UBC Insiders

The people have spoken.

I have a really really good feeling about the execs next year. In particular, I think with Sarah Naiman’s energy for student life and Brittany Tyson’s keen and savvy mind the two can work very well together in working to engage the students.

The “Video screen idea” from Sarah Naiman which has come under scrutiny so much during the course of the election may not be a good one (as it has been proposed to the AMS Business Operations Committee before and was voted down), but it’s grounded from the right mind and attitude.

I also think that Jeff Friedrich’s continuity will help a lot in directing Brendon’s passion for the VP Academic job in an efficient manner.

Matthew Naylor came up to me last night and said “Gina I’m not as crazy as you think I am”. With an election year coming up, and the partisanship he openly admits to, I hope he’s right. He threw a marvellous campaign, and he deserved to win.

Without further ado, here are some of the less scandalous pictures of the night:

The Gallery was packed

Chris Anderson, the Elections Administrator enjoying the anticipation from the audience

Tariq Ahmed looking smug and content for being re-elected (CONGRATULATIONS it’s been a pleasure working with you this year!)

A very drunk Brittany Tyson being hugged by her supporter

Sarah Naiman hugged by Zoe Shipley (her campaign manager) and Mike Duncan (SUS president)

Brendon Goodmurphy very happy to hear that he won

Camp Naylor

Jeff Friedrich and First Lady Nadine Straka

There they are, our representatives of next year…

So it’s the day after. I haven’t checked my e-mail, and yet I’m updating this blog. Wow.

I’m particularly happy w/ the results – every candidate for whom I voted ended up winning, which pleases me. And a big huge congrats to Darren Peets, who deserves his BoG seat more than anybody who’s held the chair in a good long while. And another to the Radical Beer Tribune, who finished ninth, a handful of votes behind the Duncan-Kearney media group. Boo-urns to that outcome.

As well, after conversations with a gazillion people, I’m convinced that there has to be a way to keep this going. It requires a new URL and site name, to be sure, and will require some new contributors, but I’ll work a bit to get things up and running the next couple months. And don’t expect twice-daily posts. Just not happening.

So I ask for your patience. This weekend is very busy and my computer is broken, so it’s gonna take a few days to swing it together. But hell, I’m still updating it, and we’re still getting readers, so why the hell not?

And I love you too, Antoine!

Gina’s Bit: I agree that we should provide an interactive interface for students wanting to engage on issues that are UBC/AMS specific. Using this (EI) experiment as a basic platform could be a starting point. The key is allowing comments and not throwing around jargon (CPAC, UILO, CCP) that’s only comprehensible to people who work in the system. I think it should be part of a larger PR-revamp of the AMS. The AMS website could be a lot more accessible. There could be a subsection which has commentators on what the AMS is doing – in a blog style.

Due to a hole in WordPress, this post’s author is misattributed. The follow was written by former Insiders editor Gina Eom.

Student Legal Fund Society:
Sadowski, Elizabeth 674
Escobar 623
Bird (?) 547
Sihota 545
Bendayar 497

Senate:
Jaspreet Khangura 1588
Tariq Ahmed 430
Alfie Lee 1070
Hillson Tse 1059
Peter Pan 996

Board of Governors:
Jeff Friedrich 1386
Darren Peets 849
——-
Aidha Shaikh 842 (7 vote difference! Recount=???)

VP Finance:
Brittany Tyson 1891
——————
Peter Rizov 1260

VP Admin:
Sarah Naiman 1436
—————
(Suvina To 992, Lougheed the Barbarian 567)

VP External:
Matthew Naylor 1017
———————
Joel Koczawarski 915
Thomas Masterson 695
Chris Brush 670

VP Academic:
Brendon Goodmurphy 1510
————————–
Bruce Kraenhoff 810
Jerry Fan Fan 787

President:
Jeff Friedrich 2653
——————–
Maxwell Maxwell 882

VFM:
1) Underground
2) Thunderbird
3) The Knoll
4) The 432
5) Let them Eat Cake
6) Elections Erections Magazine
7) Elections Insider
8) Duncan Kearney Media Group

I’m drunk so I may have made spelling errors. I love you Antoine.

Lots of really good pictures tomorrow!

voter turnout was so low….

We’ll both have withdrawal symptoms and we hope you’ll still read and interact with our discussion posts below. Play with them! We’ll probably reply. Actually, I’m sure we will. And stay tuned for Elections Results tonight! We’ll come back then, with commentary, of course. And photos.

End Transmissions. This is goodbye, because the election is almost over, and we’ve each neglected some parts of our normal life. Not that we didn’t enjoy this (way too much at times). We’ve both invested a lot into this blog, the AMS, and the university, so writing this is cathartically bitter and heavy. But we’re also happy, because this has been an incredible experience for us, and, we hope, for you as well. We’ve learned that engaging people in dialogue is as difficult as is presumed. It’s a matter of approach. And more importantly, there’s a demand for thoughtful discussion of student issues, and that demand exists outside the AMS clique. Students don’t care? Bullshit.

So what would we ask you to take away from this blog? That student want to be engaged, they want places to engage, and they want to be able to inform themselves. Don’t take students for granted, nor for idiots, and you’ll be rewarded.

We didn’t do this on our own. We have some people who need to be thanked:

First and foremost, Gerald Deo. He gave us the wonderful design for this page, made it functional for us who are largely computer and design illiterate, and was responsive to our sometimes annoying demands. (Sorry Gerald! – Gina)
Everybody who contributed, and responded to our questionnaires. We know it was time-consuming but, trust us, people read them. Especially the candidates – how else would they get such insight into the job they’re aspiring to get?
The Candidates. This is an excellent, diverse crew of people who’ve responded well and really reached out to students. While we could only endorse a few, we’ll be happy with (almost) any result tonight. We tried hard not to be mean; please take any criticism constructively. And stay involved. Students need your energy.
Everybody who supported us outside the blog. It’s been a busy three weeks, and not insignificant chunks of time have been poured into this. For those who put up with us, had to suffer, or otherwise supported us, thanks so much. You know who you are. Vous etes notre raison d’etre.
Finally, you. All you 5500+ unique viewers logging in from all over the world! You helped turn this into a place of discussion, engaged us, challenged us, and contributed at least as much as you got out of it. This only succeeded to the extent it did because of your participation.

It’s been so amazing. Thanks! We’ll be in touch.

—
Gina Eom and Tim Louman-Gardiner

Don’t forget about the post below. We want your thoughts.

But there’s another important question, too. Which is how ought this blog to live on? I think there’s a demand for some AMS/student/UBC blog out there. Now Gina and I are graduating, but would be happy to help out anybody who wants to keep a blog going in some way year-round. And we chose an unfortunate URL for non-elections info. But if someone wants to use it for student info purposes…

It’s kinda silly that these things only operate during the Elections period. And I’d keep going, but I’m pretty much out of here. So any thoughts as to how we can leverage this capital into producing a longer-term way of engaging students?

So, we can’t publish tomorrow. And elections are up. So, this post is designed to have a great deal to chew on in our blogging absence.
In short, a few ideas requiring bylaw reforms have been floated this election. If we can amend bylaws for one of them…. why not all? To begin:

AMS Fees Linked to Inflation
Discussed before. Let’s do it.

Turnover Change
The UBC AMS is pretty much the only SU in the country that runs its elections in January. The status quo has three major drawbacks:

1. The summer is useless for getting stuff done, because no students are around. The spring term is useless because it’s taken up with elections, lame duckery, and transitions. That leaves only one workable term, the fall, to get anything done and engage students.
2. It requires execs to take three academic terms off school, instead of two. This limits the pool, and throws a scholastic schedule for a loop.
3. Elections are in January, when school gets back. People don’t know about them, and there’s no natural run-up to build momentum.

Change the turnover to May 1, and give execs the summer to get used to the job, and a school year to make a difference.

Exec Re-Organization
President stays the same. Re-purpose the lobbying VPs, creating a VP University Affairs, and a VP External lobbying. That’s basically the status quo. Conceptually easy.

The other two are more tricky. I propose a VP Admininstration and Finance, and a VP Student Life. VP Admin takes on the budget, and all renos/property, and questions relating to the physical space and business operations, in conjunction with permanent staff. VP Student Life takes on club administration. But there’s a demand for more. This past year I worked on “student life”-y projects with both the VP Finance and the VP Admin, in separate capacities. They would have benefited from a single contact, one person whom I could contact. And create a go-to person, hopefully one with a vision for campus life, club activities, events, First week/Frosh, first-year students… there’s just so much the AMS could do!

Council Re-Organization
I realise this is a pipe dream. But I don’t care. I see two major issues with Council, as is. The first is that it’s arbitrarily representative. There’s an underlying assumption that constituency reps are representative of students. But that’s just not the case! Students are engaged in their University in zillions of ways, including their undergrad societies. So I propose a student council with reps from residences, Greeks, clubs, resource groups…. yeah, that’s less voice for constituencies. But to organize representation on that basis is kind of irrelevant.

The second is to eliminate ex-officio appointments to Council. Buy-in to Council is often a problem, and can be with people whose other, non-Council jobs make them reps to Council. Usually this means undergrad society Presidents, but it varies by group. But we should make sure that students on Council want to be on Council, that they’ve sought election specifically to that job. Why? Ensures buy-in, and hopefully makes it more likely that they’ll get to committees, participate meaningfully, etc.

—
I realise that the above are fraught with practical improbabilities. But they’re all reasonably philosophical in nature… thoughts?

Today I saw Jeff Friedrich standing on the North Side of the SUB flyering, all by himself. I’m really curious to see what the voter turnout is going to be. I would not be surprised if it were lower than most years, because of the quiet campaigns which I’ve bitched about many times before.

Needless to say, tomorrow is the last chance to vote in the Elections. It’ll be done by paper ballot – 9AM till 6PM at the SUB and other locations. Please tell anyone you suspect who hasn’t voted yet.

There’ll also be an election results party at the Gallery. Tim and I will be there, and we’ll be drinking our hearts out but more importantly update our blog as soon as the results are announced. Come by and drink with us, or refresh this page around 10pm (Pacific time, Spencer). Pictures will be up the next morning.

Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé? Where did the time go?

There are so many more issues which we could write about, from different angles. I didn’t even get to blog about the Farm, Campus Safety and its intra-politics, senate-specific issues, etc etc. But there’s only so much energy Tim and I can put into this blog without losing our personhood.

Totally unrelated: am I the only one who’s been ambushed by the Reiki lady at the busloop???

My computer has unceremoniously fried itself. This angers me. It also means my ability to respond to comments instantaneously is greatly reduced, as is my ability to create a thoughtful, well-reasoned post.

So, in the style of the “real” media, I present not-quite-formed thoughts, in short, digestible sentence form!

1) I’ll bet The Thunderbird didn’t get the permission of the copyright holder of the photo in this article. I’m not positive, but I doubt they have the right to use it. Way to go, J-school!
2) This blog has had hits from Rogers media in Ottawa, a gadzillion UBC administrators, and, most amusingly, Translink. Repeatedly. Searching for various U-Pass search terms.
3) Candidates have even stopped showing up to all-candidates debates. Apparently yesterday this was particularly acute. I wouldn’t know, of course. I wasn’t there either ;-)
4) Let Them Eat Cake has clearly educated himself about campus issues, and he, like, expresses opinions. That’s, like, awesome.
5) The Underground also has interesting elections info. Worth a read.
6) I think we have to consider VFM to have been a success. Even though it won’t boost voter turnout, it certainly helped drive debate, it differentiated candidates, influenced them, and created an actual discussion. Yay.
6a) We need to stop seeing turnout as the endpoint, as a goal in engagement. It’s a symptom of an engaged populus, not a goal unto itself.
7) Last, a question for candidates: has all the extra time spent answering ‘media’ questions been worth it? I have my opinion, but I’m curious to hear that of the people whose time we all spent…

Without a doubt, my favorite political journo is the intrepid Paul Wells; I get downright giddy when he posts about University affairs, which he does with some regularity.

Today’s post is noteworthy. It explains quite succinctly why tuition reduction is a profoundly misguided way to increase access, and how lower tuition actually keeps the under-privileged out of universities. Call that access? (Click here for the article.)

The issue has been raised by Quebec Universities, trying to end that province’s freeze, and using BC as an example. Read the G&M story here.

PS – Please visit the Radical Beer Tribune. We like them today.

This hit me the other day. I was having a conversation with a candidate, asking him (candidate wasn’t necessarily male, I’m just using the pronoun because it’s easier) about his ideas, and he was having trouble communicating, and verbalizing them, particularly when I’d ask him to relate them to abstract concepts. I tried my reassuring best to indicate my patience, but the candidate was clearly flustered and probably growing frustrated with his inability to communicate with me.

Yes, I have a propensity for verbosity. And that’s partly to blame. But I couldn’t help but realize how damn frustrating it must be for someone for whom English is not a first language.

Think about it. How many AMS Councillors, or even Executives, have been non-English speakers? It can’t be easy to articulate relatively complex platforms, answer debate-style questions, and engage with dense blogs like this one, for someone whose comfort with English is not first-rate. I can see why it just might not be worth the effort.

Moreover, it goes beyond participating in politics. Consider services. Many English language speakers won’t know what “Advocacy” means and how it’s distinct from an Ombudsperson, never mind someone for whom the language does not come naturally. Peruse clubs days banners, or walk through the lower level of the SUB at lunch hour – many signs, publications, and conversations are in languages other than English. The demand is clearly there.

To me, it begs the question – how can we address language barriers to make the AMS more accessible? Of course I see the need for a lingua franca, a language of business, which reasonably should be English. But there are some simple things we can do, to make the AMS more accessible. And by making it more accessible, it becomes more welcoming.

• Print one-page overviews of AMS services in, say, ten different languages. Wouldn’t cost much, would greatly increase access to services.
• Have the occasional sign in a language other than English; much more welcoming.
• Ensure language support at Speakeasy and other “store-front” type services

I don’t know how to address issues of political participation, though I note that’s probably a problem in the “real world” as well. Any thoughts? Should the AMS take positive steps to be more language-friendly?