The McMaster Students Union conducted the 2024 Your City Survey to gather student input on transportation, housing and food security, helping to shape its municipal advocacy priorities
The MSU Your City Survey, which closed on Dec. 4, 2025, collected feedback about McMaster students’ perceptions and experiences in Hamilton, covering topics such as housing, transit, food security and policing. The survey is anonymous but participants have the option to provide their email for a chance to win a gift card to the Grind.
The MSU developed the survey in 2011, running every few years, to address students’ concerns about Hamilton. It asks students about their perceptions of Hamilton’s job market, cultural scene and their likelihood of living in the city after graduation.
In 2015, the Your City Survey was updated to assess whether students’ perception of Hamilton had improved since its launch. The most recent collection of data was in 2018. The questions in the survey shifted focus to transit and neighbourhood safety, while also asking commuter students about their perspectives in Hamilton.
This past year, the survey aimed to inform the MSU’s municipal affairs priorities, including advocating to city councillors and submitting feedback on students’ experience with the housing market, transportation, food security and policing in Hamilton for the upcoming pre-budget submission to City Council.
According to Kerry Yang, the associate vice-president of MSU Municipal Affairs, a document outlining McMaster students’ priorities and concerns for the budget and the city’s plan will be created and presented to city councillors at a later date.
Yang, whose role involves lobbying city councillors and engaging with students on municipal priorities, shared her thoughts on how the survey has evolved since 2018.
“I think how it’s evolved is this survey is probably the most comprehensive one to come out. It’s not just focused on housing, transit but has sort of all topics we typically want to know from students. Because it’s been so long since we did a survey, it was important that this one would be all encompassing and give us a really good snapshot of what the student experience is like,” said Yang.
... because it’s been so long since we did a survey, it was important that this one would be all encompassing and give us a really good snapshot of what the student experience is like.
Kerry Yang, Associate Vice-President of Municipal Affairs McMaster Students Union
When developing the questions for this year’s survey, Yang mentioned they reviewed previous surveys and made an effort to not only ask about students’ housing and transit experience. This survey also inquired about what would encourage students to stay in Hamilton, such as affordable housing options and having a vibrant community with public parks and trails.
“I think the diversity of the questions this year and also just how comprehensive it is, is definitely an improvement in the survey which will hopefully serve as a basis for future surveys. The benefit of asking the same questions year after year is that it makes the survey easy to compare over time,” said Yang.
I think the diversity of the questions this year and also just how comprehensive it is, is definitely an improvement in the survey which will hopefully serve as a basis for future surveys. The benefit of asking the same questions year after year is that it makes the survey easy to compare over time
Kerry Yang, Associate Vice-President of Municipal Affairs McMaster Students Union
Yang noted that she anticipates differences in the results compared to previous surveys, as the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the rental market and other aspects of student life.
Additionally, Yang mentioned that one potential policy recommendation, based on questions in the survey, to be brought to city councillors would be to pass a cooling bylaw that aligns with the existing heating bylaw.
Yang explained that there are currently regulations requiring heating to be turned on at certain temperatures during specific times of the year, but no similar rule exists for cooling. She noted that many students both on-campus and off-campus lack air conditioning which leads to uncomfortable living conditions.
“We are going to propose directly to the city that they implement the same or similar bylaw where students are being protected from the heat,” said Yang.
The results of the Your City Survey are expected to be released later this year.
Rachel Katz often shares her cooking and baking with other people. After a time, people began to tell her that she should start a food blog. While Katz decided a blog would be too much to handle whilst being a full-time graduate student, she figured Instagram would be a manageable platform. So last summer while she was working one job and had relatively free evenings, she started her food Instagram, Fork in Progress.
On the account, Katz shares photos of the recipes that she’s tried. Unlike many other food accounts, her unfiltered photos project accessibility and make anyone scrolling feel like they could get in their kitchen and make the same meal.
The recipes that Katz tries are not necessarily easy, but she believes basic kitchen confidence can be applied to make more complicated recipes. She looks for recipes with very specific instructions that she can follow along with. She also looks for versatile recipes that she can add her own flavours to. In her captions, she highlights her innovations and provides tips.
One benefit to Instagram for her is the interactivity. It is easy for her followers to ask her questions and provide feedback. The platform also makes it possible for her to share step-by-step videos that break down the recipes into easier steps. This is to prove to people that anyone can learn how to cook delicious dishes.
“I was frustrated with a lot of students… saying ‘oh I have no time to cook’ or ‘I don't like cooking’… [But] food is so important, food is delicious and there's a kind of pride that you get from making your own food that you don't really get from anything else,” Katz said.
Katz understands how difficult balancing food with student life can be. The McMaster grad lived in residence in her first year where the meal plan limited the choice she had over what she ate. In her second year, she shared a six-person student house with a tiny kitchen. In both years, she didn’t feel like she had a fully functional space where she can cook her own meals.
For Katz, this resulted in patterns of disordered eating. In her second year, she committed to recognize these patterns in herself so she can create healthier eating habits. Preparing her own meals has been one tool in repairing Katz’s relationship with food.
In her third year, Katz moved into a two-person apartment with a nice kitchen. In her new kitchen, Katz explored cooking more. Working at the Silhouette also encouraged her as she began to regularly bake for the office. This practice allowed her to receive feedback on her food and grow as a baker.
“I don't use words like clean… or like detox, cleanse… [T]here are all of these other food bloggers out there who use those lines and a lot of recipe bloggers who have these crazy extravagant recipes. But there wasn't really anyone to fulfill the student niche for people who wanted to cook actual meals but didn't really know where to start,” Katz explained.
While developing a healthy relationship with food is important to Katz, food is also a tool that she uses in her relationships with others. Cooking is an activity that she likes to do with family and friends. Her food-related memories stretch all the way back to her childhood.
Katz grew up eating a lot of homemade meals. She is inspired by her mother, who is an accomplished home chef and baker. Not only does she adore the chocolate chip cookies that she grew up eating, but she also admires her mother’s diligence. Her mother can spend months trying to perfect a recipe.
Now an adult, Katz is making her own food memories, many of which include food she’s made for others. For her, cooking for people is a way of shaping their experiences for the better. By making a caramel corn cake for her partner’s birthday, she was able to make the day more memorable. When she makes her mother’s birthday cake this year, she will make that day more special.
However, as the name of her account indicates, Katz is still growing her skills in the kitchen. She wants her followers to continue learning, experimenting and trying new things.
“[H]aving a name that has associations of things that are not quite perfect, that I'm still learning but it doesn't mean that I don't know anything, I think… that embodies the mentality that I'm hoping I can encourage people to take with food and feeding themselves,” said Katz.
For this reason, Katz is not focused on monetizing Fork in Progress, as she and her followers operate within a student budget, she does not want to promote products that are inaccessible. While she would consider a column in a publication, she believes the account can only remain authentic by staying fairly small.
As long as she’s a student, Katz wants to continue spreading positive messages about food and cooking. She wants Fork in Progress to show students that they can make their own cakes and eat them too.
Whether it’s the real world being brought into the classroom by a professor, or the ease in explanation provided by a teaching assistant, there is no doubt that a good learning experience is a product of the time and energy of professors and TAs.
However, these educators are often overlooked and underappreciated for their efforts to bring life to course content. It’s time we become more active in acknowledging our professors and TAs.
The 2019 Teaching Awards Ceremony, an event run by a subcommittee of McMaster Students Union Macademics, was held on March 15, presenting nominated professors and TAs with awards for their excellence in teaching.
As someone involved in organizing and attending the event, a common remark made by the winners was that the greatest compliment they could receive was hearing appreciation from their students.
Although we generally view professors and TAs to be confident people in positions of authority, it was interesting that many of them discussed how even though it’s their job to lecture or run tutorials, they still feel a sense of nervousness before the start of each class.
Though instructors are strongly educated and qualified, it’s reassuring for them to hear that they’re doing a good job from their students.
Let’s take the time to compliment instructors that incorporate memes into their presentations, relate class material to our generation, take feedback seriously and actually make course improvements based off of them.
It’s easy to take their efforts for granted, but if you really enjoyed a class, let your instructor know after class or send them an email with follow-up questions.
Trying to be actively engaged in class is a great way to show instructors that what they’re saying is interesting. Although three-hour lectures can start to drag on, it’s great to ask questions or give your professor a nod of understanding when they look in your direction.
With course evaluations now open, spare a few minutes to describe what you like about your classes so far, and provide suggestions if you have any.
Not only is this an opportunity to give your input, it’s also a great way for professors to cater their class to their students’ needs, something many professors genuinely want to do.
When it’s Teaching Award nomination season, make sure you nominate professors and TAs that are doing a great job. The process takes no more than five minutes and can make all the difference for the educators you’re nominating.
Besides the fact that appreciating your teachers is a kind gesture, it’s also important to remember that beyond the course they are teaching, professors and TAs have industry knowledge and professional experience that could benefit you.
Whether you’re interested in learning more about the field they’re in, getting advice about graduate school or acquiring volunteer opportunities, it’s not a bad idea to start building a relationship with your instructors by showing them how they’re making your learning experience better.
Of course, be genuine and mean what you say, but recognize that sharing your thoughts and opinions about a class can result in a really great professional relationship.
There are classes you will love and others you will hate. But amongst the many that are boring, annoying and difficult, we all have at least one class that we look forward to attending, even on a rough day.
As students, let’s take the time to show our appreciation for our beloved educators that make a positive difference in our lives.
[spacer height="20px"]Working at a newspaper is a good time, especially when the mean comments come in.
Here at the Silhouette, we’re no stranger to harsh comments. For real, just go through our Facebook reviews. For whatever reason, you folks think that you could do our job better than we can.
Sure, maybe you could, but you don’t, so until you overthrow the staff at the Silhouette and claim the paper as your own, we’re asking you to roast us.
Your student fees have paid for the Silhouette to keep on for the past 89 years and our content and design is entirely student-made. We want to represent you and your interests as accurately as we can.
If you vehemently hate the Speculator and all it stands for, hate the fact that we’re not, in your words, a “real” news source, or that our crosswords are a heaping pile of poo, roast us.
We’ve put out tons of surveys over the years and for some reason, while everyone roasts us any other time of year, no one has anything to say when a survey comes out. This is your chance to tell us what you really want.
Want to see more spicy opinion pieces about free speech on campus? Tell us. Want to see more serious, investigative news pieces? Let us know! More memes on Instagram? Hell yeah, say so!
We’ve been through some big changes this year, from strengthening our online voice, growing our video talents and generally becoming better rounded in our content, we’ve definitely modernized our content to fit the general mood. But there’s always room for improvement.
Help us with this! Be honest and critical. Tell us that you hate our guts, if you want, but give us a productive solution so that we can move forward in the ways you want to see.
To help get this feedback, we’re setting up the roast of the Sil. This will take shape in the form of an online survey which will give you the chance to get things off your chest, once and for all. Not only will you get the opportunity to roast us, you’ll also get a chance to win one of twelve prizes in our Twelve Days of Exams campaign which will be launched over the coming weeks.
[button link="https://goo.gl/forms/Q02DEtbB79cj7aki1" type="big" " color="red" newwindow="yes"] FILL OUT OUR SURVEY[/button]
Back in 2016, the Silhouette had a campaign called “Silvision”. It was cheesy in its execution and salty in its referencing of negative subtweets and pseudo-insults.
The paper’s approach to arts and opinions completely changed as a result of this feedback. The successes of this were discussed in the editorial on June 1, 2017, which also highlighted what we would be taking the initiative on in the future.
In particular, these initiatives detailed were to add a second Production Coordinator position, hire the Digital Media Specialist position and attempt to not be as bound by the weekly schedule have all progressed and been successes throughout the year. Award-winning design, memorable videos and more consistent coverage on the website and on all forms of social media were just a few of the direct results of these early plans.
These, in addition to the ambitions of each print section, have made this year a success. The passion for breaking news, intriguing angles and possibilities out of any feature, finding a balance of perspectives and issues in opinions provided, the increased diversity of forms of arts covered and the humanization of sports and willingness to break away from the usual weekly tendencies surpassed my high expectations for the staff.
We definitely do appreciate your praise when it comes to your favourite parts and changes to the paper. It warms the hearts of the Silhouette’s staff to know our work is appreciated and respected, and we cannot thank you enough for your willingness to reach out and let us know.
As we look to the future, there have been a few things that we have left behind that have resurfaced as requests. Sex and the Steel City came back after a hiatus because of the staff’s aspirations for it and the positive reception from readers. Things like a few pages dedicated to business-specific content, an advice column and more coverage of McMaster events from certain clubs and services have all come up at some point this year.
While we do get a decent amount of praise for the decisions made in the past, it is time to look towards the future and transitioning into Volume 89. A few of these requests are already in progress, e.g., we are hoping to collaborate with a contributor for business content starting on the last issue of Volume 88 on April 5 and see the viability of continuing this into the Volume 89 summer issues.
However, what we really want is more feedback to work with. Though this has been a great year for the Silhouette, we want to know how we can continue to best serve you.
We have a Google form available. This will have a few questions related to where you like to read your content, how you feel about sections and aspects of the paper, what you like in terms of designs and layout, social media considerations, volunteering improvements, special issues and so much more.
You do not need to fill everything out, but every single response will be read and considered and we have continuously demonstrated the willingness to adapt to help provide you the highest quality content possible in what you want to see. We look forward to working with you to make the Silhouette even better.
Ethan D’Mello Mechatronics, Engineering and Management III Did you feel like it changed your opinion?
Yes, it definitely did. I got to see who the candidates were in terms of personality, I got to see how they act under pressure. It was good to see how they interact with other candidates. I got more informed about their ideas. Before, they would tell me about their ideas and I was like “oh that’s good” but now after seeing rebuttals from everybody I have more of an idea of what’s feasible, and that’s really going to affect my decision.
Favourite?
I’m a strong supporter of Jama, right now. I could see the passion in her answers, and that’s what I want in a leader. They’ll do what it takes to get it done.
Did you come in with someone in mind?
I had nobody until now. Before the week I just met everybody and got to know their ideas.
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Daniel Tuba D’Souza Biochemistry III
Personally I prefer to read platforms and see on paper what the individuals have thought out and their plans. I think debates are good because you really get to see the individuals on their feet and how they respond to each other, but at the same time, there are some individuals who may not be as good at public speaking and because of that some of their platform points, or their ideas and their ambition or the things they can accomplish for the school do get drowned out. I think that’s a little bit sad to see. But I think that it is good to have this visual out here, it draws people out, it gets their attention, especially the main points. Students should go further and research platform points to see if some of the statements candidates are making are backed up and if the are valid and what they really connect to on that level.
I base my own voting on the platforms themselves… It was more entertaining to see them fire at each other.
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Brian Zheng Kinesiology II
Not really. I think generally with debates like this, often times depending on the popularity of yourself and your public speaking skills it heavily influences how people respond to your arguments and debates. Oftentimes people just come up with buzzwords and end off with a really strong tone and attempt to get people really rallied up and none of their points are really backed up. I think everyone covers it up with really fuzzy words and it’s not backed up… it’s unfortunate that some, like Justin, his points were really good but he’s not as good a public speaker as others, and some of his points get covered up. Some people are just louder than others; some just have bigger teams than others.
I don’t really have a favourite. I think there are obvious leads… but I don’t really have a favourite at all.
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Labika Ghani Commerce I
After watching the debate I really got to understand the candidates and what they believe and their stance and everything, and I feel that I’m more informed about their candidates and their platforms. I know who I’m voting for: Mike Gill.
I think he did a really good job at explaining why he was running for MSU president and what he can accomplish and help students with.
I know all of them, besides Toni and Devante, so I did have a pretty un-bias perspective before coming in. Sarah, Justin and Mike, I know all of them, so I wanted to make sure I had an unbiased perspective and get to see their platforms. But I did read their platforms before coming to the debate.
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Nada El Naiem CSMM II
I didn’t watch the full debate because I had class for an hour.
I found the debate was very informative. There was one question that asked about their views on other peoples platform points, which was good, because you got to see if they actually know about other platform points and if they did their research. Because were supposed to be informed as voters, and I believe that they should also be informed, so it’s nice to know that they also asked questions apart from their own platform points so we can see how they view other points that they might not mention.
I don’t think I have a favourite. I still want to read more about their platform points and visit each table. Also I’m a community advisor, so I’m not allowed to endorse a certain person.
When Mike Gill got rallied up, I’m not sure how he meant to come across, but I know the audience was taken aback. He was defending his 38 platform points, because that was attacked, and he said “I think you should have big goals as MSU president, and if you want to aim low,” not quite sure what the exact quote was, “if you don’t really want much of a change, re-elect Ehima,” I think that was really unprofessional and made a lot of people feel uncomfortable.
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Photos taken by: Jon White/Photo Editor
With the SRA general election underway (polling on March 12 and 13, 2014), we wondered how much McMaster students really know about their Student Representative Assembly.
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