For some Victoria College students, not only does March mean final essays, exams, and assignments, it means election season. It’s a time where these students spend the majority of their time preparing for and executing a week-long election cycle where they attempt to convince fellow Victorians to elect them as their student leaders for the next twelve months. I sat down with co-presidential candidates Stuart Norton and Rahul Christofferson to talk about their campaign and their plans for their presidency if elected.
What sort of skills and experience do the two of you bring to the table?
Rahul: We have a lot of experience on VUSAC, we both have two years so far. We have experience from both sides of the Executive since Stuart worked as a Comissioner this year and I worked as VP this year on the judiciary. So we have seen some of the issues with the breakdown of communication that comes along with that. In terms of skills, there are general things in that we’re approachable, but it’s also that we work very well together and we’ve been working with each other on different things since we were councillors together.
Stu: I think we have very complimentary skills as well. Sometimes I can definitely be a little bit more cautious about things, whereas Rahul can be a little bit faster paced. I think we compliment each other nicely on how we come to a conclusion on things.
How do you guys think you’ll divide up responsibilities, given that you’ll be tackling the presidency as a team if elected?
Stu: I think we want to strike a balance between the two. We don’t want to totally isolate every single thing. But for example, the President or co-Presidents have to sit on the Orientation Executive Committee, or someone has to sit on the Board of Regents – on things like that we’re not going to split the role. But in dealing with other initiatives, we want to come at it collaboratively. We’re pretty into keeping an open discussion with each other, so we’re not polarizing ourselves with different responsibilities.
Rahul: We’re very similar in a lot of ways, both in our interests and our opinions on student politics. That being said, there are some things that you have to work on individually and that don’t require our attention at the same time, but there in many cases its easier to get things done if we keep each other informed and make decisions together.
Lets say you do get elected, and it’s your first day on the job, what’s the first thing you do?
Rahul: This is something that’s been bothering me since the all-candidates meeting, since I realized there was no one running for equity commissioner. I don’t want to go a full summer without an Equity Commissioner. We are both very conscious that we are both cis-gendered, male, white and mixed-race students. We want to be able to engage with equity issues both as allies and student leaders. An important part of that is being able to work with an equity commissioner. Not only will we have a lot of work on our plates that isn’t involved with equity commissioners, but also we have to take a step back as allies. We need to look for a way to hire or appoint an Equity Commissioner for the summer, someone who can be specifically dedicated to the portfolio until we can elect someone in the fall.
Stu: If we get elected, that would be fantastic and we would be thrilled. But there’s also a whole other team that’s also going to be elected. From the beginning, a really big focus for us will be to actually bring everyone together and have an unofficial meeting, and just getting everyone to get to know each other and feel comfortable. I feel that that is one of the biggest things that VUSAC faces going into the summer, is that you get elected, maybe you meet once, but people go their own ways. Keeping that community going is vital to the momentum you have going into the new school year.
A lot of your platform from what I’ve read so far stems from streamlining the ways VUSAC functions – supporting various VPs in their roles, increasing responsibilities of councillors, increasing communication with students and administration – which are all great. But are there any new initiatives on the table? New projects you hope to take on to improve student life at Vic, etc.?
Rahul: I think a part of our approach that we wanted to take from the very beginning is the exact opposite of that. We don’t want to start initiatives on our own, on top of the fairly substantial workload the president already has, and also because this is why we have commissioners, committees, and they are better suited to the job. They work with the issues more consistently; they are better suited to it. What we want to do is focus on taking a step back and really making our year about supporting everyone else’s work, doing what we need to do to support them.
Stu: Coming at it from being a commissioner this past year, which is an interesting role because you have your own portfolio and its very autonomous, but there is also this duality of balancing being an executive member of VUSAC that is involved. When you have such set initiatives, and you’re planning events, I don’t think it’s the president’s job to be running alternatives to that. I don’t think that’s where the focus should be, and I know that from being in that position, talking to other commissioners, and even talking to councillors who work with commissioners. People want the President’s to offer support, and I think us supporting these initiatives just increases their quality, and can have a direct effect on the programming that VUSAC puts out.
Victoria College students can vote from March 19-23 at voting.utoronto.ca
