritize student issues and makes sure student issues are at the forefront of whatever they are deciding. My sixth thing which is a low thing is marketing for the tutoring app, we have one, but no one uses it.

RF: What are you first going to do if elected?

AD: When I first get in I want to hire a good team, I’d want to hear from all the executives what they want to see done too, it’s not a one person show and I’d have to work with the President and talk to them and see what ideas they have. Lots of collaboration and work with students to see what they want and other people on council want.

Presidential Candidate Profile: Dhruv Patel

RF: What do you think the responsibilities of the Students’ Union President are?

DP: A representative of all of the students at StFX as well as working with the Nova Scotia government and the federal government to do better for the students and raise questions and issues that students have.

RF: What qualifications do you have for this job?

DP: I feel that in leadership you don’t need to have qualifications, but I was raised around politics. My father was in parliament in India and I was raised around seeing him work. I also run and cofounded the Indianan society here at StFX. I also grew up around the family business, which is international, so I feel confident in handling the business side and using compromise in trying to change meal hall times. I believe that people learn things as time goes on and learn things from experience.

RF: What are your pillars/platforms you are running on?

DP: The timing of the meal halls is very awkward, and I have talked with many students and this seems to be quite a problem. Students aren’t able to eat after night classes and lots of athletes are affected. There should also be more daytime events so that first year students or student’s underage can get to know more about the university. I also want to do a lot of international events because there are a lot of international students who come through and it would allow students to learn more about other cultures.

RF: What is the first thing you will do if elected?

DP: I want to try to convince them [meal hall] to let students use the swipe for all items in meal hall and also for them to add some more salads and work on the times they can be open. I want to get student support and hand out surveys to find out what students want in the dining facilities.

Presidential Candidate: Sarah Elliot

RF: What do you believe the responsibilities of the president are?

SE: There are two sides to the president’s job: there is the internal side, the everyday function of the student’s union. And there is the external advocacy, advocating for students with the big guys. And making sure the team is working smoothly and helping out with the other execs and sub-execs and make sure everyone is good and happy.

RF: What qualifications do you have for this job?

SE: I have been in the student union for three years now, ever since I first stepped foot at StFX. I have sat on every role you can do at the student’s union; I was a councilor my first year and my second year I was a sub-exec and vice president of Chillis. Currently I am the vice president external affairs and sit on the executive board.

So I have seen every single side of the students unions, so that’s the hard skills and lived experience but on the other side I feel I am a very friendly person and I’m able to talk to a lot of people and I like the idea that students can come to me and I can be a fair voice to represent them. I really love the Union it and I know how it works and I think there is a lot of value it brings students and I want to be able to take on that responsibility and make it really really great. 

RF: What are your pillars/platforms?

SE: I have three main pillars and then three specific policy goals under each of them. The first is student wellness, and underneath that I want to see the implementation of the post-secondary mental health standard, which is an overarching standard for all post-secondary institutions in Canada to make sure they are prioritizing student mental wellness. It is very detailed but concerns policies around teachers and students and how teachers and faculty can support students. So, I really want to work with the administration to pass that. So that StFX is really prioritizing student mental wellness. 

The second one is education about consent and sexualized violence. I have been working with the vice president of students and we just got funding from the provincial government to make consent modules for education on consent and sexualized violence. It will be for new and returning students and it will be kind of like a driver’s license, you will have to fill it out and read a little and learn more about sexualized violence and consent. We want to be as proactive as possible and try to change the culture before students are even here. And the last part is modernizing the student food resource center and looking at food insecurity in more of a holistic way, teaching students how to be healthy and make balanced meals and diet and where to buy affordable groceries. I want everyone to be able to access the student food resource center because we have the fund, and everyone deserves an equal opportunity to use it.

My second platform is advocacy, I am very passionate about it. I have one main point for federal, provincial and StFX advocacy. Students Nova Scotia has been advocating for international students to receive Canadian healthcare when they come to Canada and currently they can’t access it if they want to go home in the summer, but now we are seeing a change and hopefully we can get that for next years 2021 provincial budget. And on the federal side I want to work on the indigenization of university campuses across Canada and bring more indigenous students to the table when it comes to making decisions and see what they want and need. For StFX advocacy I want to work on making StFX more sustainable and minimizing our ecological footprint and everyone should be playing a part in climate action whether it is vegetarian options of knowing where to throw your garbage in the right place to know where it should go.

My last Pillar is for students by students which is the student union moto, which for me means an increase in student consultation. I find that student consultation can be tokenizing, they may take a student and hear what they have to say but that student could not be affected by the issue at hand at all. I want to use our society coordinator to be able to contact each society and create a chain so if I don’t know about an issue I can contact students that are in society’s related to the issue at hand and make sure that students who are affected and knowledge about the issue are consulted. The second one is mobile office hours to make executives more accessible to students, say doing office hours for an hour in in Starbucks or a day in Mulroney, it will allow easier access and let students ask more questions and get to know their representatives more. And finally, the point is transparency with the marketing team, so making sure students know where their money is going and what it is doing. To ensure that students now just what their student union is doing, whether it be advocacy for students or running the Inn or the free drive home service.

RF: What is the first thing you are going to do if you are elected?

SE: For transition I want to make sure that students coming into these roles are getting the proper training and are adequately prepared and know what they are getting themselves into and feel confident with what they are doing. I want to prioritize students feeling comfortable in their roles so they can be successful for the rest of the year.