The Strand sat down with Jayde Jones, presidential candidate in the 2018 VUSAC spring election. Jones is currently serving as a UTSU Director, representing Victoria College. We discussed her plans for strengthening the internal structure of VUSAC, the importance of actively pursuing student feedback, as well as her proposed pilot project that would place free menstrual products in Victoria College bathrooms.
The Strand: Why are you running for President?
Jayde Jones: I held a councillor position on VUSAC in the 2016-2017 year, and I really enjoyed the experience. It was a tumultuous year to be on VUSAC because there was a lot happening with the Dean’s Office, with administration, and we had our Finance Chair resign, and so our actual working culture wasn’t always ideal. But the opportunities that I had—I got to work really closely with the Sustainability Commission, and with the Equity Commission, and I got to create my own campaign for voting season called “This is What Equity Looks Like,” all of these really cool things, and I really felt like I had found a place where I could do some of the things I wanted to do at Vic, and also through that experience I learned so much about what it was that Vic needed.
That was the gift of being there during such a tumultuous year is that people were being really vocal about what wasn’t and isn’t working at Vic, and that’s where even some of these ideas started, as early as back then, specifically compiling a Dean’s Office reform and recommendations report, in consultations with students, and it will hopefully involve talking to some of the students who had those experiences, and seeing what can be done about them and making VUSAC a real advocate for that. So that is when it started, and then I was planning on running for another VUSAC position when I was approached to run for the UTSU last year.
Which position is that, that you were planning to run for?
I was hoping to run for one of the VP positions, with a particular interest in VP Internal, just because again, the internal culture had been somewhere where I saw much room for improvement, and I think much of my platform now does reflect some of the changes that I saw as necessary then that I think continue to be just good governance practices. But then I was approached to run for the UTSU, and I was engaged with many of the issues that were ongoing at the UTSU, and it felt too important to be involved in this year at the UTSU than it would be to run for VPI and stay at Vic.
I’m really grateful for the year that I’ve had working with the UTSU. I’ve managed to stay incredibly connected to Vic, but I also got to see how Vic fits into the bigger picture, and see some really divisive campus issues, and I got to hear from a lot of students about what they like and dislike about student politics, and what the appropriate place of student governments is, than I think I would have gotten on VUSAC. So it probably would have made this campaign period easier if I had gone and been successful in getting an executive seat on VUSAC last year, but I definitely think that I ultimately made the right choice in pursuing a position with the UTSU, because I learned so many things that I wouldn’t have otherwise, but I still got to engage with VUSAC to the extent that I have another year’s experience of working with the body, and a really robust understanding of what VUSAC can do.
How has your experience as a Vic Director with the UTSU prepared you to take on the role of president?
One of the key things about holding a UTSU position when it’s on a board level in representing a division or a college is that you can make the role as big or as small as you want to, because it’s a very self-guided position, which is great in that you have a lot of autonomy and not great in that you don’t really have a team around you. So I was really lucky that I had Hambo[luhle Moyo] as my co-director until December, and one of the things I aimed to do with this position was make it as big as it could possibly be. That started with getting an anonymous feedback measure in May, just after we’d been elected, and you’ll see that thread of anonymous feedback through my platform. I was surprised that people actually used it, and that they used it to talk about specific items that were being voted on and how they felt and the people around them felt about them.
One thing I am particularly proud of were my monthly reports, which were a campaign promise, and I think have been really effective. I had a lot of people say that they had read them and learned a lot about the functioning of the UTSU and what it is that I was actually doing there. I’m really happy that those came to fruition.
Your campaign advertises a “forward-looking VUSAC that listens.” In what way do you feel that VUSAC is not doing this now, or in what way do you think that they should be?
All of my points in areas for improvement hopefully won’t be taken as critiques of current council. A lot of them are directed at structure and not particular individuals and roles. I think council this year in particular has done a really great job in engaging students. When I say “forward-looking,” I’m looking particularly at the structure of council, the culture of council, and the actual institutional policies and practices that are being followed or should be being followed, what those look like and what tangible impacts of them are on not only VUSAC members and their experiences, but the relationship between VUSAC and student groups, and Vic more broadly. So forward looking is really an emphasis on this idea that there are lots of really cool things that I want to do in my term if elected, but I also want to leave behind a council that is in a strong position to move forward and continue to grow and continue to be internally reflective and an active seeker of outside opinions.
With respect to “that listens,” I think that one thing that VUSAC as greatly improved on this year is being receptive to people that come to them with criticism or feedback, but I think there’s still a long way that they can go in terms of actively seeking out people’s opinions. I think some of the measures that I hope to implement, like an anonymous feedback form available for all of the VCU to use, with the ability to check a box that says you would like published a written response from the executive on how this concern is being addressed. [This is] among other things, like revising commission structures to be more open, making meetings more accessible, making sure that things are much better advertised—a whole bunch of things will hopefully be taking a more proactive step towards getting people’s voices to listen to, as opposed to waiting for them to come to you.
As it stands, people who have been around Vic for a long time don’t have a positive opinion of VUSAC, given many different things that have happened, so I think some of those people probably have some of the most valuable things to tell VUSAC, and are probably the least likely to come to VUSAC. I want to bring VUSAC to them. And then I want to continue the phenomenal work that council this year has done in making incoming students feel like VUSAC is a place they can actually go to.
Both you and Katie have very lengthy platforms. I’ve heard feedback from students that think it’s fantastic that we have two dedicated candidates who have put this much thought into their campaigns, but they all laugh when I ask if they’ve actually read the platforms.
Which is super fair. I’ll be honest, I had an original version of my platform that was genuinely over 60 pages long. I keep it on my computer so I still have all my ideas, but I shrunk it down to 30 pages and I didn’t expect anyone to read it. I don’t expect anyone to read it. The platform exists so that when you see me use a word like democratic, accessible, or forward-looking, you’re able to see that I’ve backed that up with specific ideas. The platform is there as an accountability measure. I think it’s really important that people know when I say something like “piloting a free menstrual product in Vic washrooms” that there’s a game plan for how to make that happen.
When I’m talking to students [during my campaign], I’m engaging them first in what they want to hear. We tailor the conversation to where they want to go. I think that’s hopefully something that will be a running theme if I am elected president.
You have a very broad scope of ideas represented in your platform. Are you concerned at all about actually being able to address all of these things during your term?
I’m not actually worried about being able to get through the full scope of ideas. If you’re paying attention to the language of some things, for some things I’m not making promises. One of my points is “exploring the option of hosting internal UTSU Director elections,” not because that’s not incredibly easy to make happen, because it is, you just send an email to the UTSU, but because that’s something I’m not really sure whether past VPEs or UTSU Directors other than myself would need and want. For other things it’s because it is a lot more unpredictable. It involves working with administration, it’s something that I maybe don’t have full control over. But I think that the really big thing about the VUSAC presidency is that you have four months of being a full-time president who is being compensated for their work. You make $8,000 in the summer, and I’m an incredibly hard worker. I don’t ever give less than eight-million percent of myself to something, and part of the reason I cut down my platform initially from the 60 pages to 30 is because I want to give people a sense of what I can really do.
What part of your platform are you most passionate about?
I am incredibly excited about the goal of piloting a free menstrual product distribution system in Vic washrooms. It’s something that came to me as an idea as a result of the fact that the Student Projects Levy is so chronically underused. It takes in around $30,000 every year, and what was intended to happen was that that money would get used every year, and not that there would be a growing and growing pile of student money just sitting there. There is talk about lowering the Student Projects fee, but I was thinking if we are already paying this money, maybe we can redirect some of it to do something that really matters. In my platform I talk about free menstrual products only being available in VUSAC proper, in their office, and I thought about how many students use that, and how many students would use that if it didn’t involve having to go to VUSAC.
My game plan is as follows: throughout the summer, there are tons of other universities, tons of other student unions, and most not on the small scale that is Vic (but that will actually work in my favour) who run programs like this. It’s a numbers game—crunching the numbers, putting together a formal proposal for Student Projects, presenting that proposal to Student Projects, getting start-up funding from Student Projects to pilot the program for a year. I should mention that throughout the summer would come consulting physical plant about actually putting in distribution members, like putting in a pad and tampon dispenser without a coin feature. Although the project can start without that, because baskets are a thing. So basically, making sure that goes in place and then keeping really good records of what is being spent, how much of what products are used, how often ordering needs to happen, how often caretaking staff need to be involved, and then using that to compile an end of year report, and running a spring 2019 referendum asking whether students want to re-appropriate whatever it works out to be—let’s say it would be $3 of the $10 they pay now is not designated Student Projects, but is designated [for] free menstrual products, and they continue to pay $7 into Student Projects. This is something that imposes an extra cost to anyone who menstruates, and I don’t think it’s fair that students have to bear that cost or anyone has to bear that cost by virtue of the body they live in.
What is the first thing you would do if elected?
The first thing I would do in office is bring together the entire group of people who were elected and have a steering meeting, talking about our priorities and what we want to do, and I’d want to hear their feedback about what they would like an official first meeting to look like, what they’d like to know, and what they’d like to learn. What’s really important for me is that the incoming council, if I’m a part of it, gets conflict resolution training right at the beginning of the year so that we’re able to, in a healthy, professional, internal to VUSAC environment, handle any conflicts that come down the road.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
