Originally Posted by starfish

I think #1 is the biggest problem in terms of actually implementing platform points. The general student body doesn't really understand that the MSU president's power is very limited when it comes to enacting a great deal of things (for example, a fall break). They can push for it to happen, but they only have one year to do so and a lot of "big" changes take more than that. Then the student body doesn't see change happening on the timescale they expect, and grow apathetic. Most of the things that the President does aren't really noticed by the majority of the university.

After reading all of the campaign platforms I think that most of the candidates don't understand that either. HOWEVER, I've picked my candidate - the only one who seems to understand what the position is and has a fairly realistic platform. And a great poster campaign.

I can't speak to getting a question answered online or immediately, but if you want to submit a question for the Presidential Debate (Tues Jan 29 at 12:30 in MUSC) you can go to the MSU website and do so!

In regards to what Siobhan or the MSU has been upto I would definitely recommending browsing through the State of the Union document as found here: https://msu-production.s3.amazona w...ion_2013V2.pdf

In brief, in regards to the Fall Break a motion was approved yesterday at the University Undergraduate Council to recommend that the McMaster Senate approve a two day Fall Break starting Fall 2013 (It will be occurring in late November). While from a certain angle it is true that many issues tend to be long term items, having worked with various Presidents and elected representatives I can safely say that many of what the experienced candidates run on usually tends to be realistic enough to be achievable in a year.

Items like Green Roof and Fall Break and Peer Support Line were a major component of Siobhan's platform and both of them will be wrapped up in some way, shape or form before the end of the term (with the pilot project of PSL starting next week). They were all also mentioned in the President's page article that is published weekly on Page two of the Silhouette, Assuming you've read all the Prez pages (It totals approx 900 words) I don't think there is much in terms of major student initiatives that you wouldn't be aware off.

In terms of communication, I think it is a two way street. For decades candidates for SRA and President have been running on communications platforms but despite initially starting off on that stream in my early years and working tirelessly to attempt to deliver them, I ran into nothing but a lack of readership and engagement.

I'd say it’s definitely the responsibility of a representative body to ensure that information is available and accessible to anyone who wants it; likewise, it’s the responsibility of the people to use that information and be informed. On that regard over the last year, especially through hiring a Social Media Coordinator our online presence has improved exponentially with an active Facebook and Twitter presence that covers pretty much every important news, event or opportunity that exists in the MSU. However, despite having a membership of 19,500 students we don't have much followers despite our best attempts to plug it everywhere; I don't understand why that's the case. Because many of those not following us then turn around and say "so and so elected rep hasn't been heard from again". So if you were to follow @msu_mcmaster and like www.facebook.com/msumcmaster and perhaps read the President's page, you will probably know a good chunk of what the Board of Directors are doing (with a lot of it being boring behind the scenes stuff and meetings on a daily basis which we usually update the SRA about, whose minutes are public on our website)

The rest of my sentiments are well captured here: http://mtapathy.wordpress.co m/2013...ion-vs-result/

On the topic of Faculty Society presence, I definitely agree. While my extensive travel/workload means I have been unable to attend Society meetings myself (especially because most of them have a largely events based focus which is completely out of my portfolio) the MSU has an Academic Affairs Council chaired by myself where barring a couple all faculty societies send their VP Academics.

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

In brief, in regards to the Fall Break a motion was approved yesterday at the University Undergraduate Council to recommend that the McMaster Senate approve a two day Fall Break starting Fall 2013 (It will be occurring in late November). While from a certain angle it is true that many issues tend to be long term items, having worked with various Presidents and elected representatives I can safely say that many of what the experienced candidates run on usually tends to be realistic enough to be achievable in a year.

I can't tell you how pissed off I am at this... As are many other engineering students. This "Reading Week" recommendation ignored us as Engineers almost completely. The survey concept was flawed, and she never came out to more than our Executive meeting to gather feedback from elected Engineering student representatives. This break is going to be a giant nightmare for us...

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

On the topic of Faculty Society presence, I definitely agree. While my extensive travel/workload means I have been unable to attend Society meetings myself (especially because most of them have a largely events based focus which is completely out of my portfolio) the MSU has an Academic Affairs Council chaired by myself where barring a couple all faculty societies send their VP Academics.

With regards to this, I am more concerned about the President actually making an appearance at our student society meeting. I don't care if other student socities aren't as developed because the President can be a go-between to pass on best practices as he/she observes them between student societies. Benefit everyone, and ACTUALLY stay in touch with the students!

Originally Posted by mike_302

I can't tell you how pissed off I am at this... As are many other engineering students. This "Reading Week" recommendation ignored us as Engineers almost completely. The survey concept was flawed, and she never came out to more than our Executive meeting to gather feedback from elected Engineering student representatives. This break is going to be a giant nightmare for us...



With regards to this, I am more concerned about the President actually making an appearance at our student society meetinresident can be a go-between to pass on best practices as he/she observes them. Benefit everyone, and ACTUALLY stay in touch with the students!

That two day fall break is for all faculties including engineering! It is also my understanding that she did definitely attend an MES meeting or two on this topic for feedback (Did you attend all MES meetings last term?). Similarly the actual platform documentation mentioned a "Fall Break" (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vote-S...6503?sk=in fo) even though various media sources, other candidates and sometimes her own volunteers did start using the term "Reading week" interchangeably. A week can only be eeked out at McMaster, especially because of engineering through a combination of a few of the following: if we pull back classes to the Monday of WW, create more examination space (very difficult given capacity issues), Sunday exams and constricting the exam period from 13/14 to 11 days.

I'll pass of this thread to Siobhan since I don't know all the specifics and can only rely on personal memory to confirm some of the stuff or provide clarifications.

I agree with your point about directly visiting the Faculty Societies though, I'll definitely pass that on too.

Originally Posted by mike_302

I can't tell you how pissed off I am at this... As are many other engineering students. This "Reading Week" recommendation ignored us as Engineers almost completely. The survey concept was flawed, and she never came out to more than our Executive meeting to gather feedback from elected Engineering student representatives. This break is going to be a giant nightmare for us...

I'm a bit confused...I understand that getting a full week off would result in engineers not meeting the requirement for number of class hours, will getting two days off reduce the amount of hours enough to not meet the requirements either? Also, I'm not sure if/how the loss of two days will be offset...it's entirely possible our exam schedule is two days shorter and since it's so long already, that won't make a difference at all (we typically have 15-18 exam days for people to write 4-6 exams). Cutting it down to 13 days is still pretty decent relative to the number of exams, and lets face it, even if we had an 18 day exam period the schedule would suck and you'd have exams squished together anyways .

I know some other schools give everyone a fall reading week except for the engineers, would you prefer that?

Some schools also have a 8-10 day exam schedule for 6 exams (that's why these schools tend to start later than McMaster).

The only issues I've heard are the two I brought up - reducing the number of class hours and compressing the exam schedule. There are ways around the first, and I really don't think the second is a problem if it's only being compressed by two days. Are there other issues that I'm completely missing?

To cover all the points brought up:

I am on the MES Executive, so I was at every meeting: I make a point to be quite aware of this stuff. I actually liaise with other student societies across Ontario, as my role on the society... Other schools looking at the same implementation actually took this whole project a lot more seriously. Heck, I was even asked by my Carleton counterpart for input, as they were collecting feedback from other schools to put together an informed decision to take back to their student society! The way this project was handled definitely seemed like a project that Siobhan wanted, and 1 survey gave her the justification to put it in place.

But even as you say, Engineering students needed to be examined differently: Other schools do this break and leave their engineers out of it, and there is an awful lot of positive feedback from them on that. We also stand to lose: While starfish rationalizes that a couple days shorter on the exam period is probably not that bad, it's actually HUUUUUGE! Some engineers have a standard 20-unit course load, with 6 technical exams. A few even have 7!!! How many other faculties have that, really? Heck, I only had 5 exams last term (lucky me) and I felt the pressure of the condensed schedule, myself... I'm not being elitist. I don't think we're better because we're different... We're just different. Our students needed to be investigated differently.

Ultimate point on this: Every once in a while, I hear something about the Fall Reading Week, and it's in some further planning/implementation stage, but Engineers didn't really get the chance to have separate input on it, and now you're making recommendations for the whole school, including us weird/different folk who make up a solid chunk of the population?

Originally Posted by mike_302

To cover all the points brought up:


But even as you say, Engineering students needed to be examined differently: Other schools do this break and leave their engineers out of it, and there is an awful lot of positive feedback from them on that. We also stand to lose: While starfish rationalizes that a couple days shorter on the exam period is probably not that bad, it's actually HUUUUUGE! Some engineers have a standard 20-unit course load, with 6 technical exams. A few even have 7!!! How many other faculties have that, really? Heck, I only had 5 exams last term (lucky me) and I felt the pressure of the condensed schedule, myself... I'm not being elitist. I don't think we're better because we're different... We're just different. Our students needed to be investigated differently.

Ultimate point on this: Every once in a while, I hear something about the Fall Reading Week, and it's in some further planning/implementation stage, but Engineers didn't really get the chance to have separate input on it, and now you're making recommendations for the whole school, including us weird/different folk who make up a solid chunk of the population?

I'm not sure I'm understanding what you're saying. I don't know what you mean by "engineering students needed to be examined differently" or "investigated differently". I'm assuming that when you said "standard 20-unit course load" there was a typo there...don't engineers typically have 33 units?

Also, I was using 6 exams as an example because I believe that is standard for engineers. There are, however, many engineers who have 4 or 5 exams in a term. I don't understand what you mean by "technical". You could call exams from some other courses technical too, and that doesn't make them any harder or easier, or deserving of more or less time to study.

I also don't understand how having an exam schedule that is two days shorter makes a difference. If your exams were perfectly spread out, I can see how it would make *some* difference but even then two days shouldn't be life-and-death. Realistically, no matter how many exams you have, whether it's 1 or 7, the way they are scheduled (which depends on the registrar) is far more important than the length of the exam period. Yes, having a shorter exam period increases the likelihood of having exams closer together, but you could end up with exactly the same schedule even with a longer exam period. And, since engineering programs are regulated they all have similar standards, so I don't think it's unreasonable to compare across different schools, and there are other schools with *much* shorter exam schedules. I really don't think it's unreasonable.

Anyways, I'm currently in a specialized program with 6-7 courses per term and ten exam days. To be honest, I prefer it to McMaster's exam schedule, which always irritated me for being long and drawn out...I'd inevitably have 2-3 exams back-to-back and then another week for the last two. Maybe it's just the way I study, but having experienced both, I really don't think reducing the exam schedule by two days would make a difference.

I also don't think it's worth arguing over whether it will or won't, because it's only one way of dealing with the situation. Classes could start one day earlier without much of an issue. You could cut one day out of exams, or you could have exams end one day later. There are many alternatives, and I do agree that they're not all being explored as thoroughly as they probably should be, but I also don't think a decision has been made yet as to how those extra days will be made up (if they have made a decision, I'm not aware of it).

The general MSU survey should not have been the way to gather info from Engineering students. They could not be properly informed/educated on the effects of any additional break time. That's what's meant by "examined differently"

20-units in 1 term. So 40-units in a whole year (yea, that exists as a pretty standard thing). And 20-units in 1 term, with 5 or 6 technical courses is actually a HUGE difference over other faculties. It DOES actually make them more difficult.

For this reason, a shorter exam schedule impacts us greatly. 2 days DOES make a big difference, and again, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone with any experience on this matter who doesn't agree. Yea, you could end up with the same shitty schedule with a longer exam period, but it's less likely (significantly).

I'm not sure we're on the same page about comparing across different schools: I'm saying that my counterparts were given the chance to research the situation from other Engineering student societies, whereas we had a brief meeting about this survey 2 or 3 days before the survey came out and started collecting info from our possibly uninformed students.

But as you say in the end, it's pointless to argue this. Although, I believe it's pointless because whoever is pushing this through seems almost hellbent on making it happen. Also, how seriously will it be taken? A recommendation gets made near the end of Siobhan's term, administration has to mull it over, and if she's gone before it's in effect, the only way it will carry through is if the next President is super passionate about it too. Fingers crossed a more reasonable analysis is made before anyone else starts pushing this idea through too :S

Originally Posted by mike_302

Also, how seriously will it be taken? A recommendation gets made near the end of Siobhan's term, administration has to mull it over, and if she's gone before it's in effect, the only way it will carry through is if the next President is super passionate about it too. Fingers crossed a more reasonable analysis is made before anyone else starts pushing this idea through too :S

Myself or Siobhan will read the comments when we come back to work tomorrow (Or well if I ever leave, I probably should).

However, for that quote: Yes, Once the dates are locked in at Senate that sets up the sessional calender (which usually is set in December but in this case was delayed till early Feb because of the Fall Break project) will be in place and things can't really go back at least for a year after that. This 2 day break is going to be tried out and analyzed as a pilot project for two years.

Hi everyone,

I saw that many of you were looking for a way to reach out to the candidates and ask us questions. I'll do by best to address any questions you have through MacInsiders, but I also encourage you to come to our campaign headquarters (near the doors to the Arts Quad) so we can discuss my platform in detail.

Also, feel free to stop me or any of my campaign team to ask your questions!

Have an amazing day!
-JB

Originally Posted by mike_302

I don't know how to post this question for a response from all candidates... But:

What I really liked about MDL was his attendance at essentially all of our Eng student society meetings. He was constantly aware of what we were up to, and since this kind of meeting is when student issues are often brought up/addressed, he was really useful in this way. Do any of the current candidates plan on scheduling attendance at these meetings? (By "these meetings" I mean any faculty student society meetings, which is where all other student issues should be coming up to... Even though I do understand that not many other faculty student societies really do this well...)

Hi mike_302

Thanks so much for asking a question! I've really tried to reach out to Faculty Societies to talk to them about what is important to their students. So far, I've been invited to a few Faculty Society meetings and they have been a really great opportunity to connect with students. I am hoping to be invited to a few more. If you would me to attend a meeting, feel free to tweet me (@VoteDC2013) or send me an email ([email protected] ail.com).

Keep the questions coming!

-David

Originally Posted by DavidC

Hi mike_302

Thanks so much for asking a question! I've really tried to reach out to Faculty Societies to talk to them about what is important to their students. So far, I've been invited to a few Faculty Society meetings and they have been a really great opportunity to connect with students. I am hoping to be invited to a few more. If you would me to attend a meeting, feel free to tweet me (@VoteDC2013) or send me an email ([email protected] ail.com).

Keep the questions coming!

-David

Absolutely. I figure if I were to invite a candidate, they'd all come. Unless our council members express an interest in hearing more from the candidates, I won't personally send out any invitations. The MES in particular, operates pretty autonomously. In the past, (and I've seen 4 years of it), the biggest excitement that the MSU has created within the MES has been when MDL made regular appearances at our Society meetings every second week. He didn't necessarily have to talk at all of them, and there is obviously an SRA rep (ours is actually decent), but having the President there still had the biggest impact.

To any candidate: Your presence at student society meetings throughout the year (or at least the MES ones), may be one of the biggest impacts you can have on any group that seems apathetic towards the MSU.

Anyone else find Adrian's platform rude, inconsiderate and not even the least bit funny? I think it's terribly inconsiderate to candidates like Jacob and David who take this seriously and care about the issues where Adrian comes in acting like it's a joke that aren't even the least bit funny. I cringe every time I walk by one of his posters. They are obnoxious, rude and I don't even think MSU should of allowed him to run. It's a slap in the face to the whole MSU election.

Originally Posted by ashleighp

Could someone post links to the websites that have been set up by any of them? I didn't have my phone with me today to snap pictures of the URLs and was too hurried to write anything down.

Websites added for the ones we have, those missing websites that have one just email us [email protected] om or PM me.

Some great discussion going on here. Thanks everyone for participating and asking questions! And thanks Huzaifa, David, Matt and other MSU staffers for answering the questions so far. Great insights and responses.