Candidate: David Campbell
Fourth Year Arts & Science

SITE: www.davidcampbell2012 .com
TWITTER: @its_dcampbell
FACEBOOK:David Campbell: Engage, Experience, Grow
LOCATION: Between La Piazza and Tim Horton’s.
PLATFORM SLOGAN: “Engage, Experience, Grow.”

Hi David, first off congratulations for making the decision to run for president. Running a campaign takes a lot of hard work and dedication so good luck! I developed a question for you from examining your platform and I have made sure to do this for each of the candidates. I look forward to your response.

1. One of your platform points mentions bringing the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to campus. How do you intend to help bring a CFL team to McMaster? Is the intention for this to happen over the summer or during the actual fall semester? If it turns out that the presence of this team creates difficulties for the campus, such as parking, and an influx of non students during the school year, how would you address these concerns?

Thanks for asking! I've been receiving a lot of questions about this, so it's great to have the chance to respond.

As it happens, the TiCats have already been discussing playing games at McMaster during the 2013 season. In my co...nversations with Phil Wood, Dean of Students and the main contact on this point, I learned that lending the voice of students could help make this possibility a reality. This issue is of particular relevance because the opportunity is limited to this year only. We can get the CFL on campus - building relationships with the community and raising the profile of our university - but only if we act now.

As you suggest, the logistics of this are important to consider. The games would happen during the summer, since the extra infrastructure required to support the fans would cause too much interference with our regular classes, from putting up temporary extra seating to accommodating extra parking. One of the reasons for students to be part of this discussion is to make sure that students don't pay for any of this infrastructure. But I think it much more likely that the university will be making money in the process, in which case it will be important for us to track where this extra money goes.

Students have a huge opportunity with this deal. Not only are there the benefits for the university as a whole which I mentioned before, but representatives with the TiCats have told me that the organization would be willing to offer student prices or discount tickets if we show we are interested. Students who are still on or near campus could have a chance to be a part of having a professional sports team at McMaster.

The TiCats coming to Mac is an initiative which is probably going to happen, whether students get involved or not. But the MSU taking part will ensure that students benefit as well from this amazing community initiative.

Thanks again for the question Matt! I will likely be writing a blog post explaining this idea again soon, so be sure to check it out

Hi David,

Congratulations on your run and campaign so far! I wish you and all the other candidates the very best of luck this next week.

My question pertains to your platform point about making the Student Wellness Center more accessible with shorter wait times. Some of the key issues regarding the feasibility of this point extend beyond funding, which may become more challenging given the continuing recession and the extension of tuition grants which deduct from the provincial budget.

However, given the division of services from the Center of Student Development to the Student Accessibility Center and Student Wellness Center respectively, how likely do you think it is that the organizations will be able to accommodate more changes?

With respect to mental health appointments, cutting down wait times may allow more students to get their first appointment faster but could pose the risk of longer "between appointment" wait times. How have you and your team factored the implications of this into your decision, as students also registered with SAS who require Wellness appointments may need them on a more urgent basis, and more frequently.

Lastly, I was wondering if you had any data regarding the nature of appointments. While patient information is of course confidential, data could easily and privately be collected about what most of the appointments in a day entail; have there been significant rises in mental health appointments this year? Could this be because students were not familiar with the personal counselling offered by Campus Health + the CSD before the split? As well, now the Wellness Center is more actively promoting and advertising its mental health resources, are the numbers stabilizing over the course of the term and expected to do so? If so, would the university allow expansion of SWC given that more students may not necessarily be unwell, but simply not aware of the options available to them, causing a greater than expected influx of patients?

Thank you for your time,

Cheers
Bushra

Hey Bushra,

Thanks so much for your great questions! I will try to answer each of them in turn.

You are correct that in cutting down wait times, we need to ensure that the times between normal appointments are not made any longer. In fact, currently the wait time between regular appointments is two weeks, when visiting with a counsellor would normally take place weekly. This is why our focus in driving down both of these wait times should be the hiring of more counsellors. The major problem with doing this is space - because of the reshuffling of services you mentioned (done by Student Affairs in order to try and make them more efficient), the SWC does not have space to be adding more offices. Instead, our target will be using extra staff to extend the hours available for appoinments over mental health issues.

Currently, the SWC sees about 160-170 students per day (total). There are 7 physicians, and 7-9 counsellors on duty each day. Whether numbers of appointments are increasing or decreasing has been difficult to discover, due to the restructuring that has taken place. We can fairly safely say there is higher awareness levels on campus of mental health problems than there has been ever before, and we can only hope that this has cause a decreasing stigma surrounding the issue (past statistics have shown as many as half of all people suffering from mental illness never report the problem). Combined with our increasing enrolment, this may be in part responsible for the increasing wait times. It is important to stress that these wait times are not a result of lack of efficiency or effort in the SWC (far from it!), but insufficient resources.

I hope this answers your questions! If not, please respond and I'll get back to you. I'm happy this issue is getting attention, as I think it is one of critical importance for many students.

David

I really don care about the MSU presidentials, but the one thing I found funny...

All David Campbell would talk about when he came to class rooms to yell at us, was his idea of giving students free food... Im sure there are bigger issues to handle than that, and he didnt even say he how he was going to pay for this free food that he wanted to give to students every night during exams.

David Campbell!