The Strand: The biggest question mark here is that you’ve never been involved in VUSAC before.
Knipe: Yes, that’s correct.
So why run for president?
Well, I actually think me not being involved for VUSAC makes me an optimal candidate for president. I think in the past what we’ve seen is this kind of groupthink mentality in VUSAC, that basically leads to VUSAC representing their interest to the students, instead of student interests being represented by VUSAC. There’s a fine nuance to that, but I think it’s really important. That’s where I’m coming from. I just want to come at it from an outside perspective, bring in some new ideas, bring in a fresh face, and hopefully change things up a little bit. It’s been, in my opinion, very much the same group of people, same type of people for as long as I’ve been here, and I’d just like to see a little change.
You’re going into your fourth year.
I’m in my fourth year. I’m going into my fifth year. I recognize that the role of VUSAC president is one of the most significant student leadership roles you can take on at this college. I’m just doing school part-time next year, and I’m not working either because I’m living at home. I would say that gives me an edge, but I think it’s a more appropriate fit to the role. Because I’ve seen in the past people being president, running clubs, doing their job, being a full-time student, and they just burn out. So I’m hoping to enter this position as something that I’m doing full-time, part-time school, no work.
Last year was the first time that they introduced the ability to have co-presidents. Do you think you’ll have the resources to not burn out and dedicate the time?
Absolutely. I’m not a huge fan of the co-presidency. I understand why they introduced it. We just heard, year after year, that there was too much weight on the president’s shoulders. However, I think a lot of that weight was because of UTSU involvement, and also just things that aren’t regular VUSAC operating policy. Just unforeseen things that snowballed four years in a row. The deficit, internal issues, stuff like that. I respect the fact that we have co-presidents now and I think it’s a great idea, but I’m just worried, with co-presidents, that you have people micromanaging and kind of overlapping in their roles. I think having one person leading a group is a lot simpler and a lot more effective than having two trying to divide the roles up. It just becomes very micromanaging, and [that’s] not really what I’m about.
There’s a lot of people campaigning on the idea of a less hierarchical relationship than they currently perceive. Do you anticipate the same sort of hierarchy and just yourself helping that? Or do you anticipate that since you would be in the role on your own, you would be able to more accurately delegate and have everyone be able to contribute without that overlap?
Exactly. I think the hierarchy is probably one of the biggest systemic issues that VUSAC has. You’re not getting the most out of your members if you’re treating people like, you know, “You’re a counsellor, you are assisting the commissioners. You’re a commissioner, you’re not involved in the judicial proceedings.” I really want to break down those barriers. I would just like to see more equal treatment of members on the council. It’s pretty straightforward to me, coming from the outside. I know how I’ve run things in other groups, and it’s always been, you know, everyone’s got equal say, everyone gets their voice heard. No one has overlapping responsibility, because everyone has their role, and we talk about it, and then we break off.
On that point, other involvement in other student organizations, you’re involved in [Vic’s bike repair club] Betty & Dash, correct?
Yes.
How long have you been doing that?
I’ve done Betty & Dash technically since my first year, but I’ve been managing it for two years, since third year. I’ve always run it as an on-demand kind of organization. I never advertised for it because I don’t have the supply of bikes or technicians, people to work with me. Betty & Dash is not a great example of teamwork, because it’s a fairly independent operation. But I’m also captain of the dragon boat team at Vic, and that is an organization that’s all teamwork. I’ve really focused on giving each individual member, even if they don’t have an exec position, a role or place in the team. Explaining, you know, “You’re a pacer, this is what you’re doing. You’re the engine, you’re the caboose of the boat,” you know. Everyone’s got their role. Everyone needs to understand that, and no one has a better role than anybody else.
So you have leadership experience that’s outside of VUSAC. Are you confident that you’d be able to go in without having been inside the machinations of VUSAC and be able to properly handle the role?
I think it would be overly optimistic for me to assume there’s no learning curve. I’m expecting a steep learning curve, but that being said, as I mentioned earlier I’m only doing school part-time. I have the option to live at home and not worry about money, and that will give me the time to learn whatever policy proceedings that I need to learn. I’m not totally foreign to the institution, but I do recognize that there will be a learning curve for me to pick up on.
You’re coming in with a set of ideas pretty far off from how it’s currently run. Do you think that you will focus less on the institutional history of VUSAC, and let VUSAC do what you think it should be doing?
I don’t want to ignore the institutional memory entirely. I just want to update the institution. I think there are lots of good things that have happened, but I don’t think the way the council is organized, the hierarchy, is productive. If anything can be taken away from my time at VUSAC, I want it to be that there is not only representation of individuals on the council, but representation of students outside the council on VUSAC. I just don’t think that’s possible right now the way it’s set up. There’s too much separation between the top and the grassroots, even between the presidents and the councillors.
Around this time last year there was this optimism that VUSAC would get out of its bubble to a degree, because a lot of people campaigned on reaching out. For example, there were the mental health and sexual violence focus groups, which involved students at large. What are some of the ways that you envision to continue that consistent reach-out to the average Vic student?
Focus groups are sometimes appropriate, sometimes they’re not. I want to introduce a long-form survey for students to talk about their relationship to VUSAC and to campus life in general. I want to learn demographics. Everyone says Vic is two-thirds women, but that’s about all I know demographically, so I want to get that information so we can prescribe policy from there. I think there’s been a lot of focus on having more meetings and making them more available. I respect that, but I also think it’s better to have members of VUSAC going out into the community and just taking to people. If I’m in office, I’m going to possibly cut down on office hours, but also encourage individual members of council to spend an hour a week just talking to people they don’t know. Again, at the end of the day, there’s this separateness between VUSAC and the rest of Vic, and I want to ameliorate that by just getting people talking. I think that’s where it starts, really, is face-to-face interaction outside of the office.
Yeah, a lot of people say they don’t feel they can just walk into the office.
It’s not that welcoming a place. Even if you have the door open, it’s still kind of closed off. I think it’s better to just get the members of VUSAC out of the office. Get them out, get them talking to people. I recognize it’s difficult for a lot of people to do that. I love it, personally. I learned that from my friend JJ. You’ve just got to talk to people, and then from there things will just start happening.
They’ve been doing the “out of office” hours in the Cat’s Eye and Wymilwood Lounge. Would you follow that pattern and try to emphasize it more?
No, I don’t think adding more meetings is effective. I think there are certain meetings that need to be had; Caucus probably needs to continue. It’s kind of like a constitutional thing, so I would put it to the people [to see] if people really didn’t want it. I know how I feel about Caucus, but I think there’s enough people that want it. I think Caucus should stay the same, but more accessible hours and more options for Caucus meetings. It’s like this one thing, you miss it, you get a demerit point. I don’t like that. I don’t think adding more mini-meetings works. I think it’s just better to go out and talk to people. Even the idea of just having chat in Wymilwood, chat here or chat there, you’re setting groups of VUSAC people to hang out with VUSAC people, you know. They don’t usually run them as individuals, they have them as little groups, and it’s only generally the friends of those groups, so I just think it’s better to just talk to people. And I recognize that’s hard to enforce and encourage, but that’s really where I’m coming from. That’s what I do best, and it’s what I want VUSAC to do best.
What about relationships with the UTSU? Obviously there was the board structure this year that seemed to take up a lot of the presidents’ time, as well as the constant question of continued involvement in the UTSU. Do you think Vic has a place in the UTSU in the future, or do you think that’s something you don’t necessarily need to maintain for VUSAC to still do its job?
I think for VUSAC, as an entirety, to do its job, there needs to be some communication. I don’t see my role as president as someone who’s directly involved with UTSU or with UTSG. That’s what we have VPE and Board of Directors for. I’m more interested in focusing on Vic. That’s up to the VPE. That’s his or her job. It’s one of those things that the presidents have focused too much on in the past, and that’s what’s led to this burnout and this need for co-presidency, and thereby having this management problem. I really do feel like co-presidency can lead to a lot of issues with management on top. I’m not interested in getting any more involved in the UTSU, and the VPE thinks that we need to be.
Why run in your fifth year, not having been involved in student politics before? Why run for president and not another council position?
Since my ideas are, some might say, a little radical, a little outside the framework, I don’t think I could accomplish what I want to get done in any other position. If VUSAC was structured in the way I want it to be structured, then I’d run for those positions. But the way I see it, commissioners are boxed into their commission, councillors are chained to their commissioners, and members of the judiciary even still have very defined roles. I’m not saying get rid of tradition entirely, but we need to start breaking down a little of this past-century, top-down kind of governing. I don’t think I could do that in any other position.
What are some specific things that VUSAC isn’t doing very well right now that could be benefited by changing this hierarchy and organization? Why shake up the structure?
I think the most important thing is having real student representation on the council. As I mentioned before, it’s the same group of people that have been representing an increasingly diverse group of students. That needs to be shaken up, and in my opinion the only way to do that is to restructure the council. That’s the most important thing, representation on the council. I think it’s also, for me, a little bit about giving more autonomy to students, clubs, levies. I see VUSAC almost as an over-glorified club at times. It has its function and role of giving out money, but I don’t think that should be its main function, because then it turns into something like a finance club that does a little bit of student representation but really is focused on the finance. I want to shift away from that kind of financing and move to student representation, and by shifting away from the financing I just want to talk about my hopes for the future of VUSAC’s finances. Whatever is being financed on VUSAC, whether it’s commissions, whether it’s events that the judiciary run, I think there needs to be affirmation from VCU members, people not on VUSAC, that this needs to happen, because a lot of times you’re getting events or commissions running things that not that many people go to or know about or are interested in. I’m not sure why that is, but I do know one way to resolve that is to stop putting the cart before the horse. Get the interest and the student involvement before you start funding these things. I talk a lot about redistributing funds to clubs and levies and individual student projects, because I know there’s demand for those things. I don’t know that there’s demand for commissions unless I see that there are students involved in the commission as well as the commissioner. Of course there are times where commissions run events and there are lots of people involved, but there are also times when that doesn’t happen. Same is true for judiciary events and stuff like that. Refunding things in that way is a big part of shaking up the way the institution works.
So you want to decentralize things?
Absolutely. Going back to why I want to be president, I’ve gained so many invaluable experiences and opportunities from Vic over the years. I feel like I should be giving back a little bit, and I think running as president is an opportunity for me to do that. If I’m elected, in my policy I talk about forgoing the honorarium. I believe honorariums should be for people who need them, people who are losing income by taking this position. You could argue that I’m losing income, but I don’t need that income. I’m living at home, I have my OSAP funding. I’m not particularly worried about paying it off after I graduate, although maybe I should be. But this $8,000 just seems gratuitous for me to be taking it. At the end of the day, it’s my pleasure to serve students at Vic as their president, and I would rather see that money go back to clubs, levies, or individual projects. That’s another aspect of redistributing Vic finance that I talked about. I would never make it mandatory to forgo honorariums because I understand that there are people who very much could be doing better things with their time. But me personally, I don’t see it as something that needs to come with the job. The pleasure of serving Vic is enough on its own.
Which events or commissions do you have in mind where things are being paid for but nothing is happening or no one is showing up?
I can’t speak for this year as much. I’ve seen a lot of good work being done this year. But in the past, I’ve seen advertising for Robert Fan. I want to say maybe academic development, and maybe something else.
There was no academic development coordinator two years ago.
I can’t give you an example of an event that had no one show up, because I don’t think that exists. Most of the events I go to have a decent amount of [attendance]. Sometimes there’s only ten people, but that’s fine if those ten people are getting a lot out of it.
They could just be more efficient?
It’s more about getting VCU members involved with things going on at VUSAC. If you have only the VUSAC and councillors organising the events and then throwing them out to the public, the public doesn’t care as much. But if you go out first and talk to people about what they want to do and what they want to see, then you can get more people to work on events, which is always good, and also have real demand for these events. Rather than creating events in VUSAC then creating demand after the fact by advertising. I think that’s more where I’m coming from, because I really don’t think I can give an example of an event where I’ve been there and there’s been no one. It’s more about bringing students from outside VUSAC into VUSAC to get involved in these events before we start going too far [into planning them].
What three words would you use to describe yourself?
I would say porous, moderate, and young.
And what’s your biggest fear?
I could do shout-out to Rowan if he sees this article–my biggest fear is having President Robins steal my towel in the AC shower room.
