Candidates' Forum summary (part 2)

Take note of the abbreviations:

• SU: Students United
• CS: Clean Slate
• RC: Regressive Conservatives

All citations are paraphrased - it's hard to write everything verbatim without a keyboard.

Question #6 (candidates for President): As President of a multi-million dollar organization, this position requires management of staff. Describe your management style.

Unrau (CS) has organized release events for major products. He promotes the free flow of information and the empowerment of followers.

Cairns (RC) laments a past job where he managed some kind of aquatics facility. He claims he used to be friendly to followers, but now believes that "if they don't listen, maybe they shouldn't be staff."

Sopotiuk (SU) prefers a strength-based approach. His slate has the vision, and his followers implement it.

Question #7 (candidates for VPSS): How many student groups are there currently in UMSU, and what does it take to become one?

This is the second-worst question so far. The one asking the VPA candidates to describe the position of VPA was worse. Good grief.

11:59: Rashid (SU) explains all the things his slate would do for student groups but complete fails to answer the question. Given the poor quality of the question, this was a good move.

Heska (CS) answers the question perfectly, but loses an opportunity to promote her slate's views on student groups.

Dinning (RC) remarks that it doesn't matter how many student groups there are because "if we get in, that's definitely going to change." An exceptionally poor answer. You can have a libertarian and conservative philosophy, but his comments were both threatening and vague. They say they're not a joke slate, but....

Question #8 (candidates for VPA): A significant part of UMSU is representing students on appeals. Describe skills you have that relate to this job.

12:01: Tripple (SU) describes his experience with the Peers - Students Helping Students, excellent experience for this kind of position. He then lists the various steps for appealing a grade.

Cairns (RC) advocates a "step-wise" approach and feels this sort of thing isn't UMSU's job. (See earlier comment from him where he advocates eliminating the position.

Duong (CS) makes the first dig of the debate! He says he's not going to list the various steps to file an appeal, and instead describes how advocates an inductive approach to gather all the data and come to a conclusion that best fits the conflict. (Alright, it wasn't much of a dig.)

Question #9 (candidates for VPE): What steps will you take to promote school spirit?

Cairns (RC) lauds Bison sports teams, and says that promoting such activities to students is a "top priority."

Singer (SU) gets everyone to cheer the Vanier Cup-winning football team. He explains his plan to bring a live bison to games that fans can "pet and molest in various ways."

Bruce-Nanakeain (CS) wants to better advertize sporting events and set up transportation to games that are far from campus.

Question #10 (candidates for VPI): How will you ensure the student body is represented in decisions made by UMSU?

12:08: Brine (CS) advocates a referendum to gauge student opinion. She also wants an interactive website, and brings up the recent UMSU Council decision to censure Canadian Blood Services for the discriminating questions used on their eligibility questionnaire.

Rajotte (SU) promotes talking one-on-one with students, meeting with faculty and college associations, and would like to spend more time meeting students casually in hallways.

Cairns (RC) bashes both previous answers, and feels any student who chooses not to vote in the UMSU election does not deserve to be represented.

Question #11 (candidates for President): Many student unions in Canada are attempting to leave the Canadian Federation of Students. Would you reevaluate UMSU's membership in the federation?

Sopotiuk (SU) supports working with other student unions across Canada to lobby the federal government, and wants to work the networks that UMSU is a part of. This is the second time he hasn't directly answered the question - he didn't even say the word "CFS".

Unrau (CS) wants to carefully evaluate the relationship with CFS for a while before making a firm commitment. He isn't happy with how CFS fights its own students. There's significant applause for this answer, unlike for most other answers from Clean Slate.

It's easy to tell that Cairns (RC) has been waiting for a question like this. He tears into CFS and rhetorically asks whether students prefer to have their student dollars paying for lawyer's fees for lawsuits against other unions, or to fly student politicians around the country to try to stop unions from de-federating.