The problem with having an election for five spots is you end up with a race of twelve candidates (last year aside). Fortunately for us, only seven candidates showed up today to answer some questions from the moderator, Forestry Senator and All Around Good Guy Mr. Angus Cheung, and from the audience.
More on their answers behind le jump.
Click here to skip to profiles of the candidates in this race.
Note: Alex was the 2008/2009 AMS VP Academic and University Affairs.
The VP University affairs is the largest and most detail-oriented position on the executive. Best described as the executive that handles “everything else”, the VP A/UA is the single student on campus with the most influence over the way the university goes about its regular business. The job is best chunked into three broad categories: campus governance (planning, liaising, fiscals), academics (quality, funding, senate), and campus climate (culture, relations, equity).
Traditionally a position held by wonks, a good candidate will have a strong appreciation for detail, will be strategic and organized, will learn quickly, and will be a leader when they need to be. This means an understanding of the issues, players, conflicts and rhetoric of campus, as well as having the managerial skills to organize an office that handles forty committees, tens of pages of reading a day, and countless emails.
All that really matters is governance, and questionnaires after the jump.
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Click here to skip to profiles of the candidates in this race.
The Student Legal Fund Society was created in the wake of the 1997 APEC protests. Its specific mandate is: “SLFS is a non-profit student run society that provides advisory, legal, and financial assistance to fund, initiate and continue advocacy, lobbying and litigation to improve education and access to education at UBC and such other matters of law, which set broad precedent and concern UBC students.” It’s a very broad definition, and the decision this year to provide funding for the BC Civil Liberties Association’s Legal Observer training and Know Your Rights workshops exposed the widely differing interpretations of this mandate that are possible.
More on the SLFS and questionnaires, after the jump.
Click here to skip to profiles of the candidates in this race.
The VP Finance has traditionally been one of the most difficult jobs to be effective at in the executive committee. Tasked with crafting a budget to spend millions of dollars in three months, there’s little the VP Finance can do to shake up the status-quo in their most important task. Other parts in the job are the SUB businesses, sustainability, the AMS/GSS health and dental plan, and financial administration.
Because elections don’t yield the best accountants and because the post has been neglected in the past, the VP Finance role was once thought to be a liability to the society. To make sure the job gets done, the staff assumed much of the job. The AMS has matured since those days, and I would claim today the staff has too much control. What the job needs is an insider who understands the system, has the trust of the staff, but also has a vision on how to modernize a fiscal system that’s as rigid and cold as the building it’s housed in.
Recently challenged at council were philosophical questions about the operations of the SUB businesses. The AMS has prided itself on being one of the only student societies in Canada that has a business operation that nets a profit, which is one way the AMS retains the lowest student fees in the country. That said, profitable businesses often come at the cost of pricier food and lower employee wages, many of whom are students. Which is better: cheap mandatory fees, or cheap Pendulum T-Birds?
Also challenged was the extent that the AMS should be volunteer- or employment- driven. While the undergraduate societies are largely run by volunteers, does the importance of their parent organization warrant the added accountability only paid employment can ensure? Insiders answers this question with an unequivocal yes, provided the position at hand has any significant stake in the future of the society. There is, however, a larger role that volunteers and interns can play within the AMS, as opportunities there are currently non-existent.
Budget-wise, the VP Finance is the mastermind behind the AMS services. Operationally overseen by the hired ECSS, the VP Finance still sets the political direction of the otherwise non-political services for the year. In particular, an issue is controlling the spending of the $130,000-annual Safewalk, in which a walk costs more than a taxi-ride.
Also, an alleged structural deficit was uncovered in the budget this year, of which not much is yet known (we asked). It will be the incoming VP Finance’s job to make sense of this hoo-hah, and hopefully use the crisis to introduce some overdue changes.
The candidates in this race are the rather fashionable Elin Tayyar, ’09 SAC Vice-Chair, and the hyper-transparent Invisible Man. We’re elated to see a joke candidate in the running, but disappointed at the overall lack of interest for this race. Tuum Est, Elin.
See Candidate Profiles after the jump.
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Click here to skip to profiles of the candidates in this race.
The non-voting international student seat was created by AMS Council in November 2008 at the request of representatives from the International Student Association (ISA). They were looking to increase communication between the AMS and the ISA, International House, and the international student population in general. They also wanted the ability to better advocate on issues from the international student perspective, and gain recognition and formal status within the AMS.
The first person to assume this position, Nazanin Moghadami, was elected alongside last year’s AMS elections in January 2009. Councilors and council observers tend to agree that over the past year, the International Student Rep has had very limited visibility in and around council, and the expected benefits of the position have largely failed to materialize.
The optimistic view of the situation is that after only a year, more time is needed for the position to fully develop, and that there should not be a rush to judgment. A new person in the position may take a different approach to it and be very effective. Having the position causes no harm and takes nothing away from the AMS, but contains the potential for great benefit.
The pessimistic view is that having the seat has brought no actual value to the society and therefore the position is unnecessary. The brouhaha in November 2009 over council’s refusal to create a non-voting seat for students with disabilities caused some councilors to have second thoughts about the International Student Seat. In December 2009, a motion was put on the council agenda proposing to abolish the seat, but the motion was ultimately taken off the agenda before the meeting and has not been discussed further.
If you are an optimist, and hope the seat can evolve into a valued and integral part of council, the most important qualities to look for in a candidate are quite basic: thoughtfulness and commitment to the job. It will be very important in this position to contribute constructively to the AMS in everything it does, not only the things that are of special concern to international students.
Visibility, both within the AMS and within the international student community is also key. One of the reasons behind the creation of the seat was as a way for the AMS to make better connections with groups of students they might ordinarily have trouble reaching. If the person elected to this seat can successfully forge those connections, it is something that would reflect very well on them.
On the other hand, someone with a lot of bold new ideas, looking for immediate change in the AMS may have that work against them. The AMS certainly recognizes that they have problems, and can be open to new ideas. But new ideas have to be based upon a solid understanding of how the AMS currently functions, something that unfortunately takes a bit of time to figure out. Coming in too quickly with a bunch of ideas that expose a knowledge gaps of AMS structure will only alienate others and ultimately reduce the effectiveness of their voice on council.
See Candidate Profiles after the jump.
Edit, Jan 21 2:30am: Much like the House and Senate reconciliate on health care reform, we misinterpreted how the original two questions were to be merged. The Chief Justice will still be required to be a third year law student if this referendum passes. Thanks for the comments, all. Keeps us on our toes.
On the ballot is two questions now apparently a single question designed to change the rules of student court. Overall, the main intent of the changes seem to be the closing of the author-named Lougheed Affair, where council exercised a disallowance power to not receive a ruling from the student court. This raised a crisis about the function of the student court, a body that sparsely met prior to the Affair, and caused council to launch a third-party review.
Being proposed is the removal council’s disallowance power, coupled with the authority of student court to interpret the bylaws, which could possibly be in contradiction with the B.C. Society Act. Beyond this change, there are also a number of riders dealing with some structural changes, and changes in the way referenda make their way to a vote.
With voting for AMS Elections opening in just over one week, we sat down with Ricardo Bortolon, Chief Returning Officer, to get the details on how students will be voting.
In summary, the key points for this year are:
1. No paper balloting (except affiliated colleges)
2. 15 minute voting time limit – research candidates in advance
3. AMS Executive elections using Condorcet ranked ballots, other positions remain First-Past-the-Post
4. Elections Committee may allow groups to set up informal polling stations
Full details about this year’s system are below.
The newly formed AMS Legislative Procedures committee has ruled, and the chair of Council has upheld an interpretation of a March 2009 motion of AMS council to add two questions to the referendum ballot. They interpreted the following resolution of council, brought forward by former Law councillor Clare Benton:
“That on the recommendation of the Code and Policies Committee and the Oversight Committee, Council approve the proposed Bylaw changes contained in the report ‘Bylaw Changes – Student Court Committee Suggestions,’ such changes to be submitted to the membership at a later date in a referendum or general meeting to be called in accordance with a future Council motion.”
– AMS Council, March 2009
Note the last bit of that motion. Normally, Council would simply pass a motion to place the question on a referendum, except it would now be unable to do that due to a rule that says it would have to be passed 10-days prior to voting. That said, the chair in his ruling the chair argued the 10-day requirement was achieved by the original motion.
“The spirit of the referendum question was to change the bylaws […] so I would say adding it in would be in the spirit of the original question and would be in order,” ruled the chair. It remains unclear, however, who can make such a ruling. Ironically, the final arbiter might actually be student court.
The Point Grill, located at Marine Drive residence, is UBC Food’s newest restaurant, and is set to open very soon. The always adorable Andrew Parr was nice enough to give myself and Rabi Sun (of Portraits of UBC and Just Shoot Me fame) a sneak peek at what was going in there.
Today we are happy to present a guest post written by Dia Montgomery, Law Rep on AMS Council.
The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose.
BARACK OBAMA, press conference, Feb. 9, 2009
It is a new year and the beginning of a new decade. January rains have helped settle the dust after last November’s high-charged UN complaint debacle. In the end, AMS President Blake Frederick & VP External Tim Chu retained their roles, largely due a legal memo advising councillors against severing our errant leaders from their positions. And so, between the tuna sandwiches & paper nameplates, a sort of normalcy has returned to AMS Council meetings.
Yet, after such bitter schisms between Council members, we who serve as AMS representatives must ask ourselves how to work productively for the good of all students. Perhaps the solution is to continue the ban on slates. While it is natural for students to want to organize and operate within groups, the dark side of human nature prevails. As with established political parties, there is a danger that slate members will seek to gain more power than their rivals and take revenge on political opponents. Such posturing and politicking takes away from student representation.
However, a continued ban on slates is not a surefire path to AMS unity. Even without slates, members of AMS Council, either deliberately or inadvertently, wear their larger political leanings on their proverbial sleeves. Our council chambers are often divided by NDP or Liberal affiliations. This divide distracts us from our duties by creating animosity between members and promoting petty jealousies.
But there is a way forward. Our AMS could benefit from something so clichéd, old fashioned and ridiculed that it just might work: teamwork. Hackneyed though it may be, we need to be grown ups and forgive each other for last year’s hurt feelings. Yes, we felt betrayed. Yes, we feel as though the other side did not understand our good intentions and would not really listen to us. But that was last year. Like it or not, we are still the AMS Council. We still have the responsibility to work together.
There continue to be real problems facing students at the University of British Columbia and we must get behind each other’s efforts to solve them. We have to collaborate and create a culture of teamwork. From this point on, no one councillor should completely own an idea or process. Instead, we should seek out ideas and opinions differing from our own. We should be open and receptive to ideas and input from others. We should interact with each other, despite past animosity, and maintain the willingness to engage even when things are not going the way we planned.
While we have had difficulties with each other in the past, these skirmishes should not be allowed to define us. This is a new year, an Olympic year, and we can rise to the challenges ahead together. What do you say, fellow Councillors?
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