Originally Posted by MrPlinkett

Is there a way to know what MSU President's business schedule is?

Like if he doesn't take full course load, and I don't think he needs to be in the office the rest of the time 5 days a week, then is there a reason he gets all those benefits?

I can provide some perspective on that if you'd like. The MSU is actually a larger than it appears organization with over $14 Million in revenue, over 50 Full Time Staff, 35 Business and Services, hundreds of volunteers.

The president is essentially a CEO so an average day of a full time Board of Director is anything but a walk in the park; in fact the MSU is larger than my current organization (Hamilton Chamber of Commerce) by a distance but an average person wouldn't think that based on the "pretend student council" stigma. There is a reason why you don't see MSU BOD folks often rerunning for their position, because it takes a physical and mental toll on you. Lastly, in terms of pay in the Human Resources world pay for CEO and Board of Directors is calculated using various algorithms and since we were doing an HR review at the MSU last year, out of curiosity we did one for our positions as BOD and the amount churned out was well over $70k in the market even when taking into consideration the fact that the person barely has an undergraduate degree.

The corporate oversight role is just one aspect, some of the others for a President include a variety of University Committees they sit on as a student representative. Whenever anyone in the University wants to conduct a project or initiative and need a "student voice", the president is the first one to be recruited. Then there are town and gown/community relations. Lastly, the President is almost an equal participant of the external lobbying efforts of the MSU. The MSU is a member of OUSA and CASA which are provincial and federal student advocacy organizations that through collaboration between student unions at other Universities advocate on a variety of issues at Queens Park and in Ottawa. The President is generally out of town for over 30 days for Conferences.

Lastly, a variety of student societies and clubs invite and expect the President to show up to their events. So formals, cultural celebrations, coffee houses etc.

And well, if you do still have time left after all of the above you then have your platform which understandably is the most well known job description of the President aka most students relate the job of the president to the platform; which in my personal experience is no more than 20-30% of the actual job.

Plinkett just got smacked swooop

Plinkett et al are morons.

Let me get this straight: you want the MSU to be MORE relevant, provide MORE services, craft BETTER policy, but you want to pay them less... Sounds like someone's been drinking Rob Ford's Koolaid.

If the compensation for this job is such a tremendous bounty then why do we only have 6 candidates in this race? By your logic shouldn't every single eligible student be running?

The fact is the compensation isn't really that great when compared to the commitment required or other jobs on the market for uni grads (more relevant to 4th years). This explains the relative rarity of seeing a 4th or 5th year candidate from Engineering or Commerce. The top students from those faculties are looking at offers from $50-80k salary with benefits. If we want to be attracting the school's best minds and hardest workers we should be offering higher compensation, not lower.

Jacob, would you support higher compensation for MSU BOD positions? Perhaps something in line with the $70k which Huzaifa mentioned.

Jacob whats one of your main platform points?

Originally Posted by samd

Plinkett et al are morons.

Let me get this straight: you want the MSU to be MORE relevant, provide MORE services, craft BETTER policy, but you want to pay them less... Sounds like someone's been drinking Rob Ford's Koolaid.

If the compensation for this job is such a tremendous bounty then why do we only have 6 candidates in this race? By your logic shouldn't every single eligible student be running?

The fact is the compensation isn't really that great when compared to the commitment required or other jobs on the market for uni grads (more relevant to 4th years). This explains the relative rarity of seeing a 4th or 5th year candidate from Engineering or Commerce. The top students from those faculties are looking at offers from $50-80k salary with benefits. If we want to be attracting the school's best minds and hardest workers we should be offering higher compensation, not lower.

Jacob, would you support higher compensation for MSU BOD positions? Perhaps something in line with the $70k which Huzaifa mentioned.

You are asking someone who is running for the position in question if they would support a nearly doubled salary for their work... aside from the fact that no one will EVER say no to higher pay, this is a heavily weighted question and therefore any response is irrelevant.
Thats like asking a group of 100 flight stewards/stewardesses if they would support an annual, fully compensated round trip flight to a destination of their choice for their work. Is this maybe a bit of an overstatement? yes, but the principles remain the same. Also, you seem the think that there is a large pool of eligible candidates for the position of MSU president in your comments. Correct me if I am wrong, but in order to run for MSU president, one must have held an executive position in the MSU previously. Therefore the 6 candidates running this year sounds about right in terms of number of eligible candidates interested in the job

I can provide some perspective on that if you'd like. The MSU is actually a larger than it appears organization with over $14 Million in revenue, over 50 Full Time Staff, 35 Business and Services, hundreds of volunteers.

Wait, 14 million in Revenue? 35 Businesses and Services? Are you supposed to represent students and fight for their rights, or run a stock market there?

Also a revenue implies you actually deserve it. Getting money from students simply because most of them don't considering opting out (not even sure if they could), is not a revenue, it's more of a charity.

The president is essentially a CEO so an average day of a full time Board of Director is anything but a walk in the park;

Most CEOs get paid millions simply for their title, they don't bust their backs, they don't take any risks, and for the most part they can do whatever they want, spitting down on common worker and getting away with that.

No no, go ahead, I'm listening.

There is a reason why you don't see MSU BOD folks often rerunning for their position, because it takes a physical and mental toll on you.

No, it's because after they got what they wanted, money and a very neat sounding thing for their resumes, they are off to complete their degrees.

If they really did their job, they would stopped wasting their money on idiotic things like the CFMU-FM radio.

Also if your "equations" tell you that a student working in MSU needs to get paid 70k, you need to re-evaluate those equations.

Lastly, a variety of student societies and clubs invite and expect the President to show up to their events. So formals, cultural celebrations, coffee houses etc.

So he gets paid to go to tea parties? Nice.

The corporate oversight role is just one aspect, some of the others for a President include a variety of University Committees they sit on as a student representative. Whenever anyone in the University wants to conduct a project or initiative and need a "student voice", the president is the first one to be recruited. Then there are town and gown/community relations. Lastly, the President is almost an equal participant of the external lobbying efforts of the MSU. The MSU is a member of OUSA and CASA which are provincial and federal student advocacy organizations that through collaboration between student unions at other Universities advocate on a variety of issues at Queens Park and in Ottawa. The President is generally out of town for over 30 days for Conferences.

So when was the last time any of us was asked about our opinion on the subjects? Guess our opinions are no important.

How long does it take to make changes and try to solve issue? How many conferences?

[From dictionary] Conference: a formal meeting for discussion.

So basically you get a whole bunch of people, who get paid, to go to Ottawa, live in hotels for 30 days, probably on our money too, and talk about topics an average student never heard of, without actually trying to come up with a solution.

The fact is the compensation isn't really that great when compared to the commitment required or other jobs on the market for uni grads (more relevant to 4th years). This explains the relative rarity of seeing a 4th or 5th year candidate from Engineering or Commerce. The top students from those faculties are looking at offers from $50-80k salary with benefits. If we want to be attracting the school's best minds and hardest workers we should be offering higher compensation, not lower.

Right, so a person with slightly more brains, should get paid to the same exact "nothing", as the person with less of that. What's the point.

Also the main reason why we don't have 100s of people running for this thing, is because they don't want to extend their time spend here by another year. Especially if they have no need for extra money or space for living or tea parties. They know they won't be able to change anything, so why run for it.

And yes, it is time consuming to run around the country, between all those conventions and whatnot, but that's the problem. They don't need to do that. MSU can cut so much crap from their system, stop wasting money, and create an actual student body that is not busy pretending to be glorified CEOs, but an actual working mechanism that solves problem, after problem, after problem.

ouu kill em

Originally Posted by MrPlinkett

Wait, 14 million in Revenue? 35 Businesses and Services? Are you supposed to represent students and fight for their rights, or run a stock market there?

Also a revenue implies you actually deserve it. Getting money from students simply because most of them don't considering opting out (not even sure if they could), is not a revenue, it's more of a charity.



Most CEOs get paid millions simply for their title, they don't bust their backs, they don't take any risks, and for the most part they can do whatever they want, spitting down on common worker and getting away with that.

No no, go ahead, I'm listening.



No, it's because after they got what they wanted, money and a very neat sounding thing for their resumes, they are off to complete their degrees.

If they really did their job, they would stopped wasting their money on idiotic things like the CFMU-FM radio.

Also if your "equations" tell you that a student working in MSU needs to get paid 70k, you need to re-evaluate those equations.



So he gets paid to go to tea parties? Nice.



So when was the last time any of us was asked about our opinion on the subjects? Guess our opinions are no important.

How long does it take to make changes and try to solve issue? How many conferences?

[From dictionary] Conference: a formal meeting for discussion.

So basically you get a whole bunch of people, who get paid, to go to Ottawa, live in hotels for 30 days, probably on our money too, and talk about topics an average student never heard of, without actually trying to come up with a solution.



Right, so a person with slightly more brains, should get paid to the same exact "nothing", as the person with less of that. What's the point.

Also the main reason why we don't have 100s of people running for this thing, is because they don't want to extend their time spend here by another year. Especially if they have no need for extra money or space for living or tea parties. They know they won't be able to change anything, so why run for it.

And yes, it is time consuming to run around the country, between all those conventions and whatnot, but that's the problem. They don't need to do that. MSU can cut so much crap from their system, stop wasting money, and create an actual student body that is not busy pretending to be glorified CEOs, but an actual working mechanism that solves problem, after problem, after problem.

The level of inaccuracies and assumptions in your post make it very difficult for me to want to respond to you but I'll address some of them just to demonstrate that. At this point I'm not sure if you're just trolling or in a serious argument here.

Firstly, I think you misunderstand the mandate of a Students Union. These services and business are all created with a direct intended benefit for the student body. Many of these were created back in the day when the University wasn't providing certain services, are some of them arguably redundant today? Perhaps. But there is never a consequence to having a student run alternative to relying entirely on the University to provide every single need. As for CFMU, it is a separately incorporated entity that was a centre piece of campus life before the advent of the internet, any student is free to file a referendum to entirely shut down the service, get rid of all it's employees and dismantle the infrastructure.

Where I thought you were seriously trolling was when you implied CEO's sit on their back all day, are unqualified and somehow just happen to land a job by rubbing a genie lamp. Feel free to inform me about your first hand experiences with these CEO's you speak off and what you think the process is to get hired for one of these amazing do nothing jobs.

The equations I spoke of since you didn't properly read my post were real world HR calculations and algorithms. I didn't once suggest that this is what I feel BOD members should be paid, it was just an example to demonstrate how misunderstood the roles are.

As for communications, there are a variety of channels open to any student. Email, Phone, Social Media, In person and for certain special projects surveys (eg: Fall Break), online chats and so on. It's not like the MSU office is hidden in a secret bunker somewhere, it's on the second floor of MUSC you should go pay them a visit if you have an opinion on something. I can't speak for others but in my time we would generally respond within 24 hours to any student queries, heck we looked forward to it because they were generally actionable items we could directly affect as opposed to the generally long term policy and project work that was the day to day. If the BOD is unavailable the SRA Office is just down the hall on the 2nd floor of MUSC. It is also the role of SRA members to engage with their constituents at a more personal on the ground level, some of them do a good job of it some of them were MIA, but that's between them and the people who elected them...SRA members don't have a direct boss.

There isn't much that can be done if you feign ignorance for information actively available online.

As for "how long does it take"; again that's a very simplistic way of putting it. Some issues require just an email or phone call or quick meeting with an administrator, others like long term provincial education policies take anywhere from one budget cycle to several years. For example I'm sure you've noticed your Google Student email, that was something I was personally involved in. It started with a meeting I had with the CIO of McMaster in early 2010, needed a policy endorsement from the assembly in spring 2010, a survey of the student body in fall 2010 to choose between Microsoft and Google and then a year of legal wrangling between University and Google before the email was finally implemented. How outsiders saw it as was another instance of MSU promising stuff and not delivering yada yada.

When it comes to the long term advocacy, That's the reality of public policy in Canada for any advocacy organization, there aren't many barring say the Big Industrial lobbyists who can arrange quicker turnaround time. Many commentators would argue that relative to their resources student advocacy organizations have been incredibly effective at getting incremental changes to PSE. The 30 day conferences was cumulative, there are some meetings solely focused on policy and strategy, but other meetings that are direct 30 minute lobby meetings with members of parliament. Last year the MSU met with every Hamilton area MPP and MP at least once or twice apart from a few presentations to City Council. The travel to Ottawa was for a concentrated week of meetings with MP's.

Huzaifa - God Amongst Humans

We Are Not Worthy

Healthy discussion is fine. But, please refrain from calling each other names (e.g., "X is a moron") as it's not the kind of dialogue we strive to uphold here, and I'm sure each candidate would agree.

Continuing to do so from this post on will result in an infraction.

Originally Posted by BenDover

You are asking someone who is running for the position in question if they would support a nearly doubled salary for their work... aside from the fact that no one will EVER say no to higher pay

Well no not really. If Jacob did win he would have to bring the motion forward next year, meaning that salaries wouldn't be affected until 2015/2016 when Jacob is done and gone.

Originally Posted by BenDover

Also, you seem the think that there is a large pool of eligible candidates for the position of MSU president in your comments. Correct me if I am wrong, but in order to run for MSU president, one must have held an executive position in the MSU previously. Therefore the 6 candidates running this year sounds about right in terms of number of eligible candidates interested in the job

If this is true it's a new rule since 2012. If this is a rule it was probably brought in to weed out the joke candidates that would inevitably appear every couple of years.

My point is that the compensation only seems large when you put it under a microscope. When you consider the workload and compare it relative to other opportunities (like a higher paying job, or finishing your degree earlier) it's really not very good.

My bet would be that the compensation has almost never caused a candidate to run, but has probably steered would-be candidates away.

Originally posted by Qwerty91: As for Jacob Brodka: do you intend to do anything that could make a noticeable difference to the student community?

In creating my platform I wanted to not only establish ideas that would improve the student experience but also gave students the opportunity to put forth ideas and actually control what ideas came to fruition through their feedback. Additionally, I believe that the ideas on my platform, for example the Freedom Credit, have the potential to truly allow students to expand their horizons and improve their learning experience through exploring different disciplines.

For more information I encourage you to check out my website at brodka14.com

Originally posted by BilluBarber: Jacob whats one of your main platform points?

In addition to the Freedom Credit I mentioned above, one of my main platform points is Participatory Project Budget. Currently, there are two pools of money allocated for upgrades and ideas, the Student Life Enhancement Fund and MUSC. These funds are not receiving the enthusiasm or attention they need and thus are not being utilized to their potential. By introducing a participatory project budget model, students would have an opportunity to contribute ideas and then vote on which ones they wish to receive funding. I want students to have control over the changes they want to see implemented and be a part of the decision-making process.

Originally posted by BenDover: Correct me if I am wrong, but in order to run for MSU president, one must have held an executive position in the MSU previously.

No previous MSU experience is necessary to run for President. All that is required is being a MSU member and getting 15 signatures on the nomination form. I do believe, however, that experience and knowledge of the MSU is an extremely strong asset. As Huzaifa pointed out and what has been expressed by individuals who have held the role is that platform is only about 20%, the rest of the job requires having a holistic and thorough understanding of the services, governance, actions and ideals of the organization.

Originally Posted by MrPlinkett

Wait, 14 million in Revenue? 35 Businesses and Services? Are you supposed to represent students and fight for their rights, or run a stock market there?

Uhh, what? A stock market?

Originally Posted by MrPlinkett

Also a revenue implies you actually deserve it.

Revenue is associated with merit? Uhh, what?

Originally Posted by MrPlinkett

Most CEOs get paid millions simply for their title, they don't bust their backs, they don't take any risks, and for the most part they can do whatever they want, spitting down on common worker and getting away with that.

You mean I don't have to stick my neck out to become a CEO, or take risks to get noticed? The armchair CEO exists!?

Originally Posted by MrPlinkett

So he gets paid to go to tea parties? Nice.

No, they get paid to run a "stock market", remember? You already said that.

Originally Posted by MrPlinkett

Yep, making students go to school when it's -40 outside. Thank you, I'm still sick.

The MSU: The organization that apparently decides when school is on or off...


Oh my gosh...

To all the readers of this thread, it doesn't matter what Plinkett's profile says: Please do not associate this being with the profession of engineering --- ever.

Pinklett has been waiting to go in on a MSU president candidate for so long, but now hes getting smacked

This is making me angry. Perhaps bothering enough to talk to the candidate is your first bet. If you disagree, make a different vote. But for the love of God, at least don't take down your school. You should have just enrolled somewhere else.

Anyhow, I talked to Jacob in the student centre yesterday and he seemed to be an alright fellow. Definately highly approachable, quite businesslike, yet casual, and from the couple obscure yet challenging questions I had, he definately had the one quality I like best in a candidate: the will to engage.

Even if he won't do everything right, we're all human aren't we? He seems to be quite willing to work his best and get back up if, say, I had no classes when it was -40 out.