I sat down with Vice-President, Internal candidate Golda Greenspoon to discuss her experience, and what she intends to bring to the role of VPI on VUSAC in the next year.
The Strand: What sort of skills and experience do you bring to the table as VPI?
Golda: I have two years of experience on VUSAC. In my first year at Vic, I was a Councillor on VUSAC, which means I was doing a bunch of different things. My focus was on Highball that year, so with the Scarlet & Gold Commissioner. I was also the Finance Chair’s assistant, which game me a really good internal perspective, and helped me to understand how VUSAC really works through the budget and things like that. This year, I am the Secretary of VUSAC, which means that I take all the minutes for our meetings, and I also manage our office space, which is advantageous as I pursue the role of VPI, because it’s another kind of management—not as much the management of people but its definitely similar and there’s a lot of overlap. I have worked with the VPI on coordinating with people on Council to make sure things are going okay, and that the office was functioning well as a whole. Skills that I have outside of my VUSAC experience is the fact that I truly want to listen to people, I want to empathize, and know what’s going on and how I can help, and ameliorate conditions for them. I have good listening skills; I’m more than just compassionate, I want to actually take action and see things in a better situation than they are.
There’s been concern expressed over the role of Councillors, and the lack of leadership and what their role actually is. Do you have a plan to address those concerns? And if so, what is it?
The role of Councillors is very complicated. When I was a Councillor I would sometimes feel over-utilized as a Finance Councillor. I would have a lot of work to do, and sometimes not a lot of recognition—which is okay; that was my role in helping with the portfolio. It really needs to be established early on, not right before you’re assigning Councillors to a position, to get a sense of what they’re interested in. I think that’s a very important thing. If they’re interested, they will pursue their portfolio more actively, and the person they’re helping will pursue them back and it will be a more beneficial relationship. I think we also need to look at this idea of a hierarchy on VUSAC, as largely a falsified thing. I don’t think it should be in practice in the way that it has been in the past; it doesn’t make sense to me. The voices of the judiciary are given a huge amount more prioritisation than the Councillors. The student body has elected them, just like everyone else, and their voices need to be given the recognition they deserve.
Your platform seems to stem a lot from solidifying the Council, creating a more inclusive environment. Can you tell us a little bit more about that—what your concerns are, and how you plan to address those concerns?
So my biggest concern is that over the past two years there has been an incredible amount of bickering, issues, drama, and all those things you don’t want to be going on in the space where you’re meant to be getting productive work done. Feeling comfortable and voicing your opinions and ideas is important. It goes back to the Councillor thing—when you don’t have an environment that you feel free to speak in, even if it’s not the popular opinion, then it’s not a productive one, and things aren’t going to get accomplished. That’s the biggest thing for me, when you’re in a hostile or difficult environment, things just won’t be as good as they could be.
The plan of action that I want to take, and I think this will depend on how people react to it and what’s going on, is to hold more one-on-one meetings. I as the VPI would be meeting with individual council members. I think this needs to happen more frequently, and in a more flexible way, so that I am approachable enough for people to come to me with their issues. Another thing that I want to see more of is equity training. This has been an important topic over these elections considering we don’t have an equity commissioner, which is a major concern. I think that our second equity training session this past year was very effective. It was from an external source, and I would like to see more of that, more external bodies coming in to teach us, because it’s not coming from a familiar figure, it’s coming from someone who knows exactly what they’re talking about (not to discredit the Equity Commissioner in any way), but it’s coming from this body whose job it is to teach students about these issues. I think it would be ideal to have that in the summer, as soon as everyone is elected—four months without equity training is just too long. And then having Councillors and remaining members brought back in in October for the same training as well.
It’s your first week elected as VPI: what’s the first thing you do?
I think the very first thing that I would do is start meeting with people, finding out what they want and what their goals are. I want to know, I want that to be able to happen, and see where there’s overlap and where people can work together, and make sure we can collaborate in an awesome way. Of course along with finding an Equity Commissioner, but I know that’s everyone’s goal right now too.
