believe this is one of the most important committees the SRA has, as it deals directly with the students, academic or non-academic issues, and encourages constructive discourse between the MSU and McMaster University’s governing bodies and administration. This committee will be working closing with the VP-Education of the MSU, many other MSU official and a lot of other university officials that will have an affect on the students life. Before I decided to run for the chairperson position I had some ideas in my mind, and I really would appreciate any kind of opinion and suggestions given to the committee by the students or non-students.Some of the ideas are so far:
1- Diversity campaign – Anti-racismWe should work with the VP Education and the new Diversity services coordinator to create a new powerful diversity campaign on campus. This should spread more awareness for students about diversity and having an inclusive community on campus. We should guide the MSU to fight any kind of racism and discrimination. I honestly see this as one of the most important projects for us next year, as we should leave a mark that we were able to spread more awareness and education about this sensitive time issue.You have heard about the islamophobic-racist hate crime that happened before exams in April, this inspired me to insure that McMaster are not like other schools suffering of any kind of racism here in Canada or any where abroad.
2- Campaign for McMaster – Survey for students to give us the feedbackThe previous SRA members voted on recommending the new SRA to direct the university affairs committee to investigate allocating and expending funds from the MSU surplus to go towards McMaster University’s “ Campaign for McMaster”.What I think we should do is get feedback from the students on what we should spend this surplus. In my opinion, it won’t be a smart decision to use this much of money all at once for one project, but at the end I want to find a way to get the feedback from the students directly.The other idea that I liked was using another portion of the surplus to create new student bursaries and scholarships, as there is a lot of student whom don’t get eligible to student bursaries or scholarships because of many reasons.
3- Provincial and Federal electionsIn any kind of voting or elections that happened at McMaster University, I found a very little turnout of students coming out to vote. We should discuss this with the VP-Education to find some ways to encourage students to come out and vote. And of course before coming out and vote we should make sure that students will send their messages for the candidates and get the chance to ask them questions and meet them. I will be looking forward to work with the external affairs committee on this idea, as they will be more in contact with the external students issues.
4- International studentsBeing an international student gave me the chance to view a lot of problems that other international students suffer from. International students don’t get equal opportunity compared to non-international students. For example, international students are not allowed to apply for bursaries or McWork summer program until they are done 2nd year. The school claims because they don’t have enough funds for that, but I believe that the MSU should fight for equal rights for all MSU members ignoring any differences between students. Maybe people will be saying that we can’t change the whole country or the school administration’s ideas, but still we can stand up for the justice that everyone deserves.
5- McMaster University ClothingAfter I visited the states a couple of times, I found out how much students there like to show which school they are from, you go to the school and find a lot of students wearing at least one piece that has their school name on it. Everyone knows that the clothing for McMaster at titles (bookstore) are ridiculously expensive, what I’m thinking of is if we can get in contact with a clothing factory or company that will be making clothes with McMaster University name on them and we can sell them at the new MSU shop in the athletic center.
6- More Support for Varsity Teams For me personally, I wanted one day to play for the university varsity team but because of some injuries and time limitations due to my engineering program, I was not able to fulfill my goal I wanted to do so. But still I’m crazy about sports and supporting it, so in my visits to the states I was able to find how much students support their varsity teams and go out to their games. I know that they have better championships than what we have in Canada. But why don’t we - the MSU - work on finding ways to attract more students to support our varsity teams. Maybe it’s not our duty as part of the university affairs committee to do this but we should be taking this issue and recommendation to the MSU.
I just mentioned some of the initial ideas I thought about before meeting with the committee, but I just wanted to start things quickly. I will of course be forwarding this to the committee and other people interested. I will try my best and the other members working with this committee to get feedback from students and listen to their needs, and I ask everyone to feel free to contact the committee. At the end, I really wish at the end of the year I will be able to reach the committee goals and leave a good mark behind us. This is one of my favorite lines which I want to end up with, “Now we talked the walk, so let’s walk the talk from here”.
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