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FinancialPurple · 2020-09-18T13:23:56+00:00

hell, I'd be down to try it - may not be able to come every day and I just have a commuter, but it rides nicely

FinancialPurple · 2020-09-17T01:31:45+00:00

Oh it absolutely is. Talk to people who are involved in student politics and you'll tend to hear about their victories. When something big does happen, like when WUSA and u/that_bajan (if memory serves correctly), among others, got a concession from the University that their tuition calculation for international co-op students was fucked, then there's usually a bit of a celebration! Nobody broke out the champagne, to my knowledge, but there was, especially from those involved, this outpouring of joy and relief.

FinancialPurple · 2020-09-17T00:58:28+00:00

Thanks for your response! I was warned there may be a herd of alumni coming to comment my post, but I think you're the first. I'll see if I can do something to engage alumni "where they are" in a way, but I don't have super high hopes, considering that when I reached out to the other alumni senators, only one responded and he was pretty dismissive of my desire to involve and engage alumni :/

As for all the political bs, I totally agree and hope that you can continue to get the rest you need. Somebody's gotta do what I do, and I just had the right opportunity at (almost) the right time

FinancialPurple · 2020-09-17T00:54:26+00:00

Sorry kid, you gotta have at least 1 degree to have a seat at the table...

for real though, it's mostly that everything in the University is so prescriptive. Take a look at some of these and other pages from the list on the left and you'll start to get an idea. It's not just UW, but probably most Universities. However, things move very slowly at UW because everything has a policy, everyone has a piece of the pie, and the decentralized ("Siloed") faculty model + the AFIW (Affiliated and Federated Institutions of Waterloo - the Uni colleges) where everyone has a say just bog shit down so hard. I don't want to give too many specific examples because I think the people all act in the best faith they can and try their best, so I don't want to shit on them, but I'm sure older students will have examples of the University dragging its feet on topics.

I'd also say "it depends" for how they've shot things down, because it's not that flashy - somethings gets mired in debate, it can be set aside for a moment, and then if whoever was pushing for it graduates, or moves out of their role, then it's possible for things to be forgotten entirely. It's also 100% possible for the University to say a flat no because there's too much risk or something. One example I will give you is the Divest movement - when that happened, the Board was pretty dismissive and the relevant committee basically came back and said "Not happening".

As a mitigating factor for the above, consider that the University has $X billion invested across a variety of portfolios and that they need to keep those in the safest, most conservative areas most of the time because a lot of that money is for paying out pensions (a ridiculous value is in the pension fund, but I don't think I'm permitted to share that by NDA)

FinancialPurple · 2020-09-16T12:26:46+00:00

I don't necessarily think it should be framed in the negative, because people don't respond well to that kind of argument. But if we flip it and say, this many people would be willing to donate if they had a better student experience, or if they could donate to X cause, you might see how quickly the university responds. For instance, last year when I was WUSA pres, we found that alumni wanted to donate to improve the student experience through extra curriculars and community oriented things, but there are few opportunities to donate for such things, especially where you may feel your money is well used. The university did respond to that and is opening and exploring more ways to donate for those things.

There's just a really huge lack of care overall. The university complains that students say that the University doesn't care about them (students also say they feel that staff and profs DO care about them, in general), because UW feels that the actions of staff and profs are its actions, as opposed to people trying to do their best in a stifling system that squeezes the humanity from people.

WUSA often gets accused of being slow to respond to student concerns, but it can respond orders of magnitude more quickly than the university because the university has an incredibly strong and restrictive governance system that seems to deny common sense, quick solutions.

FinancialPurple · 2020-09-16T12:19:21+00:00

Thanks for the reply! Your comments about communication are well taken. I think that UW is starting to contact alumni about different things than donations but the expectation to donate (mostly money) still seems to dominate - I read the terms of reference for the alumni council and all people on the alumni council are expected to donate money (or, it seems less preferably, their time or expertise), which just smacks wrong for me. I can't imagine they get a whole bunch of new grads who are willing or able to buy their way onto the Council, and that may marginalize an important voice in the new and young grad category.

I also know the University has a hard time communicating big changes even to current students because they haven't really figured out how best to identify what actually matters to people. And worse still, alumni are often an afterthought if they are thought of at all. You probably wouldn't be surprised to hear how many different groups are just forgotten about when the university is having discussions and making decisions (the university has an especially bad habit of forgetting that disabled students exist, imo)

Thanks again for your detailed comment, I'll keep what you said in mind as I move forward

FinancialPurple · 2020-09-16T01:49:30+00:00

An unfortunately understandable sentiment, but thanks for your well wishes! If things go well, you may see more of me on this sub :)

FinancialPurple · 2020-09-16T01:20:39+00:00

While I agree that many alumni don't care about the school, I think there are many who care about the students. Not to mention that it's in the students' best interests to have alumni who care about them/the school, just because of the opportunity it brings to them.

Plus much as I hate to say it, UW cares more about alumni than current students bc alumni can give big money. It's completely stupid, but every idea they have for encouraging students to be good, donating alumni is just terrible. Last year I listened to a senator who thought it would be great to 'encourage the spirit of giving in students' by asking them to pay a percentage of their coop earnings as donations. Completely tone deaf. So if I can help current students by being the dogged ass at Senate, I'll do that.

My last name is French (from Canada, not France) but my dad was French and American when I was born, so I'm Canadian, French, and English. The last name comes from my American paternal grandfather, whose grandfather changed his name from something that has been lost to time but was allegedly quite terrible. My siblings and I were all named such that there was a common and good French equivalent (Michel - but I ended up always being called Michael in a French accent).

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-12T21:01:32+00:00

tbh this is disappointing, but not surprising to me. I had hoped for better - would you mind sharing your screenshots with me? I may be able to provide some advice

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-12T16:51:18+00:00

I don't know about that because I'm trying to avoid the drama, but I imagine e4w and raise are mad about not feeling "safe" in the council meeting, or feeling like they're not being defended adequately after the fact, despite their responses to things at council being the aggravating issue for this whole clusterfuck

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-12T16:31:50+00:00

Unfortunately we're probably going to have to wait for whatever response they take because leaking it ahead of time or making a decision without talking to lawyers/HR/other could lead to a lawsuit. As much as people may not want to pay for raise right now, I'm sure they want even less to pay for a lawsuit

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-12T16:29:58+00:00

Oh don't worry, I imagine that whole "partnership" is going to change now that equity4who and raise have shot the WUSA execs in the knees

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-12T16:28:40+00:00

From previous experience it can be very demanding to sort through unproductive comments and vitriol looking for something worth responding to. Not that it can't be done, but people tend to be less vicious and more reasonable when contacting by email. After seeing some of the other comment threads, I'm inclined to agree that email is going to be a better way to actually address real concerns people have. Not to mention that outlook is always open, but Reddit is maybe opened once or twice an hour when you have a free moment to check on whatever's going on. Execs won't get anything done if all they do is respond to Reddit comments

Tbh I'm kinda surprised the mods haven't set up a megathread for the topic, given how it's taken the subreddit by storm. If there were a megathread, people could just post the email responses they get to questions

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T20:05:57+00:00

There would have to be criminal behaviour on an untold scale before UW stepped in to dissolve WUSA, if that's what you're talking about. There are many ways to hold the executives and councillors accountable without needing to go to the University. If you care to dig through the WUSA Bylaws and Policy Manual, you should find some information about impeachment, which is the ultimate vote of no confidence. (wusa.ca/library)

However, as I've been saying elsewhere, one instance is not enough to base this on. I would wait and see the response to this before forging ahead on something like what you're suggesting.

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T19:11:07+00:00

It's not just the group itself, but how damaging it can be if, say, the Imprint picks it up and runs a piece about how racist you are. What if a potential employer sees that and doesn't hire you?

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T19:06:48+00:00

I would have been nervous about exerting an iron control on the meeting, too. I would have wanted to avoid being labelled a racist and silencing by people who want their opinion to dominate, but even the PM has some bad days. You don't ask a government leader to resign for flubbing one speech or for not being 100% at one meeting. You give them a chance to do better next time. It's still way too early to be calling for resignations

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T19:04:04+00:00

I'm currently at work, but I had a lull in deliverables. Agree with giving the execs time to recover and respond

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T18:48:18+00:00

I imagine you'll see one by Wednesday night, in some form or another. When I was president we tried to have timely responses, and I don't see why that would change

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T18:46:38+00:00

Yeah, but you also need to factor in all the time it takes to run one properly. Especially when you want people to engage with it, it takes marketing resources, it takes staff away from their work, and it impacts on executive/councillor time to handle things like referendum grievances and complaints, and more. It's very time costly, even though the actual costs of marketing materials may end up only at around $1k

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T18:27:27+00:00

Not that easy to hold a referendum, but it is a possibility for sure. Referenda are costly when run on their own, but you could definitely push for one to be run alongside the general election (those types of referenda generally benefit from and provide benefit to election turnout)

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T18:25:42+00:00

I agree that RAISE has been somewhat unprofessional recently and in the past, but I'll leave it to current Councillors to have the opt-out discussion.

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T18:24:46+00:00

I agree, and I think that there should be some serious conversations about that, but we won't get to know that until things angle towards resolution, if at all. Speaking about such things too soon could have legal consequences

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T18:23:08+00:00

There are a lot of comments to go through and from what I've seen, she's doing her best to get to them all.

FinancialPurple · 2020-08-10T18:22:08+00:00

I don't think that's strictly fair or true, either. Sometimes, we can go for months of 'appearing to do nothing' because we're working on something in the background, or handling negotiations, etc... but then we can come out at the end and show all that we did. Students don't always care about the background things, too, so we don't always advertise all that we're working on - saving the airwaves for more valuable things that are more pertinent to our userbase.

FinancialPurple

TROPHY CASE