Tag Archives: kiran mahal

Endorsements Part 1: The Midweek Mark

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ENDORSEMENTS. As in years past, we’ve based these on our impressions in the debates and interviews with the candidates. We always weight towards the Ubyssey‘s official interviews, in part because we believe it’s fairest to judge candidates on the basis of their considered opinions in print—and because it’s easier than taking notes. NB: As a Voter-Funded Media candidate, we are technically available for dis-endorsement. Please consider us when writing your FB screeds!

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Poster Roundup: Snooze City

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Clearly we’ve all been spending time with our Clean Modern Design textbooks this term. While nobody’s asking anyone to repeat mistakes of years past, candidate posters have been downright dull and professional this year. Also, no joke candidates. Is it the economy that’s making you all play it so safe? [Ed: …no, we don’t know what the economy does. Coming soon: our coverage of the VP Finance race!]

This is what every day looks like for you, Barnabas, isn't it

Definitely always the exception #yolo

What do you mean dull, you bitter hacks, you say. Do you want everyone to cover their posters with glitter Myspace gifs?

but also would it kill you to use a typeface with serifs?

Normally we’d break this mother down into good-bad-ugly, but we don’t want to attract the mockery of the graphic design set [Ed. – See above, re: areas not in our expertise]. Instead, we’ve broken it down into the far duller categories of Solid as Concrete, Dynamic Red, and Firm Hand on the Tiller Blue—apparently the only three options for background colours if you’re not going for ‘blurry nature scene.’

Solid as Concrete

These gentlemen have grounded themselves on a background that says they’re stoic. Solid. Dependable. Like a rock. Note the touches of red and blue—them’s the leadership colours.

Dynamic Red

At least two of these just make us want to break out into “ABC Café“—you know? revolution! sex! STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT ANNE HATHAWAY

RED—the blood of angry hacks
BLACK—UN complaints of past
RED—the ire of students’ rants
BLACK—or grey for good contrast

We expect a full parody musical on our desk by this time next week.

Firm Hand on the Tiller Blue

With the exception of Princess Shinyhair, Queen of Efficiency, blue shows up largely as subsets of other colours, e.g. concrete:

While it may not be as musical-theatre as red, blue gives a soothing, peaceful image. Ahhh. So relaxing. Now just drift away on a sea of budget reports and mental health initiatives…

Nature scene

WILD CARD.

We’re a little worried by Tanner’s lack of foresight, though [insert joke about athletics fees here]:

Keep an eye out for more coverage and poster critiques in the coming days, kids.

Endorsements Round Choo choo choose you

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Voting has started for the 2012 AMS Elections (check your email for a vote code!) and apart from voting for us (because we’re sparkly, smart and suuuuuuper awesome) you should consider voting for actual candidates. Here are our VP picks for this year, with BoG/Senate/SLFS and your goddamn President coming. Yes, you can call these our #AMselections IF YOU MUST:

Caroline can VP Administrate me ANY DAY

Highlights from her platform: [Editor’s note: I’m super mean on this one because I used to be the VP Admin]

  • She promises a LEED Platinum Building for the New SUB and engagement with the UBC SEEDs Program. This is already happening regardless. What she should really focus on is ensuring the post-occupancy sustainability of the New SUB.
  • She wants to create an online club management system. This is promised every, single year. There’s already a financial system in place. AMS Link, an online system that did exactly that three years ago was taken down because no one used it. The focus then should be on convincing clubs to use a content management system rather than spending money on building something fancy.

Why we like her:

  • She has sat on council and numerous committees. She has also acted as the AUS’s VP External and convinced constituency presidents to dye their hair purple (that’s AUSsome).
  • She has participated in the lefty Social Justice Centre and may just be the hottest knollie we have ever seen. She’s able to see both sides to an issues and that’s a great trait to have.

Warwick for VPX: He’s Better than Nothing (Trust us, you don’t want another by-election)

His platform (and what we think about it):

  • He wants to shift lobbying from federal lobbying to focus more on provincial and municipal topics such as translink (like getting a much-needed rapid transit line to UBC!). While we agree that more should be done provincially, completely disregarding national lobbying initiatives, especially when there is NO actual national strategy on post-secondary education, is probably not the best idea.
  • He also wants to be stern and serious when it comes to UPass negotiations. While this is a valiant effort, we’re likely to keep paying more and more for our transit pass.

Why we “like” him:

  • Kyle Warwick falls into the category of heavily-partisan-hacks-that-should-graduate-already. He has sat on AMS council for three solid years and ran in the 2011 federal election for the Liberal Party in Skeena, BC (we also have NO CLUE where that is).  He has tons of experience and if he can let go of some of his Liberal Party tendencies, he’ll do a good job.

Tristan Miller for VP Finance, The Job No One Else Knows How to Do, I Don’t Care if You Have a Budget Spreadsheet

His Platform..errr. I mean manifesto?:

  • Spend less shit. (Seriously, that’s all I got from his website)

Why we like him:

  • Continuing the tradition of dapper, well-dressed gentlemen at the helm of the AMS’s finances, Tristan has a strong understanding of the AMS as the current Vice-Chair of the Financial Commission. And because we only vote based on looks, [ONLY LOOKS. JUST LOOKS, ALL THE TIME. LOOKS AND SPITE] he is an absolute shoo-in (speaking of shoes, he has SO MANY CUTE PAIRS).

KIRAN FOR VP Academic (and University affairs)

This had to be the hardest VP race for us to choose between. Mostly it’s because Carven is all sorts of fabulous and lives and breathes pure, sparkly, radical wonder. But we decided to go with Kiran Mahal. Read on to find out why.

Her platform highlights (and what we think about them):

  • She promises to address mental health and wellness. This is an ENORMOUS problem at UBC (otherwise known as the Canadian Centre for Seasonal Affective Disorder), and it would be a true benefit for the student body if the AMS can get UBC to move past “raising awareness” of issues such as suicide and mental health and ACTUALLY create better policy.
  • She wants to create an exam database. This has been attempted and failed. Much like a Clubs’ Content Management system, the trick would be to convince the many users to actually remember to post and use the system.

Why we chose her:

  • Kiran is a competent, well-spoken and hard-working individual. [Ed. note: nobody said articulate.] She is the current SUS President, worked with AMS Services AND was the President of the Young Women in Business UBC Chapter. While we would like to see her focus a little more on University Affairs such as land use and governance, she already demonstrates a firm vision of what she wants to achieve. With a strong BoG team as University allies, she could kick some major ass on both fronts.

While we all voted on the endorsements, this post written by Ekat, who was VP Admin two years ago. In candidate terms, she’s held executive office, so she’s at the Presidential experience level. In airport lounge terms, Presidential means she gets two free drinks and a newspaper. BONUS!

Think we were wrong? Candidates! Feel free to post below. It’s tough to be judged (even by someone as sparkly as us) and we would love your thoughts if you think we have it all wrong.

The Hipster-Hack Matrix

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To go with your a.m. selection: Introducing the matrix of all matrixes, The Hipster-Hack Matrix.  Literal eons in the making, we’re not even kidding, this may just be the next BCG matrix (don’t know what that is? #sauderfail). So hold on to your down-belows, take a deep breath and let’s dive in.

 

The matrix is divided into four quadrants based on the candidates’ relative hipster and hack tendencies. But old person, you say, what’s a hack? Basically, student politics is a giant, often quirky, sometimes weird and always insular clique. The more you are involved in student government, the more you’re a hack—and that can be good or bad.

So, are you involved (good) or have you totally lost sight of the average student experience (bad)? To help you determine which candidate best meets your hip-hack needs, we’ve gone ahead and positioned everyone on the scale for your viewing (and voting!) pleasure.

This post brought to you by The Confidential Team—mostly Ekat. As always, all statistics on this blog are made up. We’re sorry; we know some of you are engineers.