Elections

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.

************

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 Having been “out of the game” for nearly two years now, my now antiquated and highly outdated knowledge of individual AMS politicians is proof of the impressively and depressingly volatile nature of student politics.

This has its benefits, however. Arguably, I will be able to approach all candidates with less pre-determined biases than the other writers on this magnificent blog. On the other hand, my analysis will be shallow—based mainly, if not only, only on the debates I attend. As with all political analyses, take this post with a grain of salt, or if you so choose, a cup of it.

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.

*********************

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

*********************

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.

*********************

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.

*********************

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.

*********************

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.

*************

Discussion

Comments are disallowed for this post.

  1. Bowinn,
    Thank you. Your article shows how the ‘debates’ are too short to really get into the particulars of the position. My academic experience and plans are laid out in my platform. I also have an article on my website that goes through every single point published by the AMS as the VP Academic portfolio (www.vpacademic.com/portfolio). Me and Ben were criticized by a Ubyssey writer for our supposed ‘ignorance’ of what the Campus Plan is.

    The writer failed to notice that I was a member of the Vancouver Campus Plan Steering Committe for Campus and Community Planning and on behalf of students, having been elected to that position by the GSS Council to substitute Matt Filipiak, who briefed me in every aspect of the plan for weeks. Me and Ben were harshly judged for not being able to provide, within 30 seconds, an answer that pleased this particular reporter. The Campus Plan is not a process that can be described within 30 seconds.

    In addition, that writer assumed that the questions we were being asked by the audience were somehow ‘the issues we would be dealing with’ as VP Academic in the future. This is a gross distortion of the truth. Also, instead of trying to see what were the positive points we were trying to bring to discussion, we attacked and misrepresented, and their write-up about our whole debate was a short paragraph, without detail, without quotes, without the actual questions. It does not even mentioned that I asked an important question about Musqueam representation at the Board of Governors. In short, the Ubyssey article does not inform students in the way it should, and it is an example of lazy reporting that lacks detail, misses the most important points, it’s overtly negative and it is borderline libelous, very unfortunately.

    In this piece, Bowinn rightly points out that there is a similarity between one of the ideas I have been proposing and the plan of one BoG candidate. However, you confused the AMS Research Institute, which I mentioned later as something I had not mentioned before when that question was asked, and the ‘live consultation’ system that I have proposed to create very coherent and undisputable cases, based on data, to present to the Administration. My position about the administrations is NOT negative. You should read my responses to the media, which highlight my reluctancy to generalize and label the ‘administration’ as a single entity. I know and respect plenty of administrators in my last 7 years of involvement at UBC.

    We have not yet seen an article in the student media that engages directly with the ideas published by the authors. However, the integrity of the VFMs has been exceptional – ALL of them, including the FoxTrot, Social Capital, Spectator, Insiders, and Radical Beer, have been open to criticism and debate, and have published everything I have written without touching it, showing that they abide and practice the principle of transparency. It is unfortunately not the case with the Ubyssey, which has deleted critical comments from its malicious piece, which hypocritically critiques personal attacks, and makes personal attacks and the same time and does not allow for those attacked to respond. I have documented through screenshots several comments that were deleted, some sent to me by friends, some taken by myself once I was made aware of this phenomenon.

    To test the hypothesis that someone was maliciously deleting critical comments so to avert the public consequences of an unethical piece of writing, I posted positive comments to sports news. There was a suggestion made that, because the Ubyssey website is so poorly designed – one commentator suggested – it was buggy and it deleted comments by itself. Comments to sports news were never deleted, since they provided no critical take, just encouragement. I think that everyone should know that there’s a problem here. I really do not know what is the solution. I do forgive the writer of the Ubyssey – perhaps they were in a hurry, perhaps they missed the important details, perhaps they were not listening, perhaps they haven’t read anything we wrote, or anything published by VFMs, perhaps they do not understand that they should be committed to bringing a service that is more objective and reliable to the students that are funding their operations. Perhaps it is just an education problem and it can be fixed. So we hope.

    Rodrigo Ferrari-Nunes
    http://www.vpacademic.com

    REFERENCE
    http://ubyssey.ca/news/personal-attacks-and-ignorance-rule-round-three-of-ams-debates

    Posted by Rodrigo | January 22, 2010, 8:23 am
  2. Hey guys,
    this is something Rodrigo actually wrote “The student will then write as much as she or he wants, click on ratings and other interactive elements within the survey, and click the SEND button. This will send a simple text file to the AMS with the alterations and comments made by the student. There will be several context bound surveys available, and students can fill up as many as they want. For instance, we could have a survey that shows the students the AMS budget, and asks them to allot it to different services where they would like to see their own money go. This will immediately produce data regarding what students would like to see, what is working, and how we can change our budget and funding strategies to better fit the desires and needs of students. In due time, motivated by your support, I shall present to students and to council a comprehensive ground plan for this project” – this is an excerpt from his website on a particular idea, among many others, he proposes.

    C.K. Joy
    concerned student

    Posted by Charlie Christian | January 22, 2010, 8:31 am
  3. Rodrigo,

    I would prefer if you a) wrote us a letter or b) sent me an e-mail instead of attacking The Ubyssey on another media outlet’s post.

    Sincerely,
    Samantha

    Posted by Samantha Jung | January 22, 2010, 9:53 am
  4. Samantha,

    Please note that I did not attack anyone personally, not even the writer. I believe this type of reporting contributes to antagonism we do not need in these elections, and it contributes to making the elections less attractive to students, adding to cynicism and apathy.

    Many candidates have been committed to direct and cordial communication with other candidates and the media. I am not sure who is in charge at Ubyssey, and I do not think anyone should be condemned for this mistake.

    Without even approaching us for an interview, or providing quotes or information about the debate, the writer of that article made, in public, statements that many have found unacceptable. The writer did not send us a personal email before publishing to the student body, with obvious negative consequences to our reputation, a claim that we were ‘ignorant’. I am mystified by how this article was published in the first place.

    I wonder if Ubyssey does not have the resources to provide more information about the candidates, longer quotes about what they actually said, the actual questions. I really do not think this is too much to ask from University students operating with student funds. At least, they have recognized their mistake and published the comments that had been deleted. This is a move in a good direction.

    If you are willing to publish non-objective, condemnatory pieces in your publication, you should at least allow for public commentary on your actions.

    Requesting a personal communication rather than open public debate is a backroom approach that we should all be committed to avoiding for the sake of transparency.

    Communicating with students should be done openly and directly, without intermediaries or filters. Please make sure comments are made available as soon as they are posted on your website (as in the case of sports news). The AMS Elections are a time-sensitive issue. I would like to request that you write something about candidates platforms and ideas that does not call them ‘ignorant’ out of context.

    -Rodrigo Ferrari-Nunes
    http://www.vpacademic.com

    Posted by Rodrigo | January 22, 2010, 11:08 am
  5. This is the kind of response (see above) that gives most people cause for concern. A long, vitriolic, rambling account that ultimately says a lot about the candidate’s sense of self importance.

    One wag once said that people get the politicians they deserve: I can’t imagine that UBC students really deserve this. Too bad there isn’t a ‘none of the above’ box on the student ballot for the VP Academic position.

    Posted by Worried Resident | January 22, 2010, 12:01 pm
  6. Hello everyone. For those candidates posting that they feel I have not fully taken into account their platforms outside of the debate, I’d like to clarify again that this post was written based *purely* on the impressions gained from the debate.

    Posted by Bowinn Ma | January 22, 2010, 12:48 pm
Please vote for us in the Continuous VoterMedia Contest