I guess if you're reading this, the answer is probably not. That's more or less what my campaign is about. I'm calling for Transparency, Advocacy and Change in the SRA. Read on if I've caught your interest.

Just thought I would make a post on MacInsiders about my campaign for a seat on the SRA as a Social Sciences Representative.

So, if you're in Social Sciences, and think the SRA needs to place a better focus on transparency, advocating for our specific needs as students and undergo positive change to become more engaged with us as students(10.8% voter turnout?! Not good enough. We need to become more engaged.), I would welcome you to take a look at my Facebook page (or alternatively read it here, I've posted it below) and read my platform so you can see that "Transparency, Advocacy and Change" are more than just buzzwords on my posters, and see if it's something you feel you can Band Together with me on, and let the SRA know these are things that matter to us as students.

Thank you,

- Eric Gillis.

P.S: If this is breaking any rules, or is in the wrong forum, my apologies, please feel free to delete/move it accordingly

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Prof. Voros: "Wow Eric, I was not aware the MSU paid presidents $40,000"

It's time for Transparency.
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My Platform:

Why I'm running:
There are three key and sincere reasons why I'm running in this election. You'll see them all over my posters around campus: I want to push for an increase in the overall level of Transparency of the MSU, strive for the MSU as a group to increase advocacy of issues that truly affect students, and effect change in some of the MSU's policies that I think are part of the reason we're so disconnected from the students who we, as a group, are supposed to be representing. Below, I get into the actual specifics of my over-arching goals.
I welcome you to give them a read and see if they're something you think you can stand behind to show our Student Union that we, as students, want a government that is accountable, sincerely focused on our needs, and above all is open and honest.

Thank you for your interest in my campaign, and I hope that come this election we can Band Together as Social Science Students. For Transparency, for Advocacy, and for Change.
- Eric Gillis.

Transparency:

- Presidential and Vice Presidential Salaries: This point is a big one. Literally.
Why is this something you should care about? Because every single one of my fellow students that I have talked to have been absolutely shocked when I told them that our President's salary, including all the compensation and benefits (which includes a “free” apartment) is over $40,000 per year. (Source: http://oncampus.macleans.ca/educatio...students-union )

Despite the fact that this information is technically available if you're willing to sift through the multiple legalese-ridden bylaws of the MSU to try and find it and then do the math to actually get their total salary, I don't think that's good enough, and I think, as a student government, that we need to do a lot more to educate people on how much we're paying our executive members, and furthermore look at trying to introduce a system that ensures that salary is being properly earned. I feel this sort of transparency is something we owe to our fellow students, and right now the MSU is clearly not providing it.
As students, that's not chump change. That's a significant salary, and it's a salary that is coming out of our own pockets.

The story's no different when it comes to our three unelected Vice Presidents, either. They do not receive their mandate directly from the students, yet they're paid over $31,000. Bet you didn't know that one either. Don't feel uninformed, it's not your fault. The fact is, most people don't know. This needs to change, and this would be one of my key pursuits if elected.

Advocacy:

As a Student Union there are limits to what we can actually do around Campus. That's just the truth, and that's something I pride myself on being willing to admit freely. I won't stand by and make false promises I can't keep in order to win votes. Not my style. That said, there are no limits on what we can Band Together as a group and advocate for, and offer to collaborate on with other bodies. We can't force anyone's hands on these things-- but we can certainly let them know what we think of them and what our wishes are. With this in mind, here's what I would like to see the government of the MSU pursue:

- Taking a close look at Avenue:
There's not a single student I've met who hasn't had a problem or gripe about Avenue To Learn, which is an outside service provided by a company known as "Desire2Learn". It's a service the school is paying for that is supposed to make courses more easily accessible online, and yet quite contrary to that, it has frequently been suffering from serious outages of service, or small seemingly "random" errors that all add up to a frustrating experience, ultimately leading to heavily inconsistent availability-- and since most professors now use this service exclusively for course content and event planning, students suffer tremendously when this information is found to be unavailable. If elected, I would pursue having the SRA advocating for the University to pursue a serious commitment from Desire2Learn to ensure these constant problems stop, or to consider looking elsewhere for a similar, more-reliable service.

- The remedy of “Lake McMaster”:
As much as I love canoeing to class, this has been a problem for years and has to be looked at. It's not only just a looks issue, but for some students it's a serious matter of accessibility-- those with disabilities should not be expected to go around the entire grounds in order to get to class. The MSU recently just pulled in nearly a million dollar surplus. (Source: http://www.thesil.ca/msu-makes-record-surplus) We have money, and as a group elected by and for students we have significant sway with the university. I would like to see us advocate for the university to seek a way of dealing with this issue, potentially by raising the paths to a higher level so that water does not pool over them, or any other sort of cost-efficient, feasible system of doing so and if necessary offering to work together to fund the efforts.

- The pursuit of Adequate Space for McMaster's various societies, clubs and groups:
Campus space, or I should say the dire lack thereof, is an issue that plagues all groups on our campus, and is unfortunately not going to be something that goes away, at least not any time soon. Study spaces, club spaces, they're all heavily restricted and reaching their capacity.
To name one blatant and dire example: SOCS, or the Society of Off Campus Students, is one of the McMaster community's largest groups and represents the many off-campus students of this University, of which I, and many, many others, am one. Right now, they're residing in a building that is set to be demolished and will then have no official space for their members on campus as of May 1st. This is a serious and immediate student issue, and we need to look at seriously asking the University to look into finding a space for this group to call home. This time permanently.

Change:

These are things completely within the MSU's control to enact, and things I would pursue with the utmost dedication if elected:

- More Electoral Data:
During this Presidential election it was noted that there was an entire lack of Females engaged in running for the position. A lot of people had a lot of questions, comments, and concerns, and I was no different. I think that we should try to take steps into seeing more specifics of voting trends in our elections by pursuing the compiling of more electoral data in regards to gender, faculty and perhaps even age. This could help us to identify trends in order to start pursuing and targeting those people that are less-likely to vote and from there see what we can do in order to get them more engaged. To this end, I would like to engage in discussions between our election officials and our student government to see how we could better compile such statistics, and work with them in any way necessary to do so.

- More Democracy, Less Bureaucracy:
Bluntly-- I think our Vice Presidents should be accountable to us, the students of McMaster. To that end I would like to see Vice Presidents become an elected-by-students position, not one that is elected by the SRA. If elected I would seek working with the currently formed Committee on Democratic Reform to achieve such a goal.

Furthermore, I would like to see the lessening of MSU Election Fees. I feel they are not only prohibitive but also “scary” to students who are interested in running but can't afford to make mistakes. The reality is that people do, indeed, make mistakes. We're only human.

I would also like to see the MSU pay for the Election costs (posters, pins, etc) accrued for students who are attending the university and are using OSAP government assistance in order to attend McMaster, as I feel that currently our election rules require a person to have funds that while to some may seem insignificant, to others may mean the difference between being able to run or not being able to run, and I don't feel it is fair to those students to deny them the ability to run and engage in fully-fledged campaigns if they should so desire

At least she apologised for spamming the forum...

Originally Posted by Zebedee

At least she apologised for spamming the forum...

I'm male, and I'm not intending to spam the forum. I fully intend on being active in this topic and replying to all questions and comments raised. If you still don't feel it's worthwhile to be here, then I fully understand, but I don't personally agree with you.

Originally Posted by Eric_G

I'm male, and I'm not intending to spam the forum. I fully intend on being active in this topic and replying to all questions and comments raised. If you still don't feel it's worthwhile to be here, then I fully understand, but I don't personally agree with you.

Full Kudos to you for taking that initiative! I'm actually impressed that someone bothered to reply to one of my complaints about these messages. If I were in SS, I'd vote for you...
Don't know how many SS there are here, though. Might be a few.
And, sorry, I thought your name was Erin from the posters.

You had my attention with the MSU salaries, a fact that I was completely unaware of until now. But once you bad talked Lake McMaster,,, well i just dont know if i can support losing a natural landmark of our campus
on a serious note, that one path being flooded, while it is a bit of a pain at times, does not restrict students from getting to class. there are many paved paths between those buildings and the main road that do not flood.
With the amount of support and hype caused by lake mcmaster this year, i just dont know if its a good idea having its removal as one of your key points

Originally Posted by Chris23

You had my attention with the MSU salaries, a fact that I was completely unaware of until now. But once you bad talked Lake McMaster,,, well i just dont know if i can support losing a natural landmark of our campus
on a serious note, that one path being flooded, while it is a bit of a pain at times, does not restrict students from getting to class. there are many paved paths between those buildings and the main road that do not flood.
With the amount of support and hype caused by lake mcmaster this year, i just dont know if its a good idea having its removal as one of your key points

While I can understand what you mean about the hype perhaps not helping my campaign-- I think that hype should be used as a moving point for the university to actually do something. It's a blemish on our campus, and just because it makes for a funny joke, it is a serious problem for some people.

Consider JHE for instance. What is your primary means of entering those buildings? Generally speaking, you go in from the front facing "the lake". For some people with disabilities who may be coming from, for example, the Student Centre, they now are being forced to go around the entire grounds to avoid risking any possible injury.

I know perhaps this issue isn't something everyone consider but I do feel that we should strive to be inclusive of all students at McMaster.

Would you be able to provide us with a site that provides more detail on this, ideally the MSU site that indicates this plainly? or show us where you got the info from. Also would you know

1) salaries fro all the MSU exec positions
2) salaries for all SRA held positions
3) salaries/if there are salaries for any other student elected/run comities such as faculty societies, (i know the res execs get paid, would you be able to tell us how much)

I feel like this is something people should be aware of. If people know knew they were paid so much, they may take the elections more seriously and there may be a better turn out. I also think that both the prez and the VP should campaign for their positions, like in real elections. Its important that we know the full team that we are putting into power and not just one figure.

Originally Posted by Chevalier

Would you be able to provide us with a site that provides more detail on this, ideally the MSU site that indicates this plainly? or show us where you got the info from. Also would you know

1) salaries fro all the MSU exec positions
2) salaries for all SRA held positions
3) salaries/if there are salaries for any other student elected/run comities such as faculty societies, (i know the res execs get paid, would you be able to tell us how much)

I feel like this is something people should be aware of. If people know knew they were paid so much, they may take the elections more seriously and there may be a better turn out. I also think that both the prez and the VP should campaign for their positions, like in real elections. Its important that we know the full team that we are putting into power and not just one figure.

Happily! I'm running on transparency. This stuff should be easier to find, but until then, I will do my best to make sure it is. Anything to help inform people.

1) Here

OR

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/educatio...ase-their-pay/

2) There aren't any. Being on the SRA is not a paid position . I'm genuinely doing this because I want to better the students of McMaster.
3) There are several paid positions that I bet a lot of people aren't aware of. None of them are anywhere near as drastic as that of our executive members, but there is what I assume to be a complete list-- I could be wrong, and will update if I find out otherwise, available here: https://msu-production.s3.amazona w...ril%20 15.pdf

For the salaries, I have a source in my actual campaign platform, from Macleans magazine: http://oncampus.macleans.ca/educatio...ase-their-pay/

But, if you want direct to the source: you can look up the President's and VP's salaries by going through the actual by-laws of the MSU (this is likely why this has been kept under wraps for so long... who's actually that masochistic?!). So you don't have to do that, this is where I got that information from: https://msu-production.s3.amazona w... rch%2025.pdf

You'll notice that they don't give you the actual calculated salary that adds up to. I wonder why that may be?

I think Macinsiders should FB this thread so get it out to the public. information like this in important for everyone to know

Originally Posted by Chevalier

I think Macinsiders should FB this thread so get it out to the public. information like this in important for everyone to know

I put a link to this thread on my FB last night, i hope more people do the same!

wo. the vice actually gets more than the prez? that's weird??? also umm the second link you rpovided shows that some SRA positions do get paid? or is that something different (page 5)?

It is quite interesting to see the number of positions that are paid. Especially those that one would think people would compete over to do for free just for the exp/to put on resume. one of the things that surprised me is the fact that charity ball/shinearama/terry fox run coordinators get paid so much to organize a charity event. First, the charity ball isnt even that great, Ive seen faculty societies put on formals much better than the charity ball. Second it is a committee of students that organizes it, is it not? yet the coordinator makes 1500? personally, i think its a waste.

some of the paid positions, however, do make sense, and for the most part are reasonably paid. It would be interesting to see how much exactly these positions get paid overall (a salary is fine but how many hours do they clock in, how is it regulated, are there signs of abvious misuse of hours clocked on salaries that dont have weekly caps?)

I think a lot of this also extends onto the national government. Looking at how money is spent at the micro level opens your eyes and makes you wonder how people spend money on the national scale. how much money is wasted on governments paying them selves fat salaries and wasting money.
before when you said that the MSU voted to increase their salary even when they turned a deficit made me think of how bankers and heads of major companies gave them selves multi-million dollar bonuses while the recession was going on and people in their companies were getting fired. its disappointing to see that something like that, on a smaller scale, happens here.

Originally Posted by Chevalier

wo. the vice actually gets more than the prez? that's weird??? also umm the second link you rpovided shows that some SRA positions do get paid? or is that something different (page 5)?

It is quite interesting to see the number of positions that are paid. Especially those that one would think people would compete over to do for free just for the exp/to put on resume. one of the things that surprised me is the fact that charity ball/shinearama/terry fox run coordinators get paid so much to organize a charity event. First, the charity ball isnt even that great, Ive seen faculty societies put on formals much better than the charity ball. Second it is a committee of students that organizes it, is it not? yet the coordinator makes 1500? personally, i think its a waste.

some of the paid positions, however, do make sense, and for the most part are reasonably paid. It would be interesting to see how much exactly these positions get paid overall (a salary is fine but how many hours do they clock in, how is it regulated, are there signs of abvious misuse of hours clocked on salaries that dont have weekly caps?)

I think a lot of this also extends onto the national government. Looking at how money is spent at the micro level opens your eyes and makes you wonder how people spend money on the national scale. how much money is wasted on governments paying them selves fat salaries and wasting money.
before when you said that the MSU voted to increase their salary even when they turned a deficit made me think of how bankers and heads of major companies gave them selves multi-million dollar bonuses while the recession was going on and people in their companies were getting fired. its disappointing to see that something like that, on a smaller scale, happens here.

The SRA does not have paid positions so far as I know, the ones you're referencing are for "speakers", etc. Those aren't SRA positions but positions that are actual jobs (for instance the "speaker" moderates debates of the SRA)

As for your point about seeing the raise despite a deficit-- I agree, it's very disappointing to see. I hope it's something we can work to reverse.

The UTSU president and each of the five VPs all get $28370/yr, which is less than the MSU exec gets and UofT is a far bigger school...just saying.

The UTSU is a member of the Canadian Federation of Students, and Mac is not. They pay a wicked sum (tens of thousands of dollars.. Might be as high or higher than $50,000 if I remember correctly) to a REALLY MESSED UP organization, so their administrative budget is "slightly" more limited.

Please refer to this post for explanations and corrections of some of the points in this thread: http://www.macinsiders.com/showpost.... &postcount=76