Debate: January 21 VPAd, BoG, VPAc

The following is a guest post by Bowinn Ma, EUS President 2007-2008; AMS Councilor 2006-2008; Former Hack, less so now.

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First things first: I am no longer an “Insider” of UBC. Having been “out of the game” for nearly two years now, my now antiquated and highly outdated knowledge of individual AMS politicians is proof of the impressively and depressingly volatile nature of student politics.

While my final endorsements and impressions will be based on more thorough research, the aim of the game for now is to give you a pure and isolated impression of the candidates based strictly on their performance during today’s debate. For a full recap, look elsewhere. Anyone can transcribe or paraphrase.

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Couldn’t attend the debate?

The Ubyssey will be streaming and recording all the elections debates live! Archived debates and live streams can be found at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ams-elections-2010

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The number of people in the audience throughout the 90 minutes allotted to the debates floated at around 30 people, the majority of whom were current AMS Executives and Councillors, current candidates, or members of various Voter Funded Media sources. While this works out to be approximately 0.07% of the eligible voting population, keep in mind that the majority of voters will depend on the analyses of those student media representatives present at events that they are not. I thus urge all students that attend these events who are not contributing to a media source to do so.

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The Vice-President Administration Race
Michael Haack vs Ekaterina Dovjenko

[Salt measurement: I do not know either candidate in this race.]

Aside from Haack being a 3rd year political science & philosophy student and Dovjenko being a 3rd year commerce student, it is very easy to recognize that these two candidates are very different people.

For better or for worse, Dovjenko is a decidedly Type A character. A highly animated speaker, the voracious noddings of her head are only one of the manifestations of her enthusiasm for this position. Striking me as someone who’s practiced her smile and responses in front of a bathroom mirror for hours, Dovjenko reeks of eagerness and an unrelenting youthful zest for the challenges she expects to face during the VP Admin term. It is difficult not to wonder how long such fervent ardour will last if she is finally thrown into the slow-cooker (as opposed to a frying pan, student politics does not jade immediately).

Haack is a much calmer-speaking candidate. My background as EUS President will lead me to prefer to hang out with Haack over Dovjenko simply because of my predilection for the passionately level-headed nerd and lesser ability to handle overly zealous individuals for long periods of time, but this is not a dating site.

Dovjenko is a goal setter with a platform based strongly on identifying tangible solutions for various issues. In fact, she uses the term ‘tangible’ more than any other adjective throughout the debate and makes a point of challenging Haack to present his tangible solutions. In contrast, Haack’s relatively generic and simplified answers give away the limitations in his knowledge and understanding of the VP Admin portfolio.

For every answer Haack provides, Dovjenko seems to be able to one-up him. On answering a question on sustainability, Haack brings up green space, rooftop gardens, and building a SUB that exists above and beyond the LEED Platinum Plus Standards—decent answers if you put aside that Dovjenko had the first opportunity to answer the question and had already brought up LEED Standards. She also took the opportunity to follow up on Haack’s response and bring up that sustainability does not only apply to environmental sustainability but to economic and social sustainability as well.

As a side note, I have qualms about LEED Certification being used as the automatic response for the crux of an environmental sustainability plan whenever new buildings are brought up, but we will save that discussion for another time.

Both Dovjenko and Haack speak about clubs as being one of the major ways through which they will create a more lively and engaged community. Dovjenko wants to release restrictions on club benefit funds and create an internal booking system while Haack dotes on the concept of online tools such as online budgeting, disbursements, and submission processes. Neither mentioned what the Radical Beer Tribune once dubbed the “the abortive project”, formerly known as AMS Link, which attempted to serve most if not all these functions, aside from the release on club benefit funds. http://radicalbeer.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/the-long-death-of-amslink/

For shooting themselves in the foot, I only really picked up on one major blunder from each candidate.

For Dovjenko, it was her response to Neal Yonson (UBC Insiders)’s question about how she might handle the ridiculous number of documents that go through the signing authorities on a regular basis. Dovjenko replied that she would delegate parts of the reading to other members of the Society, including full-time staff and work on creating trust within the Executive so that the signing authorities are able to simply trust that a fellow Executive has read and approved the document and basically rubber stamp their approval on it. Aside from concern about the professional ethics involved with delegating the reading of documents requiring signing authority to staff members, I can’t help but recall that rubber stamping documents that other Executives had already approved was one in a long line of actions that led to the UN debacle existing undetected for so long. Crystal Hon was one of two signing authorities who had signed the cheque made payable to Pivot Legal Society but was otherwise uninvolved with the scandal. Further, both Dvorak and Rebane had signed off on the contract with Pivot Legal Society because they had trusted the Executives who had presented the document to them without question. Talk about not learning from the past.

Haack’s overly honest response to Crystal Hon’s question from the floor about personal weaknesses revealed an attribute that well foreshadows his inability to work as an effective leader by admitting that he had difficulty delegating work or asking for help when he needs it. While his ability to recognize this weakness is admirable, the capacity to delegate and recognize when one needs help before it’s too late is absolutely key to all the AMS Executive positions. If Haack doesn’t get past his pride and fix this, he will undoubtedly suffer high levels of stress, bring about failed initiatives, create an overburdened and suffocated portfolio, and ineffectively manage the AMS’s already limited resources.

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The Board of Governors Race

Ahmed Azim Wazeer
Blake Frederick
Guillaume Houle
Sean Heisler

[Salt measurement: I am familiar with Blake’s term as President and have spoken to him in person; I know Sean casually through the EUS as their Equity Officer, I recognize Azim, I have never met Guillaume.]

The BoG debate was by far the most interesting of the day. Heisler, being an involved engineering student, was shafted as most engineering candidates are by the campaign period falling exactly on top of the Western Engineering Competition, the prelude to the Canadian Engineering Competition. There are those who are of the opinion, however, that the choice to attend the competition over running a strong and airtight campaign is indicative of his dedication to the position. In any case, Heisler was represented at the debate by a life sized cut-out of himself and Allen Chen. Next to Chen sat Wazeer, Houle, and Frederick from left to right.

Heisler’s proxy was well spoken and articulate but was able to provide answers to relatively few of the questions asked of the Board candidates. All questions identified as more opinion based than platform based were politely sidestepped with promises of consultation (with Heisler, not the students) and future responses emailed directly to the asker. Unfortunately for Heisler, answering a question directly to one person has very limited impact on his campaign—the value of these debates are redeemed in convincing the media personnel to support your cause. It is hoped that his campaign manager will have the foresight to forward his answers to all media. What Chen could contribute was what appears to be Heisler’s strongest campaign point: The creation of a metric to measure meaningful consultation. Through this, Heisler hopes to be able to strengthen the voices of the student BoG members thus making the positions more powerful against the other industry members and business hotshots. The concern here, however, is that this requires for other BoG members to care at all what it is that students want and there is the distinct impression that this will not be the case in many of the issues raised to Board. Heisler also pushes for the creation of a database that students will be able to register into in order to be tagged a willing participant for meaningful consultation on various issues. This would undoubtedly streamline the many consultation processes that take place at UBC if a large enough percentage of students bother to register in the database.

Wazeer appeared to be by far the most level headed candidate at the table (being careful to recall that Heisler was not at the table) and his experience with Board is as good as it can get without him having been an actual voting member or Andrew Carne. Having followed Board issues and attended open Board meetings for two years, Wazeer claims to hold pre-existing relationships with several members of Board. His responses were fairly centralist, swaying to neither side of the extremes that Houle and Frederick often took. Wazeer recognizes that soft power alongside with hard power—though he may not recognize the tactics he brought up as being within the category of hard power—were necessary when negotiating with the University, and generally provided thoughtful, though relatively generic, responses.

Frederick entered the debate by immediately attempting to justify his leadership style during his term as President, thereby setting the stage for responses filled with the undeniable scent of excuse ripe with disgrace. Considering the circumstances under which he now operates—within the constant and denunciating gazes of the student body—one must be able to recognize the fortitude he must have in order to put himself once again within the public sphere. I cannot help but wonder if gumption is exactly what we need on Board. The concern, of course, is how he may use it.

Frederick responded to all questions with incredible honesty, managing to cause me to facepalm about half a dozen times during the debate. If anything, we can give Frederick that: You cannot fake the honesty in the responses he gave—no one would be that destructive to their own campaign on purpose and so I am left to marvel at his transparency (ironically). The line, “I violate my values on a daily basis” is burned into my mind and I’ve forgotten what he said to clarify what he meant.

Frederick admits that he may be accused of using the heavy-handed approach to dealing with University negotiations more often than may have been appropriate but insists that the soft political approach Houle insists is the only way to negotiate cannot be relied on exclusively. He identifies his biggest failure as the insensitivity with which the non-voting-equity-seat-on-AMS-Council-for-students-with-disabilities issue, as opposed to what might seem the obvious answer to many students. He also defends his candidacy very strongly and simply with the notion that the voters will choose as they will.

It was between Houle and Frederick that the sparks (possibly from unrequited love or sexual tension, but most likely not) really flew. Although not necessarily true, the impression one could easily get from the debate was that Houle and Frederick came at nearly every issue from opposite sides and more often than not, Frederick came under direct personal attack through Houle’s responses. Houle not only stated explicitly that he would not be able to work with Frederick on Board but that he couldn’t “understand how [Frederick] can sit [there] and say that [he] represents students”. While I do not doubt that these are the sentiments of many candidates and students in general, I am unsure of whether the personal attacks made by Houle will more likely damage how students perceive his integrity and professionalism, or promote increased support from voters still steaming from the UN Debacle. Frederick responded with relative composure against these attacks without returning similar fire, for the most part.

Houle is otherwise a highly articulate and passionate candidate. His lack of experience with even attending Board meetings and extended dealings with the University Administration is a concern, but his use of attacks against Frederick to build upon his own candidacy creates more trepidation. Understandably upset as he is, the BoG position is one that must command respect from both the students as well as the other members and should be held to the highest standards we expect from a student representative. An arguably impure campaign may be that tear that propagates along the seams of an otherwise capable candidate.

My advice at this point is to avoid choosing Houle and Frederick on the same ballot for BoG. That combination will make student representation on BoG next year a pointless exercise at best and be extremely damaging to student interests and Board respect for the AMS at worst. The good cop-bad cop routine won’t work with these two. At this point, I would place Wazeer in the first seat and wait to see how the rest of the campaign and research pans out for who should fill the second seat.

Of course, the real tragedy is that Andrew Carne will be graduating this year without serving either as an AMS Executive or a BoG Rep. If you had all taken my endorsement of Andrew Carne seriously last year, then this wouldn’t have been so. For shame.

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Vice-President Academic and University Affairs

Ben Cappellacci vs Rodrigo Ferrari-Nunes

[Salt measurement: I recognize Ferrari-Nunes, I have never met Cappellacci.]

Okay so this has gone way too long and my recap of this race’s debate is actually quite simple so I will keep it short. Basically, this race is going to won by the lesser evil of … two highly under-qualified candidates. I am unconvinced that either candidate fully understands their own portfolio, let alone the processes involved in carrying out their responsibilities.

Ferrari-Nunes unfortunately came off as being rather single-issue-minded and overly idealistic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a total socialist, but based on his responses his view of the UBC Administration is decidedly narrow minded and overly negative—a difficult place from which to fill a position with the words “University Affairs” in the title. His proposed initiative of advocating the creation of the AMS Research Institution to create a database of student opinions on various issues sounds similar to the concept brought up by Heisler in the BoG debates but far more expensive.

Cappellacci has some ideas that I identify to be unrealistic, such as the idea that private market-priced housing should be mixed in with student residences, but for the most part he seemed to have a firmer grasp on the issues at hand.

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