[mlangille]

Hey Science!

It's that time of year..SRA general elections are here and that I means I'll be one of numerous candidates attempting to use my powers of persuasion to get you to vote for me on March 10th and 11th.

First, a little bit about me,
My name is Meaghan Langille and I am a first year life sciences student at McMaster. In my short time here at Mac I have attempted to be actively involved within the school community.

Thus far I have been involved in both Engineers Without Borders- McMaster Chapter and SOCS (Society of Off-Campus Students). I was also a candidate for internal commissioner of FYC this past Spetember. Despite not being elected, the process enabled me to become more informed on what the MSU does and how it serves students.

Now onto my platform.
My platform is going to consist of 2 subgroups: commitments and possibilities.

Commitments are goals that I feel are feasible and capable of being accomplished within the one-year term on the assembly.

Possibilities are current ideas I have that will need to be researched further to ensure they are plausible and capable of being achieved within a one-year term on the assembly.

I COMMIT TO:

More tangible communication
-Creating an active Science Caucus fb group where students can go to put forth any questions/ concerns, participate in discussion(s) with caucus members, find out office hours (both in SRA office and open air), and use as general communication tool with science students

-The MSU website would be linked to the group to hopefully increase activity and use of MSU website as a resource for students

Increased Student Engagement
-Many students are very unaware of the MSU member positions they can hold on SRA standing committees, this is something that must be addressed to further involve a greater diversity of student and make the MSU appear more relevant to more students.

-Using public mediums to inform MSU constituents of open MSU seats on Standing Committees; mediums such as facebook and MacInsiders announcements/ events postings, having it possibly appear on “The Scoop” events feed of the MSU website, providing this information via the MSU email newsletter, and on the sandwich board posted outside the SRA office as a means of promoting vacant committee seats.

Real Accountability
-Building on the commitment of increased student engagement by holding representatives accountable to their year plans. Many students are completely unaware that SRA representatives’ complete year plans with goals of what they hope to accomplish within their term.

-Making the year plans publicly available (similar to this year’s “Year End Assessments”) via the MSU website then linked to facebook, MacInsiders and quite possibly twitter to ensure there are numerous means for students to access these plans with the hopes of increasing the amount of “informed” constituents and therefore producing more engagement potential

The Possibilities…

-Investigate the possibility of producing and making failure reports publicly available for projects that do not necessarily work out for the best. Although it is difficult to admit when we have failed, it is better to inform constituents of any efforts being put forth on their behalf- regardless of the outcome. Would you rather know someone tried and failed or didn’t bother to try at all?

-Investigate possibility of conducted “live polls” during class visits. A “live poll” would include classes that do utilize the I-clicker to have questions set up and answer via I-clicker to comply data in a somewhat engaging manner. I hope I’m not the only one who feels like they’re playing “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire” when using the I-clicker.

-Investigate means of increasing the off-campus connection/ connection students have to the Hamilton community. Whether it be building on the progress of the current “Get Cultured: McMaster” campaign in progress with current SRA representatives or collaboration with various student groups to enhance the connection to Hamilton that many student feel is lacking. Looking into further collaborative efforts with SOCS, Maroons, SCSN, and possibly the external affairs committee (dependent upon their current project endeavours).

This concludes my platform points for the time-being. If you have any questions or comments feel free to ask.

Voting will take place Wednesday March 10th, 2010 and Thursday March 11th, 2010! Please take the time to educate yourself on the candidates running and make an informed choice before casting your ballot.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask and check out my fb group at:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=...d=376973685914

[mlangille]

Also the new MSU President-Elect, Mary Koziol has been posting questions for candidates to answer so here's her question to me and my response:

What role do you think... the MSU website should play in SRA communication if there are a number of mediums (ie. MacInsiders, Twitter, Facebook) where students go for information?


(My answer is also going to attempt to elaborate on the following questions as well: What do you see as the most effective means of reaching your constituents?, What do you think is a more efficent way of surveying student- electronic polls or in-person polling?)

I think the role of the MSU website needs to play regarding SRA communication is as an accurate resource. Yes, I acknowledge that facebook and MacInsiders are both excellent communicative tools and must continued to be used to ensure as many constituents are reached as possible. However, the thing to consider with these mediums is that indviduals can leave feedback on them- this feedback is necessary however let’s say by chance individuals posting make comments that are taken out of context and skew information being preserted. Therefore, the MSU website must be regarded as a source that provides accuracy for one thing and is more accessible. Moreover, the navigation of the MSU website in its current state is very confusing and when seeking out information can at times feel like a treasure hunt.

Another consideration to have with all of these web-based communicative tools is a stronger cohesion between them. So not just posting on fb/ MI and posting on MSU website but linking the 2- I know many representatives currently do that and I fully acknowledge that and am impressed by their efforts. However, just because it is currently being done doesn’t mean the incumbent assembly should be disregarding it. In order for this cohesiveness to carry on and there be continuity from year-to-year, we the candidates and potnetial assembly need to not only say it’s being done, that’s great so let’s move on. We need to evaluate it the past efforts and ask ourselves tough questions.

Tough questions like: how effective is this (effectiveness being measured in qunatity of constituents reached), where/ how are these current methods lacking, how can we make students more aware of these resources? To elaborate more on making students more aware- this is HUGE- it is one thing to post our documents on MSU website and MI and a completely different thing to ensure students are seeing it.

In ensuring students see it there are many avenues of communication/ visibility that need to be looked at. This means going above and beyond technological mediums- this means don’t just post documents on facebook/MI/ MSU site then make another post on these mediums about a post (that sounds confusing so I ‘ll attempt to clarify- so you want to inform consituents, you then decide to post it on the aforementioned mediums- but then say “Well how will people know its posted?” and you decide to then post again on the same medium just stating that ypu’ve posted these documents). In order for this information to reach students, WE must reach students at a more PERSONAL level- this is something that numerous students I have spoken to during the campaign have stated as an issue.

Many students say, “I see all of these people coming to my classes and taking time out of their day to speak to me one-to-one. However, as soon as those polls close, that just stops and it shouldn’t and the fact that it does is something I am not happy with.” This is something I completely agree with and know this term it was somewhat addressed with class visits and open air office hours- but again for the sake continuity it must be addressed (I will take class visits for example- though I know it is a daunting task to reach every single class witihn a faculty however I think any class with >150 is a goal to consider, personally speaking this term I had no science reps come to my class, I found it suprising considering I am enrolled in 6 courses this term, all of which have at least 200-300 students in the lecture section). Furthermore, if we as candidates are willing to put the time in now to engage and approach students we must continue to do so if elected. Furthermore, this is something I discussed with an accalaimed candidate for the kinesiology caucus, Nashwa Khan and will not take full credit for this idea, but we just discussed it and feel it be fitting to address. When approaching students/ looking to be more visible, we need to consider “SRA branding”- what I mean is when having SRA reps do class talks or roaming campus have them wear some form of rep suit (possibly look at getting them facullty rep suits or lending out maroon rep suits for them to wear). Also SRA specific gear- I know there are the MSU hoodies and tshirts but anyone can purchase them and wear them- so this is more gear that would have SRA/ SRA logo prominently displayed on it. This would be 2 things that students can associate SRA reps with. But again to reiterate just walking around campus in this gear is NOT going to be effective- we still must take initiative to approach students personally and hear what the have to say.

To elaborate on approaching student/ receiving student feedback- this is why I would like to look into the possibility of utilizing I-clicker in class visits to poll students (for classes that use I-clicker). I think this is an effiecent polling method (if feasible-more research and consulting needs to be done I do admit) because it will be using a systematic electronic method to compile feedback/ data from a large number of students at a time while still having the personable aspect of reps being visible within classes. Also when engaging students on one-to-one basis we should be preparing an overview of what has been happening within the SRA as well as have some pop poll type questions to receive some more feedback on a personal level.

Also with regards to more effective polling methods, look at the results of past polls and ask those tough questions. How many students participated? What was the subject of the poll? How was the poll promoted? What was effective? What are more promotional opportunities to look into? This means looking at polls that had high turn out vs/ those tha didn’t. An example of a poll that was held and rather successful this year was the election pop poll “Do elections make the grade?”- through examining how that poll was promoted in comparison to less successful/ lower turnout polls can we see hpw tp collect even more feedback. This ties back to promoting through the technological mediums of MI and FB, class announcments, posters, and differrent campus reps (faculty, SOCS, Maroons etc) to ensure feedback continues to increase.

Lastly, I know throughout this response I speak of asking ourselves (if elected) tough questions and investing in students, to tie this all in there is an evalution method for doing this that I have been exposed to through my involvement with EWB and feel it could be a beneficial consideration to use as an assembly- at a caucus/ committee level then present the findings at meetings in comissioner/ caucus leader reports. It’s referrred to as “SWOT” analyisis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. If there is no formal evaluation metohd like this in place I feel it is a possibility to consider in order to provide a more pragmatic, holsitic approach to issues and projects. This would aid in ensuring the actions of the assembly are in best interest of constituents and are in line with the MSU consitution’s purpose of enhancing student life and acting as the voice of students at an adminstrative level.


I hope this clears up everything and if you are still reading this I want to thank you for taking the time to hear my take on things. Also if you have any questions/ comments/ criticisms I would love to hear them. I know I still have much to learn and am up for the challenge